TALES OF PURITAN LAND ***
Produced by David Widger
MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF OUR OWN LAND
By Charles M. Skinner
Vol. 4.
TALES OF PURITAN LAND
CONTENTS:
Evangeline The Snoring of Swunksus The Lewiston Hermit The Dead Ship of Harpswell The Schoolmaster had not reached Orrington Jack Welch's Death Light Mogg Megone The Lady Ursula Father Moody's Black Veil The Home of Thunder The Partridge Witch The Marriage of Mount Katahdin The Moose of Mount Kineo The Owl Tree A Chestnut Log The Watcher on White Island Chocorua Passaconaway's Ride to Heaven The Ball Game by the Saco The White Mountains The Vision on Mount Adams The Great Carbuncle Skinner's Cave Yet they call it Lover's Leap Salem and other Witchcraft The Gloucester Leaguers Satan and his Burial-Place Peter Rugg, the Missing Man The Loss of Weetamoo The Fatal Forget-me-not The Old Mill at Somerville Edward Randolph's Portrait Lady Eleanore's Mantle Howe's Masquerade Old Esther Dudley The Loss of Jacob Hurd The Hobomak Berkshire Tories The Revenge of Josiah Breeze The May-Pole of Merrymount The Devil and Tom Walker The Gray Champion The Forest Smithy Wahconah Falls Knocking at the Tomb The White Deer of Onota Wizard's Glen Balanced Rock Shonkeek-Moonkeek The Salem Alchemist Eliza Wharton Sale of the Southwicks The Courtship of Myles Standish Mother Crewe Aunt Rachel's Curse Nix's Mate The Wild Man of Cape Cod Newbury's Old Elm Samuel Sewall's Prophecy The Shrieking Woman Agnes Surriage Skipper Ireson's Ride Heartbreak Hill Harry Main: The Treasure and the Cats The Wessaguscus Hanging The Unknown Champion Goody Cole General Moulton and the Devil The Skeleton in Armor Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Love and Treason The Headless Skeleton of Swamptown The Crow and Cat of Hopkins Hill The Old Stone Mill Origin of a Name Micah Rood Apples A Dinner and its Consequences The New Haven Storm Ship The Windham Frogs The Lamb of Sacrifice Moodus Noises Haddam Enchantments Block Island and the Palatine The Buccaneer Robert Lockwood's Fate Love and Rum
TALES OF PURITAN LAND
EVANGALINE
The seizure by England of the country that soon afterward was rechristened Nova Scotia was one of the cruellest events in history. The land was occupied by a good and happy people who had much faith and few laws, plenty to eat and drink, no tax collectors nor magistrates, in brief, a people who were entitled to call themselves Acadians, for they made their land an Arcady. Upon them swooped the British ships, took them unarmed and unoffending, crowded them aboard their transports,--often separating husband and wife, parents and children,--scattered them far and wide, beyond hope of return, and set up the cross of St. George on the ruins of prosperity and peace. On the shore of the Basin of Minas can still be traced the foundations of many homes that were perforce deserted at that time, and among them are the ruins of Grand Pre.
Here lived Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, who were betrothed with the usual rejoicings just before the coming of the English. They had expected, when their people were arrested, to be sent away together; but most of the men were kept under guard, and Gabriel was at sea, bound neither he nor she knew whither, when Evangeline found herself in her father's house alone, for grief and excitement had been more than her aged parent could bear, and he was buried at the shore just before the women of the place were crowded on board of a transport. As the ship set off her sorrowing passengers looked behind them to see their homes going up in flame and smoke, and Acadia knew them no more. The English had planned well to keep these people from coming together for conspiracy or revenge: they scattered them over all America, from Newfoundland to the southern savannas.
Evangeline was not taken far away, only to New England; but without Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him, working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on new graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a _coureur des bois_ on the prairies, again that he was a voyageur in the Louisiana lowlands; but those of his people who kept near her inclined to jest at her faith and urged her to marry Leblanc, the notary's son, who truly loved her. To these she only replied, "I cannot."
