“It is not generally remembered, if known, by thedescendants of the Pilgrims, that when their forefathers were spending their first memorable winter in the NewWorld, they had for neighborsa colony of French no further off than Port Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia) ... where, in spite of many vicissitudes, they had been forfifteen years… Though these founders of Acadie endured no less than the Pilgrims, and about the same proportion of them ... died the first winter at St. Croix, 1604-1605, sixteen years earlier, no orator, to my knowledge, has ever celebrated their enterprise ... while the trials which their successors and descendants endured at the hands of the English have furnished a theme for both the historian and poet.”
