iosity to
examine, or exciting their inclination to adopt or embrace it. They are
remarkably fond of rosaries, crucifixes, agnus deis, and all the little
trinkets consecrated by religion, with which they love to adorn their
persons, and of which the priests make no little advantage in disposing
of amongst them: and in truth, it is almost incredible what a power and
influence these have over them, and with which they despotically govern
them. One instance I am sure cannot but make you laugh. In September,
1754, the priest at _Pigigeesh_, had appointed his parishioners to
perform the religious ceremony of a _Recess_, and to make them expiate
some disgust they had given him, obliged them, men, women, and children,
to attend the adoration of the holy-sacrament with a rope about their
necks; and what is more, he not only made them all buy the rope of him,
in which you may be sure he took care to find his account, but exacted
their coming to fetch it bare-footed, from his parsonage house; and this
they quietly submitted to. In short, considering the sweets of power on
whomsoever exercised, our good fathers the missionaries are not so much
to be pitied, as they would have us believe, for their great apostolical
labors, and exposure to fatigue; since it is certain, they live like
little kings in their respective parishes, and enjoy in all senses the
best the land affords; and even our government itself, for its own ends,
is obliged to pay a sort of court to them, and to keep them in good
humour.

The Acadian men were commonly drest in a sort of coarse black stuff made
in the country; and many of the poorer sort go bare-footed in all
weathers. The women are covered with a cloak, and all their head-dress
is generally a handkerchief, which would serve for a veil too, in the
manner they tied it, if it descended low enough.

Their dwellings were almost all built in an uniform manner; the
inhabitants themselves it was who built them, each for himself, there
being but few or no mechanics in the country. The hatchet was their
capital and universal instrument. They had saw-mills for their timber,
and with a plane and a knife, an Acadian would build his house and his
barn, and even make all his wooden domestic furniture. Happy nation!
that could thus be sufficient to itself, which would always be the case,
were the luxury and the vanity of other nations to remain unenvied.

Such in short were the French Acadians, who fell under the dom