Past the Ohio shore and past at the mouth of the Wabash,

Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi,

Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen.

It was a band of exiles, a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked

Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together,

Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune.

Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay,

Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers

On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas.

With them Evageline went, and her guide, the Father Felician.

Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness somber with forests,

Day after day they glided down the turbulent river,

Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders.

Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plume like

Cotton trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current,

Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sandbars

Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin,