, and when we grasped their hands in a last
farewell, words failed us, and our tears and sobs told them of our
gratitude for the benefits they had, so generously, showered upon us.
They, too, wept, touched to the heart by the eloquent, though mute,
expression of our gratitude. Their last words, were words of love,
glowing with a fervent wish that our cherished hopes might be
realized.

"We set out in a westerly direction, and we had soon lost sight of the
hospitable roofs of the Brent and Smith families. We again felt that
we were, once more, poor wandering exiles roaming through the world
in search of a home.

"Our journey, petiots, was slow and tedious, for a thousand obstacles
impeded our progress. We encountered deep and rapid streams that we
could not cross for want of boats; we traveled through mountain
defiles, where the pathway was narrow and dangerous, winding over hill
and dale and over craggy steeps, where one false step might hurl us
down into the yawning chasm below. We suffered from storms and pelting
rains, and at night when we halted to rest our weary limbs, we had
only the light canvass of our tents to shelter us from the inclemency
of the weather.

"Ah! petiots, we were undergoing sore trials! But we were lulled by
the hope that far, far away in Louisiana, our dreamland, we would find
our kith and kin. That radiant hope illumined our pathway; it shone as
a beacon light on which we kept our eyes riveted, and it steeled our
hearts against sufferings and privations almost too great to be borne
otherwise.

"Thus we advanced fearlessly, aye, almost cheerfully, and at night,
when we pitched our tents in some solitary spot, our Acadian songs
broke the silence and loneliness of the solitude, and, as the gentle
wind wafted them over the hills, the light couplets were re-echoed
back to us so clearly and so distinctly, that it seemed the voice of
some friend repeating them in the distance.

"As long as we journeyed in Virginia, barring the obstacles presented
by the roads of a country diversified by hill and dale, our progress,
though slow, was satisfactory. The people were generous, and supplied
us with an abundance of provisions. But when the white population grew
sparser and sparser, and when we reached the wild and mountainous
country which, we were told, bore the name of Carolina, then, petiots,
it required a stout heart and firm resolve, indeed, not to abandon the
attempt to reach Louisiana by the ov