n the woods or returned to their old haunts, whence they waged,
for several years a guerilla warfare against the English. Yet their
strength was broken, and they were no longer a danger to the province.

Of their exiled countrymen, one party overpowered the crew of the vessel
that carried them, ran her ashore at the mouth of the St. John, and
escaped.[286] The rest were distributed among the colonies from
Massachusetts to Georgia, the master of each transport having been
provided with a letter from Lawrence addressed to the Governor of the
province to which he was bound, and desiring him to receive the
unwelcome strangers. The provincials were vexed at the burden imposed
upon them; and though the Acadians were not in general ill-treated,
their lot was a hard one. Still more so was that of those among them who
escaped to Canada. The chronicle of the Ursulines of Quebec, speaking of
these last, says that their misery was indescribable, and attributes it
to the poverty of the colony. But there were other causes. The exiles
found less pity from kindred and fellow Catholics than from the heretics
of the English colonies. Some of them who had made their way to Canada
from Boston, whither they had been transported, sent word to a gentleman
of that place who had befriended them, that they wished to return.[287]
Bougainville, the celebrated navigator, then aide-de-camp to Montcalm,
says concerning them: "They are dying by wholesale. Their past and
present misery, joined to the rapacity of the Canadians, who seek only
to squeeze out of them all the money they can, and then refuse them the
help so dearly bought, are the cause of this mortality." "A citizen of
Quebec," he says farther on, "was in debt to one of the partners of the
Great Company [_Government officials leagued for plunder_]. He had no
means of paying. They gave him a great number of Acadians to board and
lodge. He starved them with hunger and cold, got out of them what money
they had, and paid the extortioner. _Quel pays! Quels moeurs_!"[288]

[Footnote 286: _Lettre commune de Drucour et Prevost au Ministre, 6
Avril, 1756. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Juin, 1756_.]

[Footnote 287: Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass._, III. 42, _note_.]

[Footnote 288: Bougainville, _Journal, 1756-1758_. His statements are
sustained by _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]

Many of the exiles eventually reached Louisiana, where their descendants
now form a numerous and distinct population. Some,