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Priests and sacraments had never been denied them. It is true that Daudin, priest of Pisiquid, had lately been sent to Halifax for using insolent language to the commandant, threatening him with an insurrection of the inhabitants, and exciting them to sedition; but on his promise to change conduct, he was sent back to his parishioners.
Later in the autumn came another delegation of Acadians who had formerly resided at Pisiquid but had migrated to French territory, asking to be allowed to return to their old homes. They had left on account of the severe oath proposed by Cornwallis, but were now willing to come back and take a restricted oath.
Winslow did not land for the present, but held his course to the estuary of the River Pisiquid, since called the Avon. Here, where the town of Windsor now stands, there was a stockade called Fort Edward, where a garrison of regulars under Captain Alexander Murray kept watch over the surrounding settlements.
In any case, of course, the children were in no way responsible, and were therefore sent home; and the governor described Goreham as 'no officer at all. When spring came Cornwallis took steps to stop the incursions of the savages and at the same time to check the emigration of the Acadians. He sent detachments to build and occupy fortified posts at Grand Pre, at Pisiquid, and at other places.
As the business was lucrative he soon accumulated much property in and around Halifax, including the well known Mauger's Beach at the entrance of Halifax harbor. He had also shops at Pisiquid and Minas or, as they are now called, Windsor and Horton where he sold goods and spirits to the French and Indians.
A case instructive of the new temper of the administration was that of the Abbe Daudin of Pisiquid. The abbe had been suspected of stirring up trouble among the Indians, and Captain Murray of Fort Edward was requested to keep an eye on him.
Charity for our detained inhabitants, and their innocence, obliged us to beg Your Excellency, to allow yourself to be touched by their miseries, and to restore to them that liberty which we ask for them, with all possible submission and the most profound respect. The inhabitants of Pisiquid presented a similar petition.
They remained unmolested until early in November, when a fresh detachment of troops arrived to assist in their removal. On December 4 over sixteen hundred men, women, and children were crowded into the transports, which lay off Goat Island and which four days later set sail at eight o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile Captain Murray of Fort Edward was doing his duty in the Pisiquid neighbourhood.
But no sooner had it arrived than the Indians seized and massacred the whole crew save one man, who claimed to be of French origin and was later ransomed by the French. In September the inhabitants of Grand Pre, Canso, and Pisiquid presented a petition to the Council at Halifax, praying that their missionaries be excused from taking the ordinary oath.
When the stern work was done at Grand Pre, at Pisiquid, now Windsor, at Annapolis, there were harrowing scenes. In command of the work at Grand Pre was Colonel Winslow, an officer from Massachusetts some of whose relatives twenty-five years later were to be driven, because of their loyalty to the British King, from their own homes in Boston to this very land of Acadia.
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