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Short and futile as is the tale of the Acadians at Tatamagouche it is, nevertheless, the tale of those who in this, our land, cut the first tree, built the first home, the first church, the first road, the first bridge, the first boat; turned the first sod, sowed the first seed and reaped the first harvest. They were our first traders, fishermen, farmers and builders; they who brought the language of civilized man, the arts and the sciences of the Old World and the Cross of Christianity to our shore. And with them came inevitably much that was good and much that was bad from the Old World; humanity and inhumanity, enlightenment and ignorance; science and superstition; Christian mercy and savage cruelty; uplifting virtues and debasing vices; the fruits of peace and the horrors of war; but withal a progress and a development which the native Americans could not give and which has made America what it is. By them, for better or for worse, the Old World came to Tatamagouche . Their tale is the tale of pathos and of tragedy, the story of a helpless few caught in the clash of two powerful Thrones contending for a continent and
Yet they narrowly escaped. For fifty years, by the procrastinations of the
Government, by their own ingenuity and through a strange, and for them an
unfortuitous sequence of events, they had stayed after their homeland had passed
to another Crown. Another month to that fifty years and all might have been
well. For then the approach of Autumn would have forced a delayed decision; and
a decision delayed is often a decision never made. Back |
