As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
After Braddock's defeat, the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers were left, for a time, to the ravages of the Indians. The colonies were slow to defend themselves, and could get no aid whatever from England, who had her hands full elsewhere.
ODE TO THE INHABITANTS OF PENNSYLVANIA
[September 30, 1756]
Still shall the tyrant scourge of Gaul
With wasteful rage resistless fall
On Britain's slumbering race?
Still shall she wave her bloody hand
And threatening banners o'er this land,
To Britain's fell disgrace?
And not one generous chieftain rise
(Who dares the frown of war despise,
And treacherous fear disclaim)
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His country's ruin to oppose,
To hurl destruction on her foes,
And blast their rising fame?
In Britain's cause, with valor fired,
Braddock, unhappy chief! expired,
And claim'd a nation's tear;
Nor could Oswego's bulwarks stand
The fury of a savage band,
Though Schuyler's arm was there.
Still shall this motley, murderous crew
Their deep, destructive arts pursue,
And general horror spread?
No—see Britannia's genius rise!
Swift o'er the Atlantic foam she flies
And lifts her laurell'd head!
Lo! streaming through the dear blue sky,
Great Loudon's awful banners fly,
In British pomp display'd!
Soon shall the gallant chief advance;
Before him shrink the sons of France,
Confounded and dismay'd.
Then rise, illustrious Britons, rise!
Great Freedom calls, pursue her voice,
And save your country's shame!
Let every hand for Britain arm'd,
And every breast with virtue warm'd,
Aspire at deathless fame!
But chief, let Pennsylvania wake,
And on her foes let terrors shake,
Their gloomy troops defy;
For, lo! her smoking farms and plains,
Her captured youths, and murder'd swains,
For vengeance louder cry.
Why should we seek inglorious rest,
Or sink, with thoughtless ease oppress'd,
While war insults so near?
While ruthless, fierce, athirst for blood,
Bellona's sons, a desperate brood!
In furious bands appear!
Rouse, rouse at once, and boldly chase
From their deep haunts, the savage race,
Till they confess you men.
Let other Armstrongs grace the field!
Let other slaves before them yield,
And tremble round Duquesne.
And thou, our chief, and martial guide,
Of worth approved, of valor tried
In many a hard campaign,
O Denny, warmed with British fire,
Our inexperienced troops inspire,
And conquest's laurels gain!
Pennsylvania Gazette, September 30, 1756.
Meanwhile things were in a troubled condition in Acadia, where the so-called "French neutrals" were discovered to be in arms against England. "Every resource of patience and persuasion" had been used to secure their loyalty to Great Britain, but in vain. At last it was decided to disperse them among the southern provinces, and the deportation began in October. At the end of two months, about six thousand of the Acadians had been sent away, and their homes destroyed.
THE EMBARKATION
From "Evangeline"
[October 8, 1755]
Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house.
Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession,
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women,
Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore,
Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings,
Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland.
Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen,
While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of playthings.
Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach
Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants.
All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply;
All day long the wains came laboring down from the village.
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting,
Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard.
Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors
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Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers.
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country,
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn,
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended
Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters.
Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices,
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:—
"Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain!
Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!"
Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.
* * * * *
Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession.
There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking.
Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion
Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children
Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties.
So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried,
While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father.
Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight
Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean
Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach
Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed.
Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons,
Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle,
All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them,
Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers.
Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean,
Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving
Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors.
Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures;
Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders;
Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,—
Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milk-maid.
Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded,
Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows.
* * * * *
Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon
Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon the mountain and meadow,
Seizing the rocks and the rivers and piling huge shadows together.
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village,
Gleamed on the sky and sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead.
Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were
Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.
These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard.
Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish,
"We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand-Pré!"
Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farm-yards,
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Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle
Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted.
Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments
Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska,
When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind,
Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river.
Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses
Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows.
* * * * *
Lo! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation,
Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges.
'Twas the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean,
With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward.
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking;
And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
