had once resided in Nova Scotia and Lower Canada, or Canada East as now known.  When peopled by the French, Nova Scotia was called Acadia.  Upon the conquest by the English, these people were expelled the country, and in a most inhuman and unchristian manner.  They were permitted to choose the countries to which they would go, and were there sent by the British Government.  Many went to Canada, some to Vincennes in Indiana, some to St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Viedepouche, and Kaskaskia in Mississippi, and many returned to France.

Upon the cession, or rather donation to Spain of Louisiana by France, these, with many others of a population similar to these, from the different arrondissements of France, were sent to Louisiana, and were located in Opelousas, Attakapas, La Fourche, and in the parishes of St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, and St. James (parishes constituting the Acadian coast on the Mississippi).  On the La Fourche they constituted, forty years ago, almost the entire population.  They were illiterate and poor.  Possessing the richest lands on earth, which they had reclaimed from the annual inundations of the Mississippi River by levees constructed along the margins of the stream—­with a climate congenial and healthful, and with every facility afforded by the navigation of the bayou and the Mississippi for reaching the best market for all they could produce—­yet, with all these natural advantages, promising to labor and enterprise the most ample rewards, they could not be stimulated to industry or made to understand them.

They had established their homes on the margin of the stream, and cleared a few acres of the land donated by the Government, upon which to grow a little corn and a few vegetables.  With a limited amount of stock, which found subsistence upon the cane and grass of the woods, and with the assistance of a shot-gun, they managed to subsist—­as Peake’s mother served the Lord—­after a fashion.

Their houses were unique:  a slender frame, often of poles cut from the forest, and rudely squared, served the purpose.  Into the studding were placed pins, extending from one to the other, horizontally, and about ten inches apart.  The long gray moss of the country was then gathered and thrown by layers into a pit dug for the purpose, with the soil, until the pit was full, when water was added in sufficient quantities to wet the mass through; this done, all who are assisting in the construction of the house—­men, women, boys, and girls—­jump in upon it, and continue to tramp until mud and moss are completely intermingled and made of proper consistence, when it is gathered up and made into rails about two feet long.  These rolls are laid over the pins, commencing at the bottom or sill of the building, when each roll is bent down at the ends, covering the intervals between the pins, pressed hardly together, and smoothed with the hands, inside and out, forming a wall some five inches in thickness, with a perfectly smooth surface.