34 ‘The French in Prince Edward Island 
     
    
   
   
    
     All that the Acadians had to do was to pick up 
     
     their movables and drive their cattle to Bay Verte, 
     
     Tatamagouche, or Chibouctou, and with assistance 
     
     from Ile Royale they would have reached their desti- 
     
     nation unmolested. This was what the French Gov- 
     
     ernment hoped they would do, and it was lavish in 
     
     its promises of reward and assistance. By special 
     
     agents, through its missionaries, and in other ways 
     
     it brought pressure upon them but the Acadians 
     
     clung to their lands made dear to them by their own 
     
     labors, made sacred by the graves of their fathers. 
     
     To the missionaries, to the French officials at Ile 
     
     Royale, to the Minister in France, they one and all 
     
     began to make excuses. At one time they preferred 
     
     Isle Saint Jean, at another they preferred Baye de 
     
     Chaleurs, at another they feared the English. But 
     
     behind all was the ever-present love of Acadia and 
     
     the ever-springing hope that it would be recovered 
     
     by France. 
     
    

    
     The apparent indecision of the Acadians, as well 
     
     as the impatient inefficiency of the mother-country, 
     
     is reflected in the correspondence of the period. The 
     
     French Government, because of its weakness and its 
     
     poverty and because of its fear of Spain at this 
     
     crucial period, was very anxious not to antagonize 
     
     the English. Consequently it would not support any 
     
     strong measures on the part of its agents in Ile Roy- 
     
     ale, but relied entirely upon the Acadian fear of the 
     
     English and upon the influence of their missionaries 
     
     in behalf of France. On the other hand the French