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The location of this village, Bacouel, is not known, for unfortunately for the historian, its name does not appear on the maps of that time nor in any of the contemporaneous documents. The name itself in Norman French means a small farm or clearing, and it is evident that wherever it was, it was merely a small settlement, which the Acadians had started in the heart of the wilderness. Whether anybody was living there then or not we do not know. As already has been suggested, it may have been in the vicinity of Farm Lake near the summit of the Cobequid Range. The tradition of over a hundred years that there was a farm and burial-ground near the North end of the Lake can scarcely be without foundation. At least, it gave the lake its name. That De Villiers and men bivouacked here for the night does seem consistent with the facts as we know them from Beaujeu’s narrative. It is true that a journey on foot in mid-winter from Wallace to Farm Lake, probably over twenty-five miles, in one day with a stop besides at Tatamagouche would seem almost a physical impossibility, if we did not remember that it was a forced march by men in the best of condition and training and whose long experience and exposure had acclimated them to such an undertaking. Their progress, too, on the ice from Gouzar to the forking of the French River at the Mill Brook would be rapid and without obstruction. But from the Mill Brook to the base of the mountains, it would be anything but easy. Back |
