McKay, Lieut.-Col.
Valentine Jones, Lieut.-Genl.

Burgoyue, and Major Philip Skene.
[Footnote 1: The full name of this British officer is not given in any part of this work.] The above has been copied principally for the purpose of showing that the following story has for its characters those who once lived and moved in the early English colonial life of Acadia.

If the districts and places where the events related in this book occurred could speak, they would tell nearly the same thrilling and extraordinary story.

In many of these localities great and important changes have taken place through a century and a quarter of time, but the records of the past remain unchanged.
Our barns may be built over the graves of the Indians, and our houses on the sites of their wigwams; our cattle may graze upon the hillsides and valleys of their hunting grounds, and our churches may be erected on positions where the Red men of the forest gathered together to invoke the blessing of the Great Chief of the everlasting hunting ground, yet what is truly written of the past must remain unalterable.
* * * * * NOTE .-- The wrecked transport _Pitt_ was named, it is said, in honour of the Earl of Chatham; and tradition states that one of the boats of the ship drifted from the wreck and went ashore at a point of land near where the town of Chatham now stands, the ship's name being painted on the boat; and from this circumstance Chatham, on the Miramichi River, received its name..