FROM 1600 TO 1607
English voyages to North America--Sir Humphrey Gilbert--Henry
Hudson--Champlain's first voyage--Founding of Ste. Croix--The colonists
in Acadia
The second attempt to plant a French colony in the New World was more
disastrous than the first.
Though my Lord Roberval fails, the French fishing vessels continue to
bound over the billows of the Atlantic to the New World. By 1578 there
are a hundred and fifty French fishing vessels off Newfoundland alone.
The fishing folk engage in barter. Cartier's heirs ask for a monopoly of
the fur trade in Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the
merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la
Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly,
with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that
he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is
1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred
people taken from jails, all but sixty have obtained their freedom by
paying a ransom. With these sixty La Roche follows the fishing fleet out
to the Grand Banks, then rounds southwestward for milder clime, where he
may winter his people.
Straight across the ship's course lies the famous sand bank, the
graveyard of the Atlantic,--what the old navigators called "the dreadful
isle,"--Sable Island. The sea lies placid as glass between the crescent
horns of the long, low reefs,--thirty miles from horn to horn, with never
a tree to break the swale of the grass waist-high.
The marquis lands his sixty colonists to fish for supplies, while he goes
on with the crew to find place for settlement.
Barely has the topsail dipped over the watery sky before breakers begin
to thunder on the sand reefs. Air and earth lash to fury. Sails are
torn from the ship of the marquis. His {24} masts go overboard, and the
vessel is driven, helpless as a chip in a maelstrom, clear back to the
ports of France. Here double misfortune awaits La Roche. His old
patrons of the court are no longer powerful. He is thrown in prison by a
rival baron.
In vain the colonists strain tired eyes for a sail at sea. Days become
weeks, weeks months, summer autumn; and no boat came back. As winter
gales assailed the sea, sending the sand drifting like spray, the
convicts built themselves huts out of driftwood, and scooped beds for
themselves in the earth like rabbit burrows. Of food there was plenty.
The people had their fishing lines; and the stock, left by the Baron de
Lery long ago, had multiplied and now overran the island. Wild fowl,
too, teemed on the inland lake; and foxes, which must have drifted ashore
on the ice float of spring, ran wild through the sedge.
Like Robinson Crusoe cast on a desert isle, the desperate people fought
their fate. Traps were set for the foxes, snares for the birds, and
scouts kept tramping from end to end of the island for sight of a sail.
Racked with despair and anxiety, these outcasts of civilization soon fell
to bitter quarreling. Traps were found rifled. Dead men lay beside the
looted traps; and, doubtless, not a few men lost their lives in spring
when the ice floes drifted down with the seal herds, and the men gave mad
chase from ice pan to ice pan for seal pelts to make clothing. Spring
wore to summer. The graves on the sand banks increased. For a second
winter the dreary snowfall wrapped the island in a mantle white as death
sheet. Then came the same weary monotony,--the frenzied seal hunt over
the blood-stained floes; the long summer days with the drone of the tide
on the sand banks; the men mad with hope at sight of a sail peak over the
far wave tops, only to be plunged in despair as the fisher boat passed
too far for signal; the fading of the grasses to russet in the sad autumn
light; then snowfall again--and despair.
Five years passed before La Roche could aid his people; and the pilot who
went to their rescue won himself immortal contempt by robbing the
castaways of their furs. Word of the {25} rescue came to the ears of the
court. Royalty commanded the refugees brought before the throne. Only
twelve had survived, and these marched before the royal presence clothed
in the skins of seals, hair unkempt, beards to mid-waist, "like river
gods of yore," says the old record. The King was so touched that he
commanded fifty crowns given to each man and the stolen furs restored.
La Roche died of chagrin.
While France is trying to colonize Canada, England has not forgotten that
John Cabot first coasted these northern shores and erected the English
flag.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH]
About the time that Marguerite Roberval was left alone on Isle Demons,
two boys--half-brothers--were playing on the sands of the English
Channel, sailing toy boats and listening to sailor yarns of loot on the
Spanish Main. One was Humphrey Gilbert; the other, Walter Raleigh.
These two were destined to lead England's first colonies to America.
Martin Frobisher had already poked the prows of English ships into the
icy straits of Greenland waters, seeking way to {26} China. He had come
out with a fleet of fifteen sails and one hundred mariners in 1578 to
found colonies, but was led away by the lure of "fool's gold." Loading
his vessels with worthless rocks which he believed contained gold enough
"to suffice all the gold gluttons of the world," he sailed back to
England without leaving the trace of a colony. Francis Drake, the very
same year, had for the first time plowed an English furrow around the
seas of the world, chasing Spanish treasure boats up the west coast of
South America and loading his own vessel with loot to the water line.
Afraid to go back the way he had come, round South America, where all the
Spanish frigates lay in wait to catch him, Drake pushed on up the west
coast as far as California, and landing, took possession of what he
called "New Albion" for Queen Elizabeth. But still no colony had been
planted for England.
[Illustration: THE BOYHOOD OF GILBERT AND RALEIGH. (From the painting by
Sir John Millais)]
Gilbert and Raleigh, the two half-brothers, were both zealous for glory.
Both stood high in court favor. Both had fought for Queen Elizabeth in
the wars. Gilbert had fame as seaman and geographer. He asks for the
privilege of founding England's first colony. The Queen will incur no
expense. Gilbert and Raleigh and their friends will fit out the vessels.
Elizabeth deeds to Gilbert all that old domain discovered by John Cabot,
reserving only one fifth of the minerals he may find; and she sends him a
present of a golden anchor as a Godspeed. June 11, 1583, Sir Humphrey
sets sail with a fleet of three splendid merchantmen, fitted out as
men-of-war, and two heavily armed little frigates. The crews number
three hundred and sixty men, but they are for the most part impressed
seamen and riotous. The fleet is only well away when the biggest of the
merchantmen signals that plague has broken out, and flees back to
England. Later, as fog hides the boats from one another, the pirate crew
on board the little frigate _Swallow_ run down an English fisherman on
the Grand Banks, board her, and at bayonet point loot the schooner from
stem to stern. When the ships lower sail to come in on the tide through
the long Narrows, to the rock-girt harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland,
{27} the hundreds of fishing vessels lying at anchor there object to the
pirate _Swallow_; but Sir Humphrey reads his commission from the Queen,
and the fishing fleet roars a welcome that sets the rocks ringing.
Sunday, August 4, the next day after entering, Biscayans and French and
Portuguese and English send their new Governor tribute in
provisions,--fish from the English, marmalade and wines and spices from
the foreigners. The admiral gives a feast to the master mariners each
week he is in port, and entertains--as the old record says--"right
bountifully." Wandering round the rocky harbor, up the high cliff to the
left where remnants of an old fortress may be seen to-day, along the
circular hills to the right where the fishing stages cover the water
front, Gilbert's men find "fool's gold," rock with specks of iron and
mica. Daniel, the refiner of metals, declares it is a rich specimen of
silver. The find goes to Sir Humphrey's head. He sees himself a second
Francis Drake, ships crammed with gold. When the captains of the other
vessels in his fleet would see the treasure, he answers: "Content
yourselves! It is enough! I have seen it but I would have no speech
made of it in harbor; for the Portuguese and {28} Biscayans and French
might learn of it. We shall soon return hither again."
[Illustration: SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT]
Many of the men are in ill health. Gilbert decides to send the invalids
home in the _Swallow_; but he transfers the bold pirate crew of that
frigate to the big ship _Delight_, which carries provisions for the
colony. While planning to make St. John's the headquarters of his new
kingdom, Sir Humphrey wishes to explore those regions where Cartier had
gone and whence the fishing schooners bring such wealth in furs.
August 20 the remainder of his fleet rounds out of St. John's south west
for the Gulf of St. Lawrence,--the _Delight_ with the provisions, the
_Golden Hinde_ with the majority of the people, the little frigate
_Squirrel_ weighted down by artillery stores but under command of Gilbert
himself, because the smaller ship can run close ashore to explore. To
keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off
Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship _Delight_, where the
trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor
jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger."
Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable
Island. Breakers were sighted. The _Delight_ signaled that her captain
wanted to shift southwest to deeper water, but Gilbert wanted to enter
the St. Lawrence and signaled back to go on northwest. That night a
storm raged. The provision ship ran full tilt into the sand banks of
Sable Island, and was battered into chips before the other ships could
come to rescue. All supplies were lost and all the pirate crew perished
but sixteen, who jumped into the pinnace dragging astern, and, with only
one oar, half punted, half drifted for seven days till the wave wash
carried them to the shores of Newfoundland. There they were picked up by
a fishing vessel.
With provisions gone, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colony was doomed. He must
turn back. Saturday, August 31, they reversed the course. When halfway
across the Atlantic the admiral rowed from the little _Squirrel_ across
to the _Golden Hinde_ to have a lame foot treated by the surgeon. "Cheer
{29} up," he urged the men. "Next year her Majesty will loan me 1000
pounds, and we shall come again."
[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH]
As storm was gathering, the men begged him to remain on the larger ship,
but Gilbert refused to leave the sailors of the _Squirrel_. The frigate
was as safe for him as for them, he said. Some one called his attention
to the fact that the frigate was overweighted with cannon. Gilbert
laughed all danger to scorn. Soon afterwards the waves began to break
short and high--a dangerous sea for a small, overweighted ship. It had
been arranged that both ships should swing lanterns fore and aft to keep
each other in sight at night. On the night of September 9 a
phosphorescent light was seen to gleam above the mainmast of the
_Squirrel_,--certain sign to the superstitious sailors of dire disaster;
but when the _Hinde_ slackened speed, and the great waves threw the
vessels almost together, there was Sir Humphrey sitting aloft, book in
hand, shouting out, "We are as near Heaven by sea as by land." The
_Hinde_ fell to the rear. The _Squirrel_ led away, her stern lanterns
lighting a trail across the shiny dark of the tempestuous billows.
Suddenly, at midnight, the guiding {30} light was lost. The _Squirrel's_
stern lanterns were seen to descend the pitching trough of a mountain
wave, and when the wall of water fell, no light came up. Down into the
abyss the little craft had plunged, never to rise again, carrying
explorer, treasure hunters, colonists, to a watery grave.
It may be added that the disaster took place halfway across the ocean,
and not off Newfoundland, as the ballad relates.
But for all this misfortune, England did not desist. The very next year
Raleigh, who had played on the sands with Humphrey Gilbert, sends out his
colonists to the Roanoke, and lays the foundations for the beginning of
empire in the Southern States. English sailors explore Cape Cod. Ten
years after Frobisher had brought home his cargo of worthless stones from
Labrador, Davis, the master mariner, is out exploring the waters west of
Greenland; and Henry Hudson, the English pilot who had discovered Hudson
River, New York, for the Dutch, is retained by the English in 1610 to
explore those waters west of Greenland where both Frobisher and Davis
reported open passage.
It is midsummer of 1610 when Hudson enters Hudson Straits. The ice jam
of Ungava Bay, Labrador, has almost torn his ships' timbers apart and has
set fear shivering like an aspen leaf among the crew. Old Juett, the
mate, rages openly at Hudson for venturing such a frail ship on such a
sea; but when the ship anchors at the west end of Hudson Straits, five
hundred miles from the Atlantic, there opens to view another sea,--a sea
large as the Mediterranean, that, like the Mediterranean, may lead to
another world. It is as dangerous to go back as forward; and forward
Hudson sails, southwestward for that sea Drake had cruised off
California, the old mate's mutiny rumbling beneath decks like a volcano.
South, southwestward, seven hundred miles sails Hudson, past the high
rocks and airy cataracts of Richmond Gulf, past silence like the realms
of death, on down where Hudson Bay rounds into James Bay and the shallows
plainly show this is no way to a western sea, but a blind inlet,
bowlder-strewn and muddy as swamps.
{31}
[Illustration: AT EASTERN ENTRANCE TO HUDSON STRAITS]
When the ship runs aground and all hands must out to waist in ice water
to pull her ashore as the tide comes in, Juett's rage bursts all bounds.
As they toil, snow begins to fall. They are winter bound and storm bound
in an unknown land. Half the crew are in open mutiny; the other half
build winter quarters and range the woods of James Bay for game. Of game
there is plenty, but the rebels refuse to hunt. A worthless lad named
Green, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London, turns traitor
and talebearer, fomenting open quarrels till the commander threatens he
will hang to the yardarm the first man guilty of disobedience. So passes
the sullen winter. Provisions are short when the ship weighs anchor for
England in June of 1611. With tears in his eyes, Hudson hands out the
last rations. Ice blocks the way. Delay means starvation. If the crew
were only half as large, Henry Green whispers to the mutineers, there
would be food enough for passage home. The ice floes clear, the sails
swing rattling to the breeze, but as Hudson steps on deck, the mutineers
leap upon him like wolves. He is bound and thrown into the rowboat.
With him are thrust his son and {32} eight others of the crew. The rope
is cut, the rowboat jerks back adrift, and Hudson's vessel, manned by
mutineers, drives before the wind. A few miles out, the mutineers lower
sails to rummage for food. The little boat with the castaways is seen
coming in pursuit. Guilt-haunted, the crew out with all sails and flee
as from avenging ghosts. So passes Henry Hudson from the ken of all men,
though Indian legend on the shores of Hudson Bay to this day maintains
that the castaways landed north of Rupert and lived among the savages.
[Illustration: HUDSON COAT OF ARMS]
Not less disastrous were English efforts than French to colonize the New
World. Up to 1610 Canada's story is, in the main, a record of blind
heroism, dogged courage, death that refused to acknowledge defeat.
Four hundred French vessels now yearly come to reap the harvest of the
sea; in and out among the fantastic rocks of Gaspé, pierced and pillared
and scooped into caves by the wave wash, where fisher boats reap other
kind of harvest, richer than the silver harvest of the sea,--harvest of
beaver, and otter, and marten; up the dim amber waters of the Saguenay,
within the shadow of the somber gorge, trafficking baubles of bead and
red print for furs, precious furs. Pontgravé, merchant prince, comes out
with fifty men in 1600, and leaves sixteen at Tadoussac, ostensibly as
colonists, really as wood lopers to scatter through the forests and learn
the haunts of the Indians. Pontgravé comes back for men and furs in
1601, and comes again in 1603 with two vessels, accompanied by a soldier
of fortune from the French court, who acts as geographer,--Samuel
Champlain, now in his thirty-sixth year, with service in war to his
credit and a journey across Spanish America.
{33} The two vessels are barely as large as coastal schooners; but
shallow draft enables them to essay the Upper St. Lawrence far as Mount
Royal, where Cartier had voyaged. Of the palisaded Indian fort not a
vestige remains. War or plague has driven the tribe westward, but it is
plain to the court geographer that, in spite of former failures, this
land of rivers like lakes, and valleys large as European kingdoms, is fit
for French colonists.
[Illustration: THE FANTASTIC ROCKS OF GASPÉ]
When Champlain returns to France the King readily grants to Sieur de
Monts a region roughly defined as anywhere between Pennsylvania and
Labrador, designated Acadia. This region Sieur de Monts is to colonize
in return for a monopoly of the fur trade. When other traders complain,
De Monts quiets them by letting them all buy shares in the venture. With
him are associated as motley a throng of treasure seekers as ever
stampeded for gold. There is Samuel Champlain, the court geographer;
there is Pontgravé, the merchant prince, on a separate {34} vessel with
stores for the colonists. Pontgravé is to attend especially to the fur
trading. There are the Baron de Poutrincourt and his young son,
Biencourt, and other noblemen looking for broader domains in the New
World; and there are the usual riffraff of convicts taken from dungeons.
Priests go to look after the souls of the Catholics, Huguenot ministers
to care for the Protestants, and so valiantly do these dispute with
tongues and fists that the sailors threaten to bury them in the same
grave to see if they can lie at peace in death.
[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN]
Before the boats sight Acadia, it is early summer of 1604. Pontgravé
leaves stores with De Monts and sails on up to Tadoussac. De Monts
enters the little bay of St. Mary's, off the northwest corner of Nova
Scotia, and sends his people ashore to explore.
Signs of minerals they seek, rushing pellmell through the woods, gleeful
as boys out of school. The forest is pathless and dense with June
undergrowth, shutting out the sun and all sign of direction. The company
scatters. Priest Aubry, more used to the cobble pavement of Paris than
to the tangle of ferns, grows fatigued and drinks at a fresh-water rill.
Going in the direction of his comrades' voices, he suddenly realizes that
he has left his sword at the spring. The priest hurries back for the
sword, loses his companions' voices, and when he would return, finds that
he is hopelessly lost. The last shafts of {35} sunlight disappear. The
chill of night settles on the darkening woods. The priest shouts till he
is hoarse and fires off his pistol; but the woods muffle all sound but
the scream of the wild cat or the uncanny hoot of the screech owl. Aubry
wanders desperately on and on in the dark, his cassock torn to tatters by
the brushwood, his way blocked by the undisturbed windfall of countless
ages, . . . on and on, . . . till gray dawn steals through the forest and
midday wears to a second night.
Back at the boat were wild alarm and wilder suspicions. Could the
Huguenots, with whom Aubry had battled so violently, have murdered him?
De Monts scouted the notion as unworthy, but the suspicion clung in spite
of fiercest denials. All night cannon were fired from the vessel and
bonfires kept blazing on shore; but two or three days passed, and the
priest did not come.
De Monts then sails on up the Bay of Fundy, which he calls French Bay,
and by the merest chance sheers through an opening eight hundred feet
wide to the right and finds himself in the beautiful lakelike Basin of
Annapolis, broad chough to harbor all the French navy, with a shore line
of wooded meadows like home-land parks. Poutrincourt is so delighted, he
at once asks for an estate here and names the domain Port Royal.
On up Fundy Bay sails De Monts, Samuel Champlain ever leaning over decks,
making those maps and drawings which have come down from that early
voyage. The tides carry to a broad river on the north side. It is St.
John's Day. They call the river St. John, and wander ashore, looking
vainly for more minerals. Westward is another river, known to-day as the
Ste. Croix, the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. Dochet Island
at its mouth seems to offer what to a soldier is an ideal site. A fort
here could command either Fundy Bay or the upland country, which Indians
say leads back to the St. Lawrence. Thinking more of fort than farms, De
Monts plants his colony on Ste. Croix River, on an island composed mainly
of sand and rock.
While workmen labor to erect a fort on the north side, the pilot is sent
back to Nova Scotia to prospect for minerals. As {36} the vessel coasts
near St. Mary's Bay, a black object is seen moving weakly along the
shore. Sailors and pilot gaze in amazement. A hat on the end of a pole
is waved weakly from the beach. The men can scarcely believe their
senses. It must be the priest, though sixteen days have passed since he
disappeared. For two weeks Aubry had wandered, living on berries and
roots, before he found his way back to the sea.
[Illustration: PORT ROYAL OR ANNAPOLIS BASIN, 1609 (From Lescarbot's
map)]
Here, then, at last, is founded the first colony in Canada, a little
palisaded fort of seventy-nine men straining longing eyes at the sails of
the vessel gliding out to sea; for Pontgravé has taken one vessel up the
St. Lawrence to trade, and Poutrincourt has gone back to France with the
other for supplies. A worse beginning could hardly have been made. The
island was little better than a sand heap. No hills shut out the cold
winds that swept down the river bed from the north, and the tide carried
in ice jam from the south. As the snow began to fall, padding the
stately forests with a silence as of death, whitening the gaunt spruce
trees somber as funereal mourners, the colonists felt the icy loneliness
of winter in a forest chill their hearts. {37} Cooped up on the island
by the ice, they did little hunting. Idleness gives time for repinings.
Scurvy came, and before spring half the colonists had peopled the little
cemetery outside the palisades. De Monts has had enough of Ste. Croix.
When Pontgravé comes out with forty more men in June, De Monts prepares
to move. Champlain had the preceding autumn sailed south seeking a
better site; and now with De Monts he sails south again far as Cape Cod,
looking for a place to plant the capital of New France. It is amusing to
speculate that Canada might have included as far south as Boston, if they
had found a harbor to their liking; but they saw nothing to compare with
Annapolis Basin, narrow of entrance, landlocked, placid as a lake, with
shores wooded like a park; and back they cruised to Ste. Croix in August,
to move the colony across to Nova Scotia, to Annapolis Basin of Acadia.
While Champlain and Pontgravé volunteer to winter in the wilderness, De
Monts goes home to look after his monopoly in France.
What had De Monts to show for his two years' labor? His company had
spent what would be $20,000 in modern money, and all returns from fur
trade had been swallowed up prolonging the colony. While Champlain
hunted moose in the woods round Port Royal and Pontgravé bartered furs
during the winter of 1605-1606, De Monts and Poutrincourt and the gay
lawyer Marc Lescarbot fight for the life of the monopoly in Paris and
point out to the clamorous merchants that the building of a French empire
in the New World is of more importance than paltry profits. De Monts
remains in France to stem the tide rising against him, while Poutrincourt
and Lescarbot sail on the _Jonas_ with more colonists and supplies for
Port Royal.
Noon, July 27, 1606, the ship slips into the Basin of Annapolis. To
Lescarbot, the poet lawyer, the scene is a fairyland--the silver flood of
the harbor motionless as glass, the wooded meadows dank with bloom, the
air odorous of woodland smells, the blue hills rimming round the sky, and
against the woods of the north shore the chapel spire and thatch roofs
and slab walls of the little fort, the one oasis of life in a wilderness.
{38} As the sails rattled down and the anchor dropped, not a soul
appeared from the fort. The gates were bolted fast. The _Jonas_ runs up
the French ensign. Then a canoe shoots out from the brushwood, paddled
by the old chief Membertou. He signals back to the watchers behind the
gates. Musketry shots ring out welcome. The ship's cannon answer,
setting the waters churning. Trumpets blare. The gates fly wide and out
marches the garrison--two lone Frenchmen. The rest, despairing of a ship
that summer, have cruised along to Cape Breton to obtain supplies from
French fishermen, whence, presently, come Pontgravé and Champlain,
overjoyed to find the ship from France. Poutrincourt has a hogshead of
wine rolled to the courtyard and all hands fitly celebrate.
[Illustration: BUILDINGS ON STE. CROIX ISLAND, 1613 (From Champlain's
diagram)]
When Pontgravé carries the furs to France, Marc Lescarbot, the lawyer
poet, proves the life of the fort for this, the third winter of the
colonists in Acadia. Poutrincourt and his son {39} attend to trade.
Champlain, as usual, commands; and dull care is chased away by a thousand
pranks of the Paris advocate. First, he sets the whole fort a-gardening,
and Baron Poutrincourt forgets his _noblesse_ long enough to wield the
hoe. Then Champlain must dam up the brook for a trout pond. The weather
is almost mild as summer until January. The woods ring to many a merry
picnic, fishing excursion, or moose hunt; and when snow comes, the gay
Lescarbot along with Champlain institutes a New World order of
nobility--the Order of Good Times. Each day one of the number must cater
to the messroom table of the fort. This means keen hunting, keen rivalry
for one to outdo another in the giving of sumptuous feasts. And all is
done with the pomp and ceremony of a court banquet. When the chapel bell
rings out noon hour and workers file to the long table, there stands the
Master of the Revels, napkin on shoulder, chain of honor round his neck,
truncheon in his hand. The gavel strikes, and there enter the
Brotherhood, each bearing a steaming dish in his hand,--moose hump,
beaver tail, bears' paws, wild fowl smelling luscious as food smells only
to out-of-doors men. Old Chief Membertou dines with the whites.
Crouching round the wall behind the benches are the squaws and the
children, to whom are flung many a tasty bit.
At night time, round the hearth fire, when the roaring logs set the
shadows dancing on the rough-timbered floor, the truncheon and chain of
command are pompously transferred to the new Grand Master. It is all
child's play, but it keeps the blood of grown men coursing hopefully.
Or else Lescarbot perpetrates a newspaper,--a handwritten sheet giving
the doings of the day,--perhaps in doggerel verse of his own composing.
At other times trumpets and drums and pipes keep time to a dance. As all
the warring clergymen, both Huguenot and Catholic, have died of scurvy,
Lescarbot acts as priest on Sundays, and winds up the day with cheerful
excursions up the river, or supper spread on the green. The lawyer's
good spirits proved contagious. The French songs that rang through the
woods of Acadia, keeping time to the chopper's {40} labors, were the best
antidote to scurvy; but the wildwood happiness was too good to last.
While L'Escarbot was writing his history of the new colonies a bolt fell
from the blue. Instead of De Monts' vessel there came in spring a
fishing smack with word that the grant of Acadia had been rescinded. No
more money would be advanced. Poutrincourt and his son, Biencourt,
resolved to come back without the support of a company; but for the
present all took sad leave of the little settlement--Poutrincourt,
Champlain, L'Escarbot--and sailed with the Cape Breton fishing fleet for
France, where they landed in October, 1607.
Cartier, Roberval, La Roche, De Monts--all had failed to establish France
in Canada; and as for England, Sir Humphrey's colonists lay bleaching
skeletons at the bottom of the sea.
{41}