Acadian garden. In it were quantities of 'very fine
well-headed cabbages and of all other sorts of pot herbs
and vegetables.' Apple and pear trees brought from France
flourished. The peas were 'so covered with pods that it
could only be believed by seeing.' The wheat was
particularly good. We read of one piece of land where
'each grain had produced six or eight stems, and the
smallest ear was half a foot in length, filled with
grain.' The streams and rivers, too, teemed with fish.
The noise of salmon sporting in the rivers sounded like
the rush of a turbulent rapid, and a catch such as 'ten
men could not haul to land' was often made in a night.
Pigeons were a plague, alighting in vast flocks in the
newly planted gardens. If the economic progress of the
country had been slow, the reason had lain, not in any
poverty of natural resources, but in the scantiness of
the population, the neglect of the home government, the
incessant turmoil within, and the devastating raids of
English enemies.




CHAPTER II

THE BRITISH IN ACADIA

Almost from the first England had advanced claims, slender
though they were, to the ownership of Acadia. And very
early, as we have seen, the colony had been subjected to