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Allan, knowing full well by experience as an Indian trader the weak points of Indian character, flattered them, appealed to their cupidity, promised them presents and supplies at the trading posts he was about to establish, recalled the days when they regarded the French as their brothers affirming he had come to do them justice with the same authority Monsieur Boishebert had exercised in the French time.
The governor not being able to provide for all the refugees at the River St. John, on account of the difficulty of transporting supplies by way of Temiscouata, gave directions to the Sieur de Boishebert to send to Miramichi the families he could not subsist on the St. John. The number of Acadians at Miramichi soon amounted to 3,500 persons.
The governor of Canada ordered Boishebert to hold himself in readiness to aid in its defence, and he accordingly proceeded to Cape Breton with a force of 100 Acadians and Canadians and about 250 Indians, many of them Maliseets of the River St. John.
Some had journeyed on foot or by canoe through an unexplored wilderness; others, from the far away Carolinas, having procured small vessels, succeeded in creeping furtively along the Atlantic coast from one colony to another until they reached the Bay of Fundy; and thus the number of the Acadians continued to increase until Boishebert had more than a thousand people under his care.
Two depots of provisions had been placed in the woods for the use of the detachment, but the fact that Boishebert had only about 120 Acadians and a few Indians in addition to a handful of regulars, entirely frustrated Drucour's design of harrassing the attacking English by a strong demonstration in their rear.
The governor and other officials at Quebec seem to have placed every confidence in the courage and capacity of Boishebert, who, it may be here mentioned received this year the Cross of St. Louis in recognition of his services in Acadia.
He wrote the French minister, June 1, 1756: "I shall not recall M. de Boishebert nor the missionaries, nor withdraw the Acadians into the heart of the colony until the last extremity, and when it shall be morally impossible to do better." It was his intention to send provisions and munitions of war to the Acadians and Indians.
He was induced by Boishebert to come on shore, was made a prisoner and only released on promising that the six prisoners carried off by Cobb should be set at liberty. In the autumn of the year 1750 Captain Rous, while cruising in the "Albany," fell in with a French man-of-war and a schooner off Cape Sable.
Boishebert, in his letter to the Count de la Galissonniere, says that one of the best reasons the English had for laying claim to the territory north of the Bay of Fundy was that the commission of Subercase, the last French governor who resided at Annapolis Royal, fixed his jurisdiction as far west as the River Kennebec.
Shortly after his arrival at the French settlements on the Petitcodiac, Boishebert had a sharp engagement with a party of New England troops who had been sent there to burn the houses of the Acadians and who were about to set fire to their chapel.
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