When Samuel de Champlain and other Europeans began to visit New Brunswick in the earlv 1600s, they were met by Maliseets and Micmacs. The early French farmers settled at the head of the Bay of Fundy and up the St. John River Valley as far as present-day Fredericton and called the land Acadia. Fall-out from the English and French wars in Europe resulted in the expulsion of more than 5,000 Acadians in 1755. Some of them escaped to what was then a remote and uninhabited coastline along the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Chaleur Bay. Today we call it the Acadian Peninsula. Others returned to France or fled to the United States, many settling in Louisiana. In 1783 it was the English who were refugees. During the American Revolution some citizens from the eastern seaboard wanted to remain loyal to the English crown and fled to Canada. So many landed in Saint John that by 1785 they were able to incorporate Canada's first city. Scots and Irish, pushed out of their homes by political pressure and potato famines, arrived in the early 1800s, and in the 1870s a few hundred Danes settled in Victoria County where their distinctive community survives to this day. But by the late 19th century, major immigration floods were replaced by a trickle of settlers from all over the world. Today, although Native, French, English, Scottish and Irish roots run deep, New Brunswick enjoys a vivid, multi-cultural and spiritual heritage.