round
Minas Basin was settled in the early years of the seventeenth
century by immigrants from La Rochelle, Saintonge, and Poitou.
During the wars between France and England the Acadians, as a Nova
Scotian historian relates, "were strongly patriotic, and took up
arms in the cause of their native land. Intensely devoted to the
Roman Catholic Church, and considering these wars as in the nature
of crusades, they fought valiantly and well. But when Nova Scotia
was finally ceded to Great Britain (in 1713) their position became
very awkward and painful. Many of them refused to take the oath of
allegiance, and for others a modified formula was framed. Emissaries
of the French power at Louisburg and Quebec circulated among them
and maintained their loyalty to France at a fever heat, while their
priests pursued the same policy and kept up the hostility to the
conquerors.

The British provincial government was located at Annapolis, and
though its laws were mild and clement, it could not command respect
on account of its physical weakness. Under these circumstances
hundreds of Acadians joined the French armies during every war
between the two powers, and proved dangerous foemen on account of
their knowledge of the region. British settlers were unwilling to
locate among these people on account of their racial hostility, and
the fairest lands of the province were thus held by an alien and
hostile population.

The expulsion and exile of the French Neutrals from their homes in
Acadia--the region now included in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick--are one of the saddest episodes in history. The
occasion for their removal and dispersion was the alleged charge that
they secretly took sides with their French compatriots against the
English in every struggle on this continent between the two nations,
each seeking supreme dominion in the New World, and were thus a constant
menace to the English colonists on the seaboard. The trouble at this
period was complicated by disputed boundary lines, the whole interior of
the continent being claimed by France, while the English were shut in
between the mountain ranges of the Alleghanies and the sea. But the
English colonies would not be hemmed in either by nature or by France.
Their hardy sons sought adventure and gain in the Far West, while not a
few for this purpose pushed their way