Boston
was filled with enthusiasm for the enterprise. The legislature
made military service compulsory, quartered soldiers in private
houses without consent of the owners, impressed sailors, and
altogether was quite arbitrary and high-handed. The people,
however, would bear almost anything if only they could crush Port
Royal, the den of privateers who seized many New England vessels.
On the 18th of September, to the great joy of Boston, the
frigates and the transports sailed away, with Nicholson in
command of the troops and Vetch as adjutant-general.
What we know today as Digby Basin on the east side of the Bay of
Fundy, is a great harbor, landlocked but for a narrow entrance
about a mile wide. Through this "gut," as it is called, the tide
rushes in a torrential and dangerous stream, but soon loses its
violence in the spacious and quiet harbor. Here the French had
made their first enduring colony in America. On the shores of the
beautiful basin the fleurs-de-lis had been raised over a French
fort as early as 1605. A lovely valley opens from the head of the
basin to the interior.
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