 Chapter 3 of Pioneers of France in the New World, Part 2, Champlain and His Associates This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman. Chapter 2. Samuel Champlain and His Associates Chapter 3. Acadia Occupied, 1604, 1605 De Montt, with one of his vessels, sailed from Avre de Grasse on the 7th of April, 1604. Pont Grave, with stores for the colony, was to follow in a few days. Scarcely were they at sea, when ministers and priests fell first to discussion, then to quarrelling, then to blows. I have seen our curate and the minister, says Champlain, fall to with their fists on questions of faith. I cannot say which had the more pluck, or which hit the harder, but I know that the minister sometimes complained to the sire de Montt that he had been beaten. This was their way of settling points of controversy. I leave you to judge if it was a pleasant thing to see. Sagares, the Franciscan friar, relates with horror that after their destination was reached, a priest and a minister happening to die at the same time, the crew buried them both in one grave to see if they would lie peaceably together. De Montt, who had been to the St. Lawrence with Chauvin and learned to dread its rigorous winters, steered for a more southern and, as he flattered himself, a milder region. The first land seen was Kaplahev on the southern coast of Nova Scotia. Four days later they entered a small bay where, to their surprise, they saw a vessel lying at anchor. Here was a piece of good luck. The stranger was a fur trader, pursuing her traffic in defiance, or more probably in ignorance, of De Montt's monopoly. The latter, as empowered by his patent, made prize of ship and cargo, consoling the commander, one Rossignol, by giving his name to the scene of his misfortune. It is now called Liverpool Harbour. In an adjacent harbour, called by them Port Mouton, because a sheep here leaped overboard, they waited nearly a month for Pongrav's store-ship. At length to their great relief she appeared, laden with the spoils of four Basque fur traders captured at Cancéan. The supplies delivered Pongrav sailed for Tadusak to trade with the Indians, while De Montt, followed by his prize, proceeded on his voyage. He doubled Cape Sable and entered St. Mary's Bay, where he lay two weeks, sending boats crews to explore the adjacent coasts. A party one day went on shore to stroll through the forest, and among them was Nicholas Obrey, a priest from Paris, who, tiring of the scholastic haunts of the Rue de la Sorbonne and the Rue d'en Faire, had persisted, despite the remonstrance of his friends, in joining the expedition. Thirsty with a long walk under the sun of June, through the tangled and rock-en-cumbered woods, he stopped to drink at a brook, laying his sword beside him on the grass. On rejoining his companions he found that he had forgotten it, and turning back in search of it, more skilled in the devious windings of the Cartier-Latin than in the intricacies of the Acadian forest, he soon lost his way. His comrades, alarmed, waited for a time, and then ranged the woods, shouting his name to the echoing solitudes. Trumpets were sounded, and cannon fired from the ships, but the priests did not appear. All now looked a-scance on a certain Huguenot, with whom Obrey had often quarreled on questions of faith, and who was now accused of having killed him. In vain he denied the charge. Obrey was given up for dead, and the ship sailed from St. Mary's Bay, while the wretched priest roamed to and fro, famished and despairing, or couched on the rocky soil in the troubled sleep of exhaustion, dreamed, perhaps, as the wind swept moaning through the pines, that he heard once more the organ roll through the columned arches of St. Jean-Vievre. The voyagers proceeded to explore the Bay of Fundy, which de Montcaldes la Baye Françoise. Their first notable discovery was that of Annapolis Harbour. A small inlet invited them. They entered, when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquil basin, compassed by sunny hills, wrapped in woodland verger, and alived with waterfalls. Putrancourt was delighted with the scene. The fancy seized him of removing thither from France with his family, and to this end he asked a grant of the place from de Montcaldes, who by his patent had nearly half the continent in his gift. The grant was made, and Putrancourt called his new domain Port Royal. Thence they sailed round the head of the Bay of Fundy, coasted its northern shore, visited and named the River St. John, and anchored at last in Passamaquati Bay. The entireing Champlain, exploring, surveying, sounding, had made charts of all the principal roads and harbours. And now, pursuing his research, he entered a river which he calls La Rivière des Etchements, from the name of the tribe of whom the present Passamaquati Indians are descendants. Near its mouth he found an islet, fenced round with rocks and shoals, and called at St. Croix, a name now borne by the river itself. With singular infelicity this spot was chosen as the site of the new colony. It commanded the river and was well fitted for defence. These were its only merits. Yet cannon were landed on it, a battery was planted on a detached rock at one end and a fort begun on a rising ground at the other. At St. Mary's Bay the voyagers thought they had found traces of iron and silver, and shop door the pilot was now sent back to pursue the search. As he and his men lay at anchor, fishing, not far from land, one of them heard a strange sound like a weak human voice, and looking towards the shore they saw a small black object in motion, apparently a hat waved on the end of a stick. Rowing in haste to the spot they found the priest Obrey. For sixteen days he had wandered in the woods, sustaining life on berries and wild fruits, and when, haggard and emaciated, a shadow of his former self, shop door carried him back to St. Croix, he was greeted as a man risen from the grave. In 1783 the River St. Croix by treaty was made the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, but which was the true St. Croix? In 1798 the point was settled, de Monts Island was found, and painfully searching among the sand, the sedge, and the matted wordleberry bushes, the commissioners could trace the foundations of buildings long crumbled into dust. For the wilderness had resumed its sway, and silence and solitude brooded once more over this ancient resting place of civilization. But while the commissioner bends over a moss-grown stone, it is for us to trace back the dim vista of the centuries to the life, the zeal, the energy of which this stone is the poor memorial. The rock-fenced islet was covered with cedars, and when the tide was out the shoals around were dark with a swash of seaweed, where in their leisure moments the Frenchmen, we are told, amused themselves with detaching the limpets from the stones as a savory addition to their fare. But there was little leisure at St. Croix. Soldiers, sailors, and artisans betook themselves to their task. Before the winter closed in, the northern end of the island was covered with buildings surrounding a square where a solitary tree had been left standing. On the right was a spacious house, well-built, and surmounted by one of those enormous roofs characteristic of the time, this with the lodging of Des Mons. Behind it and near the water was a long-covered gallery for labour or amusement in foul leather. Champlain and the sur-dor-ville, aided by the servants of the latter, built a house for themselves nearly opposite that of Des Mons, and the remainder of the square was occupied by storehouses, a magazine, workshops, lodgings for gentlemen and artisans, and a barrack for the Swiss soldiers, the whole enclosed with a palisade. There was an attempt at a garden under the auspices of Champlain, but nothing would grow in the sandy soil. There was a cemetery, too, and a small rustic chapel on a projecting point of rock. Such was the habitation de Lille-Saint-Croix as set forth by Champlain in quaint plans and drawings in that musty little quarto of 1613 sold by Jean Bergen at the sign of the flying horse, Rue Saint-Jean de Beauvais. Their labourers over, Poutrin-Cours set sail for France, proposing to return and take possession of his domain of Port-Royal. Seventy-nine men remained at Saint-Croix. Here was Des Mons, feudal lord of half a continent in virtue of two potent syllables, Henri, scrawled on parchment by the rugged hand of the Bernades. Here were gentlemen of birth and breeding, Champlain, D'Orville, Beaumont, Surin, Lamotte, Boulet, and Fougere. Here also were the Padnacius Curé and his fellow priests, with the Huguenot ministers, objects of their unceasing ire. The rest were labourers, artisans, and soldiers, all in the pay of the company, and some of them forced into its service. Poutrin-Cours' receding sails vanished between the water and the sky. The exiles were left to their solitude. From the Spanish settlements northward to the pole, there was no domestic hearth, no lodgement of civilized men, save one week band of Frenchmen, clinging as it were for life to the fringe of the vast and savage continent. The gray and sullen autumn sank upon the waste, and the bleak wind hailed down the St. Croix and swept the forest bare. Then the whirling snow powdered the vast sweep of desolate woodland and shrouded in white the gloomy green of pine-clad mountains. Ice in sheets or broken masses swept by their island with the ebbing and flowing tide, and debarring all access to the main, and cutting off their supplies of wood and water. Abelta cedars indeed hedged the island, but de Monde had ordered them to be spared that the north wind might spend something of its force with whistling through their shaggy boughs. Cider and wine frozen the casks, and were served out by the pound. As they crowded round their half-fed fires, shivering in the icy currents that pierced their rude tenements, many sank into a desperate apathy. Soon the scurvy broke out and raged with a fearful malignity. Of the seventy-nine, thirty-five died before spring, and many more were brought to the verge of death. In vain they sought that marvelous tree which had relieved the followers of Cartier. Their little cemetery was peopled with nearly half their number, and the rest, bloated and disfigured with the relentless malady, thought more of escaping from their woes than of building up a transatlantic empire. Yet among them was one at least, who amid languor and defection, held to his purpose with indomitable tenacity, and where Champlain was present there was no room for despair. Spring came at last, and with the breaking up of the ice, the melting of the snow, and the clamors of the returning wild vow, the spirits and the health of the woe-begone company began to revive. But to misery succeeded anxiety and suspense. Where was the sucker from France? Were they abandoned to their fate like the wretched exiles of La Roche? In a happy hour they saw an approaching sail. Poncrave, with forty men, cast anchor before their island on the sixteenth of June, and they hailed him as the condemned hails the messenger of his pardon. Weary as St. Croix, de Montresolve to seek out a more auspicious sight on which to rear the capital of his wilderness dominion. During the preceding September, Champlain had ranged the westward coast in a pinnace, visited and named the island of Mount Desert, and entered the mouth of the river Penobscot, called by him the Pemedicwet, or Pentequette, and previously known to fur traders and fishermen as the Norambega, a name which it shared with all the adjacent region. Footnote twenty-seven. Now embarking a second time, in a bark of fifteen tons, with de Montres, several gentlemen, twenty sailors, and an Indian with his squaw, he set forth on the eighteenth of June on a second voyage of discovery. They coasted the strangely indented shores of Maine, with its reefs and surfwashed islands, rocky headlands, and deep embosomed bays, past Mount Desert and the Penobscot, explored the mouth of the Kennebec, crossed Casco Bay, and described the distant peaks of the White Mountains. The ninth of July brought them to Soco Bay. They were now within the limits of a group of tribes who were called by the French the Armouchequois, and who included those whom the English afterwards called the Massachusetts. They differed in habits, as well as in language, from the Etchamans and the Nemacs of Acadia, for they were tillers of the soil, and around their wigwams were fields of maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes, tobacco, and the so-called Jerusalem artichoke. Near Prant's neck more than eighty of them ran down to the shore to meet the strangers, dancing and yelping to show their joy. They had a fort of palestades on a rising ground by the Soco, for they were at deadly war with their neighbors towards the east. On the twelfth the French resumed their voyage, and like some adventurous party of pleasure held their course by the beaches of York and Wells, Portsmouth Harbor, the Isles of Shoals, Rye Beach and Hampton Beach, till on the fifteenth they described the dim outline of Cape Anne. Champlain called it Cap-Ozile, from the three adjacent islands, and in a subsequent voyage he gave the name of Bopour to the neighboring harbor of Gloucester. Then steering southward and westward they entered Massachusetts Bay, gave the name of Rivière du Guaste to a river flowing into it, probably the Charles, passed the islands of Boston Harbor, which Champlain describes as covered with trees, and were met on the way by great numbers of canoes filled with astonished Indians. On Sunday the seventeenth they passed Point Allerton and Antasket Beach, coasted the shores of Cohasset, situate in Marshfield, and anchored for the night near Brandt Point. On the morning of the eighteenth a headwind forced them to take shelter in Port St. Louis, for so they called the harbor of Plymouth, where the pilgrims made their memorable landing fifteen years later. Ten wakewams and garden patches lined the shore. A troop of the inhabitants came down to the beach and danced, while others, who had been fishing, approached in their canoes, came on board the vessel, and showed Champlain their fish hooks, consisting of a barbed bone lashed at an acute angle to a slip of wood. From Plymouth the party circled round the bay, doubled Cape Cod, called by Champlain Cap Blanc, from its glistening white sands, and steered southward to Nosset Harbor, which by reason of its shoals and sandbars they named Port Malbar. Here their prosperity deserted them. A party of sailors went behind the sandbanks to find fresh water at a spring, when an Indian snatched a kettle from one of them, and its owner, pursuing, fell, pierced with arrows by the robber's comrades. The French in the vessel opened fire, Champlain's archabasque burst, and was near killing him, while the Indians, swift as deer, quickly gained the woods. Several of the tribe chanced to be on board the vessel, but flung themselves with such alacrity into the water that only one was caught. They bound him hand and foot, but soon after humanely set him at liberty. Champlain, who we are told delighted marvelously in these enterprises, had busied himself throughout the voyage with taking observations, making charts, and studying the wonders of land and sea. The horse-foot crab seems to have awakened his special curiosity, and he describes it with amusing exactness. Of the human tenets of the New England coast, he has also left the first precise and trustworthy account. They were clearly more numerous than when the Puritans landed at Plymouth, since in the interval a pestilence made great havoc among them. But Champlain's most conspicuous merit lies in the light that he threw into the dark places of American geography, and the order that he brought out of the chaos of American cartography. For it was a result of this and the rest of his voyages that precision and clearness began at last to supplant the vagueness, confusion, and contradiction of the earlier map-makers. At Nosset Harbor provisions began to fail, and steering for St. Croix, the voyagers reached that ill-starred island on the 3rd of August. Demond had found no spot to his liking. He now bethaw him of that inland harbour of Port Royal, which he had granted to Putrancor, and thither he resolved to remove. Stores, utensils, even portions of the buildings were placed on board the vessels, carried across the bay of Fundy, and landed at the chosen spot. It was on the north side of the basin opposite Goat Island, and a little below the mouth of the river Annapolis, called by the French the Achille, and afterwards the Dauphin. The Axemen began their task. The dense forest was cleared away, and the buildings of the infant colony soon rose in its place. But while Demond and his company were struggling against despair at St. Croix, the enemies of his monopoly were busy at Paris, and by a ship from France he was warned that prompt measures were needed to thwart their machinations. Before he set sail, leaving Pont Grave to command at Port Royal, while Champlain, Champ d'Or, and others, undaunted by the past, volunteered for a second winter in the wilderness. End of Chapter 3. Recording by Christine Dufour, Pioneer California. Chapter 4 of Pioneers of France in the New World, Part 2. Champlain and his associates. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman. Part 2. Samuel Champlain and his associates. Chapter 4. Les Garbots and Champlain, 1605 to 1607. Full reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease, misery, and death had heralded the arrival of Des Mons. The outlay had been great, the returns small, and when he reached Paris he found his friends cold, his enemies active, and keen. Putrincaur, however, was still full of zeal, and though his private affairs urgently called for his presence in France, he resolved at no small sacrifice to go in person to Acadia. He had, moreover, a friend who proved an invaluable ally. This was Marc Les Garbots, avocat en parlement, who had been roughly handled by fortune, and was in the mood for such a venture, being desirous, as he tells us, to fly from a corrupt world in which he had just lost a lawsuit. Unlike Des Mons, Putrincaur and others of his associates, he was not within the pale of the noblesse, belonging to the class of genre robe which stood at the head of the bourgeoisie, and which in its higher grades formed within itself a virtual nobility. Les Garbots was no common man, not that his abundant gift of verse-making was likely to avail much in the woods of New France, nor yet his classic lore, dashed with a little harmless pedantry, born not of the man but of the times, but his zeal, his good sense, the vigor of his understanding, and the breadth of his views were as conspicuous as his quick wit and his lively fancy. One of the best, as well as earliest records of the early settlement of North America, is due to his pen, and it has been said, with a certain degree of truth, that he was no less able to build up a colony than to write its history. He professed himself a Catholic, but his Catholicity sat lightly on him, and he might have passed for one of those amphibious religionists who in the civil wars were called Les Politiques. Des Mons and Putrincaur bestirred themselves to find a priest, since the foes of the enterprise had been loud in lamentation that the spiritual welfare of the Indians had been slighted. But it was holy week. All the priests were, or professed to be, busy with exercises and confessions, and not one could be found to undertake the mission of Acadia. They were more successful in engaging mechanics and laborers for the voyage. These were paid a portion of their wages in advance, and were sent in a body to Rochelle, consigned to two merchants of that port, members of the company. Des Mons and Putrincaur went thither by post. Les Scarbots soon followed, and no sooner reached Rochelle than he penned and printed his Adieu à la France, a poem which gained for him some credit. More serious matters awaited him, however, than this dalliance with amuse. Rochelle was the center and citadel of Calvinism, a town of austere and grim aspect, divided, like sysatlantic communities of later growth, betwixt trade and religion, and in the interest of both, exacting a deportment of discreet and well ordered sobriety. One must walk a straight path here, says Les Scarbots, unless he would hear from the mayor or the ministers. But the mechanics sent from Paris, flush of money and lodged together in the quarter of Saint Nicolas, made day and night hideous with riot, and their employers found not a few of them in the hands of the police. Their ship, bearing the inauspicious name of the Jonas, lay anchored in the stream, her cargo on board, when a sudden gale blew her adrift. She struck on a pier, then grounded on the flats, billed, careened, and settled in the mud. Her captain, who was ashore with Putranco, Les Scarbots, and others, hastened aboard, and the pumps were set in motion. While all Rochelle, we are told, came to gaze from the ramparts with faces of condolence, but at heart well pleased with the disaster. The ship and her cargo were saved, but she must be emptied, repaired, and relayed in. Thus a month was lost. At length, on the thirteenth of May, 1606, the disorderly crew were all brought on board, and the Jonas put to sea. Putranco and Les Scarbots had charge of the expedition, d'Amont remaining in France. Les Scarbots describes his emotions at finding himself on an element so deficient in solidity, with only a two inch plank between him and death. Off the asores, they spoke a supposed pirate. For the rest, they beguiled the voyage by harpooning porpoises, dancing on deck in calm weather, and fishing for cod on the grand bank. They were two months on their way, and, when, fevered with eagerness to reach land, they listened hourly for the welcome cry. They were involved in impenetrable fogs. Suddenly the mists parted, the sun shone forth, and streamed fair and bright over the fresh hills and forests of the New World, in near view before them. But the black rocks lay between, lashed by the snow-white breakers. Thus writes Les Scarbots, death a man sometimes seek the land as one doth his beloved, who sometimes repulseth her sweetheart very rudely. Finally, upon Saturday the fifteenth of July, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the sky began to salute us, as it were with cannon-shots, shedding tears as being sorry to have kept us so long in pain. But whilst we followed on our course, there came from the land odors incomparable for sweetness, brought with a warm wind so abundantly that all the orient parts could not produce greater abundance. We did stretch out our hands as it were to take them, so palpable were they, which I have admired a thousand times since. It was noon on the twenty-seventh when the Jonas passed the rocky gateway of Port Royal Basin, and Les Scarbots gazed with delight and wonder on the calm expanse of sunny waters, with its amphitheater of wooded hills. Wherein he saw the future asylum of distressed merit, and impoverished industry. Slowly, before a favoring breeze, they held their course towards the head of the harbor, which narrowed as they advanced, but all with solitude, no moving sail, no sign of human presence. At length, on their left, nestling in deep forests, they saw the wooden walls and roofs of the infant colony, then appeared a birch canoe, cautiously coming towards them, guided by an old Indian. Then a Frenchman, archibuce in hand, came down to the shore, and then, from the wooden bastion, sprang the smoke of a saluting shot. The ship replied, the trumpets lent their voices to the din, and the forests and the hills gave back unwanted echoes. The voyagers landed and found the colony of Port Royal dwindled to two solitary Frenchmen. These soon told their story. The preceding winter had been one of much suffering, though by no means the counterpart of the woeful experience of St. Croix. But when the spring had passed, the summer far advanced, and still no tidings of demont had come, Poincrove grew deeply anxious. To maintain themselves without supplies and sucker was impossible. He caused two small vessels to be built, and set out in search of some of the French vessels on the fishing stations. This was but 12 days before the arrival of the ship Jonas. Two men had bravely offered themselves to stay behind and guard the buildings, guns and munitions, and an old Indian chief named Memberton, a fast friend of the French, and still a redoubted warrior, we are told, though reputed to number more than a hundred years, proved a staunch ally. When the ship approached, the two guardians were at dinner in their room at the fort. Memberton, always on the watch, saw the advancing sail, and shouting from the gate, roused them from their repast. In doubt who the newcomers might be, one ran to the shore with his gun, while the other repaired to the platform where four cannon were mounted, in the valorous resolve to show fight should the strangers prove to be enemies. Happily, this redundancy of metal proved needless. He saw the white flag fluttering at the mast head, and joyfully fired his pieces as a salute. The voyagers landed, and eagerly surveyed their new home. Some wandered through the buildings, some visited the cluster of Indian wigwams hard by, some roamed in the forest and over the meadows that bordered the neighboring river. The deserted fort now swarmed with life, and the better to celebrate their prosperous arrival. Putrencourt placed a hog's head of wine in the courtyard at the discretion of his followers, whose hilarity and consequence became exuberant. Nor was it diminished when Pongrav's vessels were seen entering the harbor. A boat sent by Putrencourt more than a week before to explore the coasts had met them near Cape Sable, and they joyfully returned to Port Royal. Pongrav, however, soon sailed for France in the Jonas, hoping on his way to see certain contraband fur traders reported to be at Canso and Cape Breton. Putrencourt and Champlain, bent on finding a better site for their settlement in a more southern latitude, set out on a voyage of discovery in an ill-built vessel of 18 tons, while less carbo remained in charge of Port Royal. They had little for their pains but danger, hardship, and mishap. The autumn gales cut short their exploration, and after visiting Gloucester Harbor, doubling Manoinoi Point and advancing as far as the neighborhood of Hyannis on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, they turned back, somewhat disgusted with their errand. Along the eastern verge of Cape Cod they found the shore thickly studded with the weak wands of a race who were less hunters than tillers of the soil. At Chatham Harbor, called by them Port Fortune, five of the company who, contrary to orders, had remained on shore all night, were assailed as they slept around their fire by a shower of arrows from four hundred Indians. Two were killed outright, while the survivors fled for their boat, bristling like porcupines with the feathered missiles, a scene oddly portrayed by the untutored pencil of Champlain. He and Putrencourt, with eight men, hearing the war hoops and the cries for aid, sprang up from sleep, snatched their weapons, pulled ashore in their shirts, and charged the yelling multitude, who fled before their spectral assailants and vanished in the woods. Thus observed Lescarbeaux, did thirty-five thousand Midianites fly before Gideon and his three hundred. The French buried their dead comrades, but as they chanted their funeral hymn, the Indians at a safe distance on a neighboring hill were dancing in glee and triumph and mocking them with unseemly gestures, and no sooner had the party reembarked than they dug up the dead bodies, burnt them, and arrayed themselves in their shirts. Little pleased with the country or its inhabitants, the voyagers turned their prow towards Port Royal, though not until, by a treacherous device, they had lured some of their late assailants within their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads as trophies. Near Mount Desert on a stormy night, their rudder broke, and they had a hair-breadth escape from destruction. The chief object of their voyage, that of discovering a site for their colony under a more southern sky, had failed. Poincrasse's son had his hand blown off by the bursting of his gun, several of their number had been killed, others were sick or wounded, and thus on the fourteenth of November, with somewhat downcast visages, they guided their helpless vessel with a pair of oars to the landing at Port Royal. I will not, says Les Garbeau, compare their perils to those of Ulysses nor yet of Aeneas, lest thereby I should sully our holy enterprise with things impure. He and his followers had been expecting them with great anxiety. His alert and buoyant spirit had conceived a plan for enlivening the courage of the company, a little dashed of late by misgivings and forebodings. Accordingly, as Putranca Champlain and their weather-beaten crew approached the wooden gateway of Port Royal, Neptune issued forth, followed by his tritons, who greeted the voyagers in good French verse, written in all haste for the occasion by Les Garbeau. And as they entered, they beheld, blazoned over the arch, the arms of France, circled with laurels, and flanked by the scutians of Dement and Putranca. The ingenious author of these devices had busied himself during the absence of his associates in more serious labours for the welfare of the colony. He explored the low borders of the River Équil, or Annapolis. Here, in the solitude, he saw great meadows, where the moose with their young were grazing, and where at times the rank grass was beaten to a pulp by the trampling of their hoofs. He burned the grass and sowed crops of wheat, rye, and barley in its stead. His appearance gave so little promise of personal vigor, that some of the party assured him that he would never see France again, and warned him to husband his strain. But he knew himself better, and said at naught these comforting munitions. He was the most diligent of workers. He made gardens near the fort, where in his zeal he plied the hoe with his own hands laid into the moonlight evenings. The priests, of whom at the outset there had been no lack, had all succumbed to the scurvy at St. Croix, and Les Garbeau, so far as a layman might, essayed to supply their place, reading on Sundays from the scriptures, and adding expositions of his own after a fashion not remarkable for rigorous catholicity. Of an evening when not engrossed with his garden, he was reading or writing in his room, perhaps preparing the material of that history of New France, in which, despite the versatility of his busy brain, his good sense and capacity are clearly made manifest. Now, however, when the whole company were reassembled, Les Garbeau found associates more congenial than the rude soldiers, mechanics, and laborers who gathered at night around the blazing logs in their rude hall. Port Royal was a quadrangle of wooden buildings enclosing a spacious court. At the southeast corner was the arched gateway, whence a path, a few paces in length, led to the water. It was flanked by a sort of bastion of palisades, while at the southwest corner was another bastion, on which four cannon were mounted. On the east side of the quadrangle was a range of magazines and storehouses. On the west were quarters for the men. On the north a dining hall and lodgings for the principal persons of the company, while on the south, or water side, were the kitchen, the forge, and the oven. Except the garden patches and the cemetery, the adjacent ground was thickly studded with the stumps of the newly felled trees. Most bountiful provision had been made for the temporal wants of the colonists, and Les Garbeaux is profuse in praise of the liberality of Dumont and two merchants of Rochelle who had freighted the ship Jonas. Of wine in particular, the supply was so generous that every man in Port Royal was served with three pints daily. The principal persons of the colony sat fifteen in number at Poutrancourt's table, which by an ingenious device of Champlain was always well furnished. He formed the fifteen into a new order, christened L'Ordre du bon temps. Each was Grandmaster in turn, holding office for one day. It was his function to cater for the company, and as it became a point of honour to fill the post with credit, the prospective Grandmaster was usually busy for several days before coming to his dignity in hunting, fishing, or bartering provisions with the Indians. Thus did Poutrancourt's table groan beneath all the luxuries of the winter forest. Flesh of moose, caribou, and deer, beaver, otter, and hare, bears, and wildcats, with ducks, geese, grouse, and plover, sturgeon, too, and trout, and fish innumerable, speared through the ice of the achille, or drawn from the depths of the neighbouring bay. And says Lescarbeau in closing his bill of fare, whatever our gourmands at home may think, we found as good share at Port Royal, as they at their roue aux ores in Paris, and that, too, at a cheaper rate. For the preparation of this manifold provision, the Grandmaster was also answerable, since during his day of office he was autocrat of the kitchen. Nor did this bounteous repast lack a solemn and befitting ceremonial. When the hour had struck, after the manner of our fathers they dined at noon, the Grandmaster entered the hall, a napkin on his shoulder, his staff of office in his hand, and the collar of the order valued by Lescarbeau at four crowns about his neck. The brotherhood followed, each bearing a dish. The invited guests were Indian chiefs, of whom old Memberton was daily present, seated at table with the French, who took pleasure in this red-skinned companionship. Those of humbler degree, warriors, squaws, and children, sat on the floor, or crouched together in the corners of the hall, eagerly waiting their portion of biscuit or of bread, a novel and much coveted luxury. Being always treated with kindness, they became fond of the French, who often followed them on their moose hunts, and shared their winter bivouac. At the evening meal there was less of form and circumstance. And when the winter night closed in, when the flame crackled and the sparks streamed up the wide-throated chimney, and the founders of New France with their tawny allies were gathered around the blaze. Then did the grandmaster resign the collar and the staff to the successor of his honors, and with jovial courtesy, pledge him in a cup of wine. Thus these ingenious Frenchmen beguiled the winter of their exile. It was an unusually mild winter. Until January they wore no warmer garment than their doublets. They made hunting and fishing parties in which the Indians, whose lodges were always to be seen under the friendly shelter of the buildings, failed not to bear part. I remember, says Les Garbeau, that on the 14th of January of a Sunday afternoon we amused ourselves with singing and music on the river Achille, and that in the same month we went to see the wheat fields two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in the sunshine. Good spirits and good cheer saved them in great measure from the scurvy, and though towards the end of winter severe cold set in, yet only four men died. The snow thawed at last, and as patches of the black and oozy soil began to appear, they saw the grain of their last autumn sowing already piercing the mould. The forced inaction of the winter was over. The carpenters built a water mill on the stream now called Allen's River. Others enclosed fields and laid out gardens, others again with scoop nets and baskets, caught the herrings and alewives as they ran up the innumerable rivulets. The leaders of the colony set a contagious example of activity. Putrancourt forgot the prejudices of his noble birth, and went himself into the woods to gather turpentine from the pines, which he converted into tar by a process of his own invention. While less garbo, eager to test the qualities of the soil, was again hoe in hand at work all day in his garden, all seemed full of promise. But alas for the bright hope that kindled the manly heart of Champlain and the earnest spirit of the vivacious advocate, a sudden blight fell on them, and their rising prosperity withered to the ground. On a morning, late in spring, as the French were at breakfast, the ever-watchful memberton came in with news of an approaching sale. They hastened to the shore, but the vision of the centenarian Sagamore put them all to shame. They could see nothing. At length their doubts were resolved. A small vessel stood on towards them and anchored before the fort. She was commanded by one chevalier, a young man from Sanmallow, and was freighted with disastrous tidings. De Mol's monopoly was rescinded. The life of the enterprise was stopped, and the establishment at Port Royal could no longer be supported. For its expense was great, and the body of the colony being laborers in the pay of the company, nor was the ennelling of the patent the full extent of the disaster. For during the last summer the Dutch had found their way to the St. Lawrence and carried away a rich harvest of furs, while other interloping traders had plied a busy traffic along the coasts, and in the excess of their avidity dug up the bodies of buried Indians to rob them of their funeral robes. It was to the merchants and fishermen of the Norman, Breton, and Biscayne ports, exasperated at their exclusion from a lucrative trade, and at the confiscations which had sometimes followed their attempts to engage in it, that this sudden blow was due. Money had been used freely at court, and the monopoly, unjustly granted, had been more unjustly withdrawn. De Mol and his company, who had spent a hundred thousand leave, were allowed six thousand in requital to be collected, if possible, from the fur traders in the form of attacks. Chevalier, captain of the Illomand Bark, was entertained with the hospitality little deserved, since having been entrusted with sundry hams, fruits, spices, sweetmeats, jellies, and other dainties sent by the generous De Mol to his friends of New France, he with his crew had devoured them on the voyage, alleging that, in their belief, the inmates of Port Royal would all be dead before their arrival. Choice there was none, and Port Royal must be abandoned. Built on a false basis, sustained only by the fleeting favor of a government, the generous enterprise had come to naught. Yet Putrancourt, who in virtue of his grant from De Mol owned the place, bravely resolved that, come what might, he would see the adventure to an end, even should it involve immigration with his family to the wilderness. Meanwhile, he began the dreary task of abandonment, sending boatloads of men and stores to Cancel, where lay the ship Jonas, eking out her diminished profits by fishing for cod. Membraton was full of grief at the departure of his friends. He had built a palisaded village not far from Port Royal, and here were mustered some four hundred of his warriors for a foray into the country of the Armouchecoy, dwellers along the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and western Maine. One of his tribesmen had been killed by a chief from the Soco, and he was bent on revenge. He proved himself a sturdy beggar, pursuing Putrancourt with daily petitions, now for a bushel of beans, now for a basket of bread, and now for a barrel of wine to regale his greasy crew. Membraton's long life had not been one of repose. In deeds of blood and treachery he had no rival in the Akkadian forest, and as his old age was beset with enemies, his alliance with the French had a foundation of policy no less than of affection. In right of his rank of Sagamore, he claimed perfect equality, both with Putrancourt and with the king, laying his shriveled four fingers together in token of friendship between peers. Calumny did not spare him, and a rival chief intimated to the French that undercover of a war with the Armouchecois, the crafty veteran meant to seize and plunder Port Royal. Precautions therefore were taken, but they were seemingly needless, for their feasts and dances over, the warriors launched their birch and flotilla and set out. After an absence of six weeks, they reappeared with howls of victory, and their exploits were commemorated in French verse by the muse of the Indefatigable Les Garbots. With a heavy heart, the advocate bad farewell to the dwellings, the cornfields, the gardens, and all the dawning prosperity of Port Royal, and sailed for Canso in a small vessel on the 30th of July. Putrancourt and Champlain remained behind, for the former was resolved to learn before his departure the results of his agricultural labors. Reaching a harbor on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, six leagues west of Canso, Les Garbo found a fishing vessel commanded and owned by an old Basque named Sabale, who for 42 successive years had carried to France his annual cargo of codfish. He was in great glee at the success of his present venture, reckoning his profits at 10,000 francs. The Indians, however, annoyed him beyond measure, boarding him from their canoes as his fishing boats came alongside, and helping themselves at will to his halibut and cod. At Canso, a harbor near the strait now bearing the name, the ship Jonas still lay, her hold well stored with fish. And here on the 27th of August, Les Garbo was rejoined by Putrancourt and Champlain, who had come from Port Royal in an open boat. For a few days, they amused themselves with gathering raspberries on the islands. Then they spread their sails for France, and early in October 1607, anchored in the harbor of San Malo. First of Europeans, they had essayed to found an agricultural colony in the new world. The leaders of the enterprise had acted less as merchants than as citizens. And the fur trading monopoly, odious in itself, had been used as the instrument of a large and generous design. There was a radical defect, however, in their scheme of settlement. Accepting a few of the leaders, those engaged in it had not chosen a home in the wilderness of New France, but were mere hirelings without wives or families, and careless of the welfare of the colony. The life which should have pervaded all the members was confined to the heads alone. In one respect, however, the enterprise of De Mont was truer in principle than the Roman Catholic colonization of Canada on the one hand, or the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts on the other, for it did not attempt to enforce religious exclusion. Towards the fickle and bloodthirsty race who claimed the lordship of the forests, these colonists, accepting only in the treacherous slaughter at Port Fortune, bore themselves in a spirit of kindness contrasting brightly with the rapacious cruelty of the Spaniards and the harshness of the English settlers. When the last boatload left Port Royal, the shore resounded with lamentation, and nothing could console the afflicted savages, but reiterated promises of a speedy return. PUTRINCORE, WE HAVE SEEN, OWNED PORT ROYAL IN VIRTUAL OF A GRANT FROM DE MONT. THE ARDENT AND ADVENTURISTS BARON WAS AN EVIL CASE, INVOLVED IN LITIGATION AND LOW IN PURSE, BUT NOTHING COULD DAMP HIS ZEAL. ACADIA MUST BECOME A NEW FRANCE, AND HE, PUTRINCORE, MUST BE ITS FATHER. HE GAINED FROM THE KING A CONFIRMATION OF HIS GRANT, AND TO SUPPLY THE LACK OF HIS OWN WEEKEND RESOURCES, ASSOCIATED WITH HIMSELF ONE ROBBIN, A MAN OF FAMILY AND WEALTH. THIS DID NOT SAVE HIM FROM A HOST OF DELAYS AND VEXATIONS, AND IT WAS NOT UNTIL THE SPRING OF 1610 THAT HE FOUND HIMSELF IN A CONDITION TO EMBARK ON HIS NEW AND DOUBTFUL VENTURE. Meanwhile an influence of Sinister Omen, as he thought, had begun to act upon his schemes. The Jesuits were strong at court. One of their number, the famous Father Cotton, was confessor to Henry IV, and on matters of this world as of the next, was ever whispering at the facile ear of the renegade king. New France offered a fresh field of action to the Indefatagable Society of Jesus, and Cotton urged upon the royal convert that for the saving of souls some of its members should be attached to the proposed enterprise. The king, profoundly indifferent in matters of religion, saw no evil in a proposal which at least promised to place the Atlantic betwixt him and some of those busy friends whom at heart he deeply mistrusted. Other influences, too, seconded the confessor. Devout ladies of the court and the queen herself, supplying the lack of virtue with an overflowing piety, burned, we are assured, with a holy zeal for snatching the tribes of the West from the bondage of Satan. Therefore it was insisted that the projected colony should combine the spiritual with the temporal character, or, in other words, that Putroncourt should take Jesuits with him. Pierre Biard, professor of theology at Lyon, was named for the mission, and repaired in haste to Bordeaux, the port of embarkation, where he found no vessel and no sign of preparation, and here in wrath and disconfiture he remained for a whole year. That Putroncourt was a good Catholic appears from a letter to the Pope, written for him in Latin by Les Garbeaux, asking a blessing in his enterprise, and assuring his holiness that one of his grand objects was the saving of souls. But like other good citizens he belonged to the national party in the church, those liberal Catholics, who side by side with the Huguenots, had made head against the League, with its Spanish allies, and placed Henry IV upon the throne. The Jesuits, and order, Spanish in origin and policy, determined champions of ultra-montane principles, the sword and shield of the papacy in its broadest pretensions to spiritual and temporal sway, were to him, as to others of his party, objects of deep dislike and distrust. He feared them in his colony, evaded what he dared not refuse, left Biarchy waiting in solitude at Bardot, and sought to postpone the evil day by assuring Father Cotton that, though Port Royal was at present in no state to receive the missionaries, preparation should be made to entertain them the next year after befitting fashion. Putroncourt owned the barony of Saint Just in Champagne, inherited a few years before from his mother. Hence early in February 1610 he set out in a boat loaded to the gun-wales with provisions, furniture, goods, and munitions for Port Royal, descended the river's ob and sen, and reached Dieppe safely with his charge. Here his ship was awaiting him, and on the 26th of February he set sail, giving the slip to the indignant Jesuit at Bardot. The tedium of a long passage was unpleasantly broken by mutiny among the crew. It was suppressed, however, and Putroncourt entered at length the familiar basin of Port Royal. The buildings were still standing, whole and sound save a partial falling in of the roofs. Even furniture was found untouched in the deserted chambers. The centenarian member too was still alive, his leather wrinkled visage beaming with welcome. Putroncourt set himself without delay to the task of Christianizing New France, in an excess of zeal which his desire of proving that Jesuit aid was superfluous may be supposed largely to every enforced. He had a priest with him, one Le Flesh, whom he ordered to the pious work. No time was lost. Member too first was Catechise, confessed his sins, and renounced the devil, whom we are told he had faithfully served during a hundred and ten years. His squazz, his children, his grandchildren, and his entire clan were next one over. It was in June, the day of St. John the Baptist, when the naked proselytes, twenty-one in number, were gathered on the shore at Port Royal. Here was the priest in the vestments of his office. Here were gentlemen in gay attire, soldiers, laborers, lackeys, all the infant colony. The converts kneeled, the sacred rite was finished, today him was sung, and the roar of cannon proclaimed this triumph over the powers of darkness. Member too was named Henri, after the king, his principal squaw, Marie, after the queen. One of his sons received the name of the Pope, another that of the Dauphin. His daughter was called Marguerite, after the divorced Marguerite de Valois, and in like manner the rest of the squalid company exchanged their barbaric appellatives for the names of princes, nobles, and ladies of rank. The fame of this chef-d'oeuvre of Christian piety, as Les Garbeaux gravely calls it, spread far and wide through the forest, whose denizens partly out of a notion that the rite would bring good luck, partly to please the French, and partly to share in the good cheer with which the apostolic efforts of Father La Flesche had been sagaciously seconded, came flocking to enroll themselves under the banners of the faith. Their zeal ran high. They would take no refusal. Member too was for war on all who would not turn Christian. A living skeleton was seen crawling from hut to hut in search of the priest in his saving waters, while another neophyte, at the point of death, asked anxiously whether, in the realms of bliss to which he was bound, pies were to be had comparable to those with which the French regaled him. A formal register of baptisms was drawn up to be carried to France in the returning ship, of which Putrencourt's son, Biencourt, a spirited youth of eighteen, was to take charge. He sailed in July, his father keeping him company as far as Port-la-Heuve, whence, bidding the young man farewell, he attempted to return in an open boat to Port-Royal. A north wind blew him out to sea, and for six days he was out of sight of land, subsisting on rain-water wrung from the boat sail and on a few wildfowl which he had shot on an island. Five weeks passed before he could rejoin his colonists, who despairing of his safety were about to choose a new chief. Meanwhile, young Biencourt, speeding on his way, heard dire news from a fisherman on the Grand Bank. The knife of Ravillac had done its work. Henry IV was dead. There is an ancient street in Paris where a great thoroughfare contracts to a narrow pass, the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Tall buildings overshadow it, packed from pavement to tiles with human life, and from the dingy front of one of them the sculptured head of a man looks down on the throng that ceaselessly defiles beneath. On the fourteenth of May, sixteen twenty, a ponderous coach, studded with fleur-de-lis and rich with gilding, rolled along this street. In it was a small man, well advanced in life, whose profile, once seen, could not be forgotten. A hooked nose, a protruding chin, a brow full of wrinkles, grizzled hair, a short, grizzled beard, and stiff gray moustaches, bristling like a cat's. One would have thought him some whiskered satyr, grim from the rack of tumultuous years, but his alert, upright port bespoke unshaken vigor, and his clear eye was full of buoyant life. Following on the footways strode a tall, strong, and somewhat corpulent man, with sinister, deep-set eyes and a red beard, his arm and shoulder covered with his cloak. In the throat of the thoroughfare, where the sculptured image of Henry the Fourth still guards the spot, a collision of two carts stopped the coach. Ravaillac quickened his pace. In an instant he was at the door. With his cloak dropped from his shoulders and a long knife in his hand, he set his foot upon a guardstone, thrust his head and shoulders into the coach, and with a frantic force stabbed thrice at the king's heart. A broken exclamation, a gasping convulsion, and then the grim visage drooped on the bleeding breast. Henry breathed his last, and the hope of Europe died with him. The omens were sinister for old France and for new. Merida Medici set gross panquier, coarse scion of a bad stock, false wife and faithless queen, paramour of an intriguing foreigner, tool of the Jesuits and of Spain, was regent in the minority of her imbecile son. The Huguenots drooped, the national party collapsed, the vigorous hand of Sully was felt no more, and the treasure gathered for a vast and beneficent enterprise became the instrument of despotism and the prey of corruption. Under such auspices, young Biencor entered the thronged chambers of the Louvre. He gained audience of the queen and displayed his list of baptisms, while the ever-present Jesuits failed not to seize him by the button, assuring him, not only that the late king had deeply at heart the establishment of their society in Acadia, but that to this end he had made them a grant of two thousand leavers a year. The Jesuits had found an ally and the intended mission a friend at court, whose story and whose character are too striking to pass unnoticed. This was a lady of honour to the queen, Antoinette de Pont, Marquise de Grichville, once renowned for grace and beauty and not less conspicuous for quality's rare in the unbridled court of Henry's predecessor, where her youth had been passed. When the Civil War was at its height, the royal heart, leaping with insatiable restlessness from battle to battle, from mistress to mistress, had found a brief repose in the affections of his croissant, famed in tradition and romance, but croissant was suddenly abandoned, and the young widow Madame de Grichville became the lodestar of his erratic fancy. It was an evil hour for the Bernays. Henry sheathed in rusty steel, battling for his crown in his life, and Henry robed in royalty and thrown triumphant in the Louvre, alike urged their suit in vain. Unused to defeat, the king's passion rose higher for the obstacle that barred it. On one occasion he was met with an answer not unworthy of record. Sire, my rank, perhaps, is not high enough to permit me to be your wife, but my heart is too high to permit me to be your mistress. She left the court and retired to her chateau of La Roche-Guillon on the Seine, ten leagues below Paris, where, fond of magnificence, she is said to have lived in much expense in splendor. The indefatagable king, haunted by her memory, made a hunting-party in the neighboring forests, and as evening drew near, separating himself from his courtiers, he sent a gentleman of his train to ask of Madame de Grichville the shelter of her roof. The reply conveyed a dutiful acknowledgment of the honor and an offer of the best entertainment within her power. It was the night when Henry, with his little band of horsemen, approached the chateau, where lights were burning in every window, after a fashion of the day on occasions of welcome to an honored guest. Pages stood in the gateway, each with a blazing torch, and here, too, were gentlemen of the neighborhood, gathered to greet their sovereign. Madame de Grichville came forth, followed by the women of her household, and when the king, unprepared for so benign a welcome, giddy with love and hope, saw her radiant in pearls and more radiant yet in beauty, enhanced by the way we torchlight and the surrounding shadows, he scarcely dared trust his sentence. He gave her his hand, and she led him within the chateau, where at the door of the apartment destined for him she left him with a graceful reverence. The king, no wise disconcerted, did not doubt that she had gone to give orders for his entertainment, when an attendant came to tell him that she had descended to the courtyard and called for her coach. Thither he hastened an alarm. What? Am I driving you from your house? Sire replied Madame de Grichville, where a king is he should be the sole master, but for my part I like to preserve some little authority wherever I may be. With another deep reverence she entered her coach and disappeared, seeking shelter under the roof of a friend, some two leagues off, and leaving the baffled king to such consolation as he might find in a magnificent repast bereft of the presence of the hostess. Henry could admire the virtue which he could not vanquish, and long after on his marriage he acknowledged his sense of her worth by begging her to accept an honorable post near the person of the queen. Madame, he said, presenting her to Merida Medici, I give you a lady of honor who is a lady of honor indeed. Some twenty years had passed since the adventure of La Rose-Guillon. Madame de Grichville had outlived the charms which had attracted her royal suitor, but the virtue which repelled him was reinforced by devotion no less un- compromising. A rosary in her hand and a Jesuit at her side she realized the utmost wishes of the subtle fathers who had molded and who guided her. She readily took fire when they told her of the benighted souls of New France, and the wrongs of Father Beard kindled her utmost indignation. She declared herself the protectress of the American missions, and the only difficulty, as a Jesuit writer tells us, was to restrain her zeal within reasonable mounds. She had two illustrious co-ajuders. The first was the jealous queen whose unbridled rage and vulgar clamor had made the Louvre a hell. The second was Henriette de Entregues, Marquise de Vernieux, the crafty and capricious sirene who had awakened these conjugal tempests. To this similar coalition were joined many other ladies of the court, for the pious flame, fanned by the Jesuits, spread through the hall and boudoir, and fair votaries of the loves and graces founded a more grateful task to win heaven for the heathen than to merit it for themselves. Young Biencourt saw it vain to resist. Beard must go with him in the returning ship, and also another Jesuit, and Amanda Mass. The two fathers, repaired to Dieppe, wafted on the wind of court favour, which they never doubted would bear them to their journey's end. Not so, however, Putrencourt and his associates, in the dearth of their own resources, had bargained with two Huguenot merchants of Dieppe, du jardin and duquesne, to equip and load the vessel in consideration of their becoming partners in the expected profits. Their indignation was extreme when they saw the intended passengers. They declared that they would not aid in building up a colony for the profit of the king of Spain, nor risk their money in a venture where Jesuits were allowed to inter-metal, and they closed with a flat refusal to receive them on board, unless, they added with patriotic sarcasm, the queen would direct them to transport the whole order beyond sea. Beard and Mass insisted, on which the merchants demanded reimbursement for their outlay, as they would have no further concern in the business. Beard communicated with Father Cotton, Father Cotton with Madame de Gershville. No more was needed. The zealous lady of honor, indignant, says Beard to see the effects of hail prevail, and resolved that Satan should not remain master of the field, set on foot a subscription and raised an ample fund within the precincts of the court. Beard, in the name of the province of France of the Order of Jesus, bought out the interest of the two merchants for thirty-eight hundred leavers, thus constituting the Jesuits equal partners in business with their enemies. Nor was this all, for out of the ample proceeds of the subscription he lent to the needy associates a further sum of seven hundred and thirty-seven leavers, and advanced twelve hundred and twenty-five more to complete the outfit of the ship. Well pleased, the triumphant priest now embarked, and friend and foe set sail together on the twenty-sixth of January, sixteen-eleven. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Pioneers of France in the New World Part 2 Champlain and His Associates This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman Part 2 Champlain and His Associates Chapter 6 Jesuits in Acadia 1611 and 1612 The voyage was one of an ordinate length. Be set, too, with icebergs larger and taller, according to the Jesuit voyagers than the Church of Notre-Dame. But on the day of Pentecost, their ship, the Grace of God, anchored before Port Royal. Then first were seen in the wilderness of New France the close black cap, the clothes-backed robe of the Jesuit father, and the features seemed with study and thought and discipline. Then first did this mighty Proteus, this many-coloured Society of Jesus enter upon that rude field of toil and woe, where, in after years, the devoted zeal of its apostles was to lend dignity to their order and to honour to humanity. Few were the regions of the known world to which the potent brotherhood had not stretched the vast network of its influence. Jesuits had disputed in theology with the bronzes of Japan and taught astronomy to the Mandarin of China, had brought prodigies of sudden coercion among the followers of Brawlenra, preached the papal supremacy to obscenian schismatics, carried the cross among the savages of Cafraria, wrought reputed miracles in Brazil, and gathered the tribes of Paraguay beneath their paternal sway. And now, with the aid of the Virgin and her vodery at court, they would build another empire among the tribes of New France. The omens were sinister and the outset was unperpetuous. The society was destined to reap few laurels from their brief apostleship of Biyard and Mass. When the voyagers landed, they found at Port Royal a band of half-famished men, eagerly expecting their succor. The voyage of four months had, however, nearly exhausted their own very moderate stock of provisions, and the mutual congratulations of the old colonists and the new wave were dampened by a vision of starvation. A friction, too, speedily declared itself between the spiritual and the temporal powers. Poncre of Sun, then trading on the coast, had exasperated the Indians by an outrage on one of their women, and, dreading the wrath of paltry courts, had fled to the woods. Biyard saw fit to take his part, remonstrated for him with vehemence, gained his pardon, received his confession, and absolved him. The Jesuits say that he was treated with great consideration by paltry courts, and that he should be forever beholden to him. The latter, however, chafed at Biyard's interference. Father, he said, I know my duty, and I beg you will leave me to do it. I, with my sword, have hopes of paradise, as well as you, with your breviary. Show me my path to heaven. I will show you yours on earth. He soon set sail for France, leaving his son, Baincourt, in charge. This hardy young sailor of ability and character beyond his years had, on his visit to court, received the post of Vice Admiral in the seas of New France. And in this capacity had a certain authority over the trading vessels of Saint Malo and Rochelle, several of which were upon the coast. To compel the recognition of this authority and also to purchase provisions, he set out with Biyard in a boat filled with armed followers. His first collision was with young Ponce Grave, who, with a few men, had built a trading hut on the St. John, where he proposed to winter. Meeting with resistance, Baincourt took the whole party prisoners, in spite of the remonstrances of Biyard. Next, proceeding along the coast, he levied tribute on four or five traders wintering at St. Croix. And, continuing his course to the Cannebec, found the Indians of that region greatly enraged at the conduct of certain English adventurers, who three or four years before had, as they said, set dogs upon them and otherwise maltreated them. These were the colonists under Popham and Gilbert, who in 1607 and 1608 made an abortive attempt to settle near the mouth of the river. Nothing now was left of them but their deserted forts. The neighbouring Indians were Abbenakis, one of the tribes included by the French under the general name of Armachiquet. Their disposition was doubtful, and it needed all the coolness of young Baincourt to avoid a fatal collision. On one occasion a curious incident took place. The French met six canoes full of warriors, descending the Cannebec, and, as neither party trusted the other, the two encamped on opposite banks of the river. In the evening the Indians began to sing and dance. Bjarne suspected these proceedings to be an invocation of the devil, and, in order, he says, to thwart this accursed tyrant, I made our people sing a few church hymns, such as the Savv, and Avaman, Stella, and others. But being once in train and getting to the end of their spiritual songs, they fell to singing such others as they knew. And when these gave out, they took to mimicking the dancing and singing of the Armachiquet on the other side of the water. And, as Frenchmen are naturally good mimics, they did it so well that the Armachiquet stopped to listen, at which our people stopped too. And then the Indians began again. You would have laughed to hear them, for they were like two choirs answering each other in concerts. And you would hardly have known the real Armachiquet from the sham ones. Before the capture of young Pancrave, Bjarne made him a visit at his camp, six leagues up from the Saint John. Pancrave's men were sailors from Saint Malo, between whom and the other Frenchmen there was much ill blood. Bjarne had hardly entered the river when he saw the evening sky crimsoned with the dancing fires of a superb Aurora Borealis. And tea in his attendants marveled what evil thing the prodigy might portend. The Indian companions said that it was a sign of war. In fact, the night after they had joined Pancrave, a furious quarrel broke out in the camp and with abundant shouting, gesticulating and swearing, and, says the father, I do not doubt that an accursed band of ordinary spirits were hovering about us all night, expecting every moment to see a horrible massacre of the few Christians in those parts, but the goodness of God bridled their malice. No blood was shed, and on the next day the squall ended in a fine calm. He did not like the Indians, whom he describes as lazy, gluttonous, irreligious, treacherous, cruel, and licentuous. He makes an exception in favor of Memberton, who recalls the greatest, most renowned, and most redoubted savage that ever lived in the memory of man, and especially commends him for contending himself with but one wife, hardly a superlative merit and a centenarian. Biyard taught him to say the Lord's prayer, though at the petition give us this day our daily bread, the chief remonstrated, saying, if I ask for nothing but bread, I shall get no fish or moose-meats. His protracted career was now drawing to a close, and being brought to the settlement in a dying state, he was placed in Biyard's bed and attended by the two Jesuits. He was as remarkable in person as in character, for he was bearded like a Frenchman. Though alone among the flesh's converts, the faith seemed to have left some impression upon him. He insisted on being buried with his heathen forefathers. But was persuaded to forego a wish fatal to his salvation and slept at last in consecrated grounds. Another of the scanty fruits of the mission was a little girl on the point of death, whom Biyard had asked her parents to give him for baptism. Take her and keep her, if you like, was the reply, for she is no better than a dead dog. We accepted the offer, says Biyard, in order to show them the difference between Christianity and their impiety, but with what care we could, together with some instruction, we baptized her. We named her after Madame de Marquise de Gershaville. In gratitude for the benefits we have received from that lady who can now rejoice that her name is already in heaven, for a few days after baptism the chosen soul flew to that place of glory. Biyard's greatest difficulty was with the McMack language. Young Bancourt was his best interpreter, and on common occasions served him well, but the moment that religion was in question he was, as it were, stricken dumb. The reason being that the language was totally without abstract terms. Biyard resolutely said himself to the study of it, a hard and thorny path on which he made small progress, and often went astray. Biyard was able in hand before some Indians squatting on the floor, whom with a bribe of a moldy biscuit he had lured into the hut, he plied him with questions which he often neither would nor could answer. What was the Indian word for faith, hope, charity, sacraments, baptism, eucharist, trinity, incarnation? The perplexed savage willing to amuse himself and impelled as Biyard thinks gave him scurrilous and unseemly phrases as the equivalent of things holy which studiously incorporated into the father's Indian catechism produced on his pupils and effect the reverse of that intended. Biyard's colleague, Mass, was equally zealous and still less fortunate. He tried a forest life among the Indians with signal ill success, hard fare, and the cries of children reduced him to a forlorn condition of body and mind, wore him to a skeleton and sent him back to Port Royal without a single converse. The dark months were slowly on. A band of half-famished men gathered about the huge fires of the barn-like hall, Moody, sullen, and quarrelsome. Discord was here in the black robe of the Jesuit and the brown capote of the rival trader. The position of the wretched little colony may well provoke reflection. Here lay the shaggy continent, from Florida to the Pole, outstretched in savage slumber along the sea, the stern domain of nature, or to adopt the ready solution of the Jesuit, a realm of the powers of night, blasted beneath a scepter of hell. On the banks of James River was a nest of woe-begun Englishmen, a handful of Dutch fur traders at the mouth of the Hudson, and a few shivering Frenchmen among the snow-drifts of Acadia. While deep within the wild monotony of desolation, on the icy verge of the great northern river, the hand of Champlain appell'd the flagellis on the rock of Quebec. These were the advance guard, the forlorn hope of civilization, messengers of promise to a desert continent. Yet unconscious of their high function, not content with inevitable woes, they were rents by petty jealousies and miserable feuds. While each of these detached fragments of rival nationalities, scarcely able to maintain its own wretched existence on a few square miles, be grudged to the others the smallest share in a domain which all the nations of Europe could hardly have suffice to fill. One evening, as the forlorn tenants of Port Royal sat together disconsolids, Beard was seized with a spirit of prophecy. He called upon them, and said to them, that they would not be able to fulfill their prophecy. He called upon Bincourt to serve out the little of wine that remains, a proposal which met with high favor from the company present, though apparently with none from the youthful vice admiral. The wine was ordered, however, and as an unwanted cheer ran round the circle, the Jesuit announced that an inward voice told him how, within a month, they should see a ship from France. In truth, they saw one within a week. On the 23rd of January, 1612, arrived a small vessel laden with a moderate store of provisions and abundant seeds of future strife. This was the expected sucker sent by Paltrin courts. A series of ruinous voyages had exhausted his resources, but he had stalked all on the success of the colony, had even brought his family to Acadia, and he would not leave them and his companions to perish. His credit was gone, his hopes were dashed, yet assistance was proffered and, in his extremity, he was forced to accept it. It came from Madame de Gorshaville and her Jesuit advisors. She offered to buy the interest of a thousand crowns in the enterprise. The ill omen sucker could not be refused, but this was not all. The zealous protectress of the missions obtained in Monts, whose fortune, like those of Paltrin courts, had ebbs low, a transfer of all his claims to the lands of Acadia, while the young king Louis XIII was persuaded to give her, in addition, a new grant of all the territory of North America, from the St. Lawrence to Florida. Thus did Madame de Gorshaville, or in other words, the Jesuits who used her name as a cover, become proprietors of the great part of the future states and British provinces. The English colony of Virginia and the Dutch trading houses of New York were included within the limits of this destined northern Paraguay, while Port Royal, the scenery of the unfortunate Paltrin courts, was encompassed like a petty island by the vast domain of the society of Jesus. They could not deprive him of it, since his title had been confirmed by the late king, but they flattered themselves far of their own language that he would be confined as in a prison. His grant, however, had been vaguely worded, and while they held him restricted to an insignificant patch of grounds, he claimed lordship over a wide and indefinite territory. Here was argument for endless strife. Other interests, too, were adverse. Paltrin court in his discouragement had abandoned his plan of liberal colonization and now thought of nothing but beaver skins. He wished to make a trading post. The Jesuits wished to make a mission. When the vessel anchored before Port Royal, Byncourt, with disgust and anger, saw another Jesuit landed at the pier. This was Gilbert De Thet, a lay brother versed in affairs of this world who had come out as representative and administrator of Madame de Gaulle-Cerville. Paltrin court also had his agent on board, and without the loss of a day the two began to quarrel. A truce ensued then a smothered feud, pervading the whole colony and ending in a notable explosion. The Jesuits, chafing under this way of Byncourt, had withdrawn without ceremony and be taken themselves to the vessel, intending to sail for France. Byncourt, exasperated at such a breach of discipline and fearing their representations at courts, ordered them to return, adding that since the queen had commended them to his especial care he could not in conscience lose sight of them. The indignant fathers excommunicated him. On this, the Sycamore Louis, son of the grizzly converts, membered to you, begged leave to kill them. But Byncourt would not countenance the summary mode of relieving his embarrassment. He again, in the king's name, ordered the clerical mutineers to return to the forts. Biyar declared that he would not threaten to excommunicate any who should lay hands on him and called the vice admiral a robber. His wrath, however, soon colds. He yielded to necessity and came quietly ashore, where for the next three months neither he nor his colleagues would say mass, or perform any office of religion. At length a change came over him, and he made advances of peace. Prayed that the past might be forgotten, said Mass again, and closed with the petition that brother Duthet might be allowed to go to France in a trading vessel, then on the other coast. His petition being granted, he wrote to Poundrencourt a letter overflowing with praises of his son, and charged, with dismissive, Duthet set sail. End of chapter 6 Recording by Katie Riley March 2009 Pending these squabbles, the Jesuits at home were far from idle. Bent on ridding themselves of Putrancourt, they seized in satisfaction of debts to them all the cargo of his returning vessel and involved him in a network of litigation. If we accept his own statements in a letter to his friend Lescarbeaux who was previously misused and indeed defrauded by his clerical co-partners, who at length had him thrown into prison. Here, exasperated, weary, sick of Acadia, and anxious for the wretched exiles who looked to him for succour, the unfortunate man fell ill. Regaining his liberty, he again addressed himself with what strength remained to the forlorn task of sending relief to his son and his comrades. When she arrived in France, when Madame de Gershawil and her Jesuits strong in court favour and in the charity of wealthy penitents prepared to take possession of their empire beyond sea, contributions were asked, and not in vain, for the sagacious fathers mindful of every spring of influence had deeply studied the mazes of feminine psychology, and then, as now, were favourite confessors of the fair. It was on the 12th of March, when the Mayflower of the Jesuits sailed from Hanfleur for the shores of New England. She was the Jonas, formerly in the service of Dumont, a small craft bearing 48 sailors and colonists, including two Jesuits, Father Quentin and Brother Duthey. She carried horses too, and goats, and was abundantly stored with all things needful by the pious munificence of her patrons. A courtier, named Laçassie, Captain Charles Fleury commanded the ship, and, as she winged her way across the Atlantic, benedictions hovered over her from lordly halls and perfumed chambers. On the 16th of May, Laçassie touched at L'Heve, where he heard mass, planted across, and displayed the scuttion of Madame de Gershawil. Thence, passing on to Port Royal, he found Beard, Massé, their servant boy, an apothecary and one man beside. Beyond court and his followers were scattered about the woods and shores, digging the tuberous roots called groundnuts, catching olive-wives in the brooks, and by similar expedience sustaining their miserable existence. Taking the two Jesuits on board, the voyagers steered for the Penobscot, a fog rose upon the sea. They sailed to and fro, groping their way in blindness, straining their eyes through the mist, and trembling each instant they scry the black outline of some deadly reef, and the ghostly death-dance of the breakers, but heaven heard their prayers. At night they could see the stars. The sun rose resplendent on a laughing sea, and his morning beams streamed fair and full on the wild heights of the island of Mount Desert. They entered a bay that stretched inland between iron-bound shores, and gave it the name of Saint Saviour. It is now called Frenchman's Bay. They saw a coastline of weather-beaten crags set thick with spruce and fir, the surf-washed cliffs of Great Head and Schoonerhead, the rocky front of Newport Mountain patched with ragged woods, the arid domes of Dry Mountain and Green Mountain, the round bristly backs of the porcupine islands, and the waving outline of the Goldsboro Hills. LaSassier cast anchor not far from Schoonerhead, and here he lay till evening. The jet-black shade betwixt the crags in sea, the pines along the cliff penciled against the fiery sunset, the dreamy slumber of distant mountains bathed in shadowy purples. Such is the scene that in this our day greets the wandering artist, the roving collegian Bivouac down the shore, or the pilgrim from stifled cities renewing his laided strength in the mighty life of nature. Perhaps they then greeted the adventurous Frenchman. There was peace on the wilderness and peace on the sea, but none in this missionary bark, pioneer of Christianity and civilization. A rabble of angry sailors clamored on her deck, ready to mutiny over the terms of their engagement. Should the time of their stay be reckoned from their landing at L'Heve, or from their anchoring at Mount Desert? Fleury the naval commander took their part. Sailor, courtier and priest gave tongue together in vociferous debate. Putran court was far away, a ruined man, and the intractable vice admiral had ceased from troubling. Yet not the less were the omens of the pious enterprise sinister and dark. The company, however, went ashore, raised across, and heard mass. At a distance in the woods they saw the smoke signal of Indians whom Beard lost no time in visiting. Some of them were from a village on the shore, three leagues westward. They urged the French to go with them to their wigwams. The astute savages had learned already how to deal with a Jesuit. Our great chief astakew is there. He wishes for baptism. He is very sick. He will die unbaptized. He will burn in hell, and it will be all your fault. This was enough. Beard embarked in a canoe, and they paddied him to the spot where he found the great chief astakew in his wigwam with a heavy cold in the head. Disappointed of his charitable purpose, the priest consoled himself with copies of the neighboring shore, which seemed to him better fitted than Saint Saviour for the intended settlement. It was a gentle slope, descending to the water, covered with tall grass, and backed by rocky hills. It looked southeast upon a harbour where a fleet might ride at anchor, sheltered from the gales by a cluster of islands. The ship was brought to the spot, and the colonists disembarked. First they planted a cross, then they began their labours, their quarrels. Lesassier's zealous for agriculture wished to break ground and raise crops immediately. The rest opposed him, wishing first to be housed and fortified. Fleury demanded that the ship should be unladen, and Lesassier would not consent. Debate ran high when suddenly all was harmony, and the disputants were friends once more in the pacification of a common danger. Far out at sea, beyond the islands that sheltered their harbour, they saw an approaching sail, and as she drew near, straining their anxious eyes, they could describe the red flags that streamed from her mast head and her stern, then the black mussels of her canyon. They counted seven on a side, then the throng of men upon her decks. The wind was brisk and fair, all her sails were set. She came on, writes a spectator, more swiftly than an arrow. Six years before, in 1607, the ships of Captain Newport had conveyed to the banks of James River the first vital germ of English colonisation on the continent. Noble and wealthy speculators with Hispaniola, Mexico, and Peru for their inspiration had combined to gather the fancied Golden Harvest of Virginia, received a charter from the Crown, and taken possession of their El Dorado. From Tavern, gaming house and brothel, was drawn the staple, the colony. Ruin gentlemen, prodigal sons, disreputable retainers, debauched tradesmen. Yet it would be foul slander to affirm that the founders of Virginia were all of this stamp, for among the riotous crew were men of worth, and, above them all, a hero disguised by the homeliest of names. Again and again, in direst woe and jeopardy, the infant settlement owed its life to the heart and hand of John Smith. Several years had elapsed since Newport's voyage, and the colony, depleted by famine, disease, and an Indian war, had been recruited by fresh emigration, when when Samuel Argal arrived at Jamestown, captain of an illicit trading vessel. He was a man of ability and force, one of those compounds of craft and daring in which the age was fruitful, for the rest, unscrupulous and grasping. In the spring of 1613 he achieved a characteristic exploit, the abduction of Pocahontas, that most interesting of young squaws, or, to borrow the style of the day, of Indian princesses. Sailing up the Potomac, he lured her on board his ship, and then carried off the benefactress of the colony a prisoner to Jamestown. Here a young man of family, Rolf, became enamored of her, married her with more than ordinary ceremony, and thus secured a firm alliance between her tribesmen and the English. Meanwhile, Argal had set forth on another enterprise, with a ship of 130 tons, carrying 14 guns and 60 men. He sailed in May for islands off the coast of Maine to fish, as he says, for cod. He had a more important errand, for Sir Thomas Dale, Governor of Virginia, had commissioned him to expel the French from any settlement they might have made within the limits of King James's patents. Thick fogs involved him, and when the weather cleared he found himself not far from the Bay of Penobscot. Canoes came out from shore, the Indians climbed the ship's side, and, as they gained the deck, greeted the astonished English with an odd pantomime of bows and flourishes which, in the belief of the latter, could have been learned from none but Frenchmen. By signs, too, and by often repeating the word Norman, by which they always designated the French, they betrayed the presence of the latter. Argal questioned them as well as his total ignorance of their language would permit, and learned, by signs, the position clearly they were no match for him, assuring the Indians that the Normans were his friends, and that he longed to see them, he retained one of the visitors as a guide, dismissed the rest with presence, and shaped his course for Mount Desert. Now the wild heights rose in view, now the English could see the masts of a small ship anchored in the sound, and now as they rounded the islands, four white tents were visible on the grassy slope between the water and the woods. They were a gift from the queen to Madame de Gershaville and her missionaries. Argal's men prepared for fight while their Indian guide, amazed, broke into a howl of lamentation. Unsure, all was confusion. Beleuil, the pilot, went to reconnature, and ended by hiding among the islands. LaSassie lost presence of mind and did nothing for defense. Lamotte, his lieutenant, with Captain Fleury, and Ensign, a sergeant, the Jesuit duthey, and a few of the bravest men, hastened on board the vessel, but had no time to cast loose her cables. Argal bore down on them with a furious din of drums and trumpets, showed his broadside, and replied to their hail with a volley of cannon and musket shot. Fire! Fire! screamed Fleury. But there was no gunner to obey till duthey seized and applied the match. The cannon made as much noise as the enemies, writes Beard, but as the against artillerist forgot to aim the piece, no other result ensued. Another storm of musketry and brother Gilbert duthey rolled helpless on the deck. The French ship was mute. The English plied her for a time with shot, then lowered a boat and boarded. Under the awnings which covered her, dead and wounded men lay strewn about her deck, and among them the brave lay brother, smoldering in his blood. He had his wish, for, on leaving France, had prayed with uplifted hands that he might not return, but perish in that holy enterprise. Like the order of which he was a humble member, he was a compound of qualities in appearance contradictory. Le Mat, sword and hand, showed fight to the last, and won the esteem of his captors. The English landed without meeting any show of resistance and ranged at will among the tents, the piles of baggage and stores, and the buildings and defences newly begun. Argal asked for the commander, but Lassace had fled to the woods. The crafty Englishman seized his chests, caused the locks to be picked, searched till he found the royal letters and commissions, withdrew them, replaced everything else as he had found it, and again closed the lids. In the morning Lassace, between the English and starvation, preferred the former and issued from his hiding place. Argal received him with studious courtesy. That country, he said, belonged to his master, King James. Doubtless they had authority from their own sovereign for thus encroaching upon it, and for his part he was prepared to yield all respect to the commissions of the King of France, that the peace between the two nations might not be disturbed. Therefore he prayed that the commissions might be shown to him. Lassace opened his chests. The royal signature was nowhere to be found. At this Argal's courtesy was changed to RAF. He denounced the Frenchmen as robbers and pirates who deserved the gallows, removed their property on board his ship and spent the afternoon in dividing it among his followers. The disconsolate French remained on the scene of their woes, where the greedy sailors, as they came ashore, would snatch from them now a cloak, now a hat, and now a doublet, till the unfortunate colonists were left half-naked. In other respects the English treated their captives well, except two of them, who they flogged, and Argal, whom Beard, after recounting his navery calls, a gentleman of noble courage, having gained his point, returned to his former courtesy. But how to dispose of the prisoners? Fifteen of them including Lassace and the Jesuit Massé, were turned adrift in an open boat at the mercy of the wilderness and the sea. Nearly all were landsmen, but while their unpracticed hands were struggling with yours, they were joined among the islands by the fugitive pilot and his boat's crew. Worn the united bands made their perilous way eastward, stopping from time to time to hear mass, make a procession or catch codfish. Thus sustained in the spirit and in the flesh, cheered to by the Indians, who proved fast friends in need, they crossed the bay of Fundy, doubled Cape Sable, and followed the southern coast of Nova Scotia, till they happily fell in with two French trading vessels, which bore them in safety to St. Malo. CHAPTER VIII. RUIN OF FRENCH ARCADIA. 1613 to 1615. Praised be God, behold, two-thirds of our company safe in France, telling their strange adventures to their relatives and friends. And now you will wish to know what befell the rest of us. Thus writes Father Beyard, who, with his companions in misfortune, fourteen in all, prisoners on board Argyle's ship and the prize, were born captive to Virginia. Old Point Comfort was reached at length, the side of Fortress Monroe, Hampton Rhodes, renowned in our day for the sea fight of the Titans. Sewell's Point, the Rip Wraps, Newport News, all household words in the years of this generation. Now, far on their right, buried in the deep shade of Immemorial Verdure, lay untrodden and voiceless the fields where stretched the Ligard Lines of Washington, where the lilies of France floated beside the banners of the Newborn Republic, and where in later years embattled treason confronted the manhood of an old town, before them they could describe the mast of small craft at anchor, a cluster of rude dwellings fresh from the axe, scattered tenements, and fields green with tobacco. Throughout the voyage the prisoners had been soothed with flattering tales of the benignity of the Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, of his love of the French, and his respect for the memory of Henry IV, to whom they were told he was much beholden for countenance and the picture was reversed. The Governor fumed and blustered, talked of halter and gallows, and declared that he would hang them all. In vain Argal remonstrated, urging that he had pledged his word for their lives. Dale, outraged by their invasion of British Territory, was deaf to all appeals, till Argal, driven to extremity, displayed the stolen commissions and proclaimed his stratagem of which the French themselves had to that moment in their government their lives at least were safe. Yet the wrath of Sir Thomas Dale still burned high. He summoned his counsel and they resolved promptly to wipe off all the stain of French intrusion from shores which King James claimed as his own. Their action was utterly unauthorized. The two kingdoms were at peace. James I by the patents of 1606 had granted all North America from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degree of latitude to the two Plymouth, Virginia being assigned to the former while to the latter were given Maine and Arcadia with adjacent regions. Of these, though as yet the claimants had not taken possession of them, the authorities of Virginia had no color of jurisdiction. England claimed all North America in virtue of the discovery of Cabot, and Sir Thomas Dale became the self-constituted champion of British rights, not the less zealous that his championship promised to harvest a booty. Argyle's ship, the captured ship of Lausassie and another smaller vessel, were at once equipped and dispatched on their errand of havoc. Argyle commanded and beyard with Quentin and several others of the prisoners were embarked with him. They shaped their course first for Mount Desert. Here they landed, leveled all Lausassie's unfinished defenses, cut down the French Cross, and planted one of their own in its place. Next they sought out the island of St. Caesar's to quantity of salt, and raised to the ground all that remained of the dilapidated buildings of Dumont's. They crossed the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal, guided, says beyard by an Indian chief, and improbable assertion, since the natives of these coasts hated the English as much as they loved the French, and now well knew the designs of the former. The unfortunate settlement was tenetless. Biencore, with some of his men, was on a visit to Port Royal, which were reaping in the fields on the river, two leagues above the fort. Sucker from Portreancourt had arrived during the summer. The magazines were by no means empty, and there were cattle, horses and hogs in adjacent fields and enclosures. Exalting at their good fortune, Argyle's men butchered or carried off the animals, ransacked the buildings, plundered them even to the locks and bolts of the doors, and then laid the hole in ashes. And may it please the Lord, may our incommitted may likewise have been consumed in that burning. Having demolished Port Royal, the marauders went in boats up the river to the fields where the reapers were at work. These fled, and took refuge behind the ridge of a hill, once they gazed helplessly on the destruction of their harvest. Beyard approached them, and according to the declaration of Putreancourt, made and attested before the admiralty of Guyenne, tried to persuade them to desert his son, Biencore, and take service the reply of one of the men gave little encouragement for further parley. Begone, or I will split your head with this hatchet. There is flat contradiction here between the narrative of the Jesuit and the accounts of Putreancourt and contemporary English writers, who agree in affirming that Beyard, out of indigestible malice that he had conceived against Biencore, encouraged the attack on the settlements of St. Croix and Port Royal, and guided the English thither. The priest himself admits that both English regarded him as traitor, and that his life was in danger. While Argaul's ship was at anchor, a Frenchman shouted to the English from a distance that they would do well to kill him. The master of the ship, a Puritan, in his abomination of priests, and above all of Jesuits, was at the same time urging his commander to set Beyard ashore, and leave him to the mercy of his countrymen. In this pass he was saved, to adopt his own account, by what he calls his simplicity, for he tells us that while instigated, like the rest of his enemies by the devil, the robber and the robbed were joining hands to ruin him, he was on his knees before Argaul, begging him to take pity on the French, and leave them a boat, together with provisions to sustain their miserable lives through the winter. This spectacle of charity, he further says, so moved the noble heart of the commander, that he closed his ears to all the promptings of foreign and domestic malice. The English had scarcely re-embarked when Biencourt arrived with his followers, and beheld the scene of destruction. Hopelessly outnumbered he tried to lure Argaul and some of his officers into an amuse-guide, but they would not be trapped. Biencourt now asked for an interview. The word of honour was mutually given, and the two chiefs met in a meadow not far from the demolished dwellings. An anonymous English writer says Biencourt offered to transfer his allegiance to King James, on condition of being permitted to remain in Royal, and carry on the fur trade, under a guarantee of English protection, but that Argaul would not listen to his overtures. The interview proved a stormy one. Biard says that the Frenchman vomited against him every species of malignant abuse. In the meantime he adds, you will considerately observe to what madness the evil spirit excited those who sell themselves to him. According to Putrencourt, Argaul admitted that the priest had urged him to attack Port Royal. Certain it is that Biencourt demanded surrender, frankly declaring that he meant to hang him. Whilst they were discoursing together, says the old English writer above mentioned, one of the savages, rushing suddenly forth from the woods, and licenciated to come near, did after this manner, with such broken French as he had, earnestly mediate a peace, wondering why they that seemed to be of one country should verse each other with such hostility, and that with such a form of habit and gesture has made them both to laugh. His work done, and as he thought, the French settlements of Acadia effectually blotted out, Argaul set sail for Virginia on the thirteenth of November. Scarcely was he at sea when a storm scattered the vessels. Of the smallest of the three nothing was ever heard. Argaul, severely buffeted, reached his port in safety, having first, it is said, compelled the Dutch at Manhattan to acknowledge, for a time, the sovereignty of King James. The captured ship of La Saucie, with Biard and his colleague Quentin was forced to yield to the fury of the Western Gaels and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the treculant Governor of Virginia, and his tempest rocked slumbers were haunted with unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended him to Sir Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows, drawing up a paper, signed by six of them, and containing allegations of a nature well-fitted to kindle the wrath of that vehement official. The vessel was commanded by Tarnel, Argaul's lieutenant, apparently an officer of merit, a scholar and linguist. He had treated his prisoner with great kindness, because, says the latter, he esteemed and loved him for his naive simplicity and ingenuous candor. But of late, thinking his kindness misplaced, he had changed it for an extreme coldness, preferring, in the words himself, to think that the Jesuit had lied, rather than so many who accused him. Water ran low, provisions began to fail, and they eked out their meager supply by butchering the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they came with inside of Fayol, when a new terror seized the minds of the two Jesuits. Might not the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that island as pirates and sacrilegious kidnappers of priests? From such hazard it was obvious. What more simple than to drop the priests into the sea? In truth, the English had no little dread of the results of conference between the Jesuits and the Portuguese authorities of Fayol, but the conscience or humanity of Ternel revolted at the expedient which awakened such apprehension in the troubled mind of Beard. He contented himself with requiring that the two priests should remain hidden while the ship lay off the port. Beard does not say that he enforced the demand, either by threats or by the ships. He and his companion, however, rigidly complied with it, lying close in the hold or under the boats, while suspicious officials searched the ship, a proof, he triumphantly declares, of the audacious malice which has asserted it is a tenant of Rome that no faith need be kept with heretics. Once more at sea Ternel shaped his course for home, having with some difficulty gained a supply of water and provisions at Fayol. All was now harmony between him and his prisoners. When he reached Pembroke, in Wales, the appearance of the vessel, a French craft in English hands, again drew upon him the suspicion of piracy. The Jesuits, dangerous witnesses among the Catholics of Fayol, could at the worst do little harm with the Vice Admiral at Pembroke. To him, therefore, he led the prisoners, in the sable garb of their order, now much the worse for wear, and commended them as persons without reproach, wherein, as the modest father, he spoke the truth. The result of their evidence was, we are told, that Ternel was henceforth treated, not as a pirate, but according to his desserts, as an honourable gentleman. This interview led to a meeting with certain dignitaries of the Anglican church, who much interested in an encounter with Jesuits in their robes, were filled, says Beard, with wonder and admiration at what they were told of their conduct. He explains that these churchmen differ widely in form and doctrine from English Calvinists, who, he says, are called Puritans, and he adds that they are superior in every respect to these, whom they detest as an excruble pest. Beard was sent to Dover and thence to Calais, returning perhaps to the tranquil honours of his chair of theology at Lyon. La Sassaye, Lamotte, Fleury, and other prisoners were at various times sent from Virginia to England, and ultimately to France. Madame de Gauchville, her pious designs crushed in the bud, seems to have gained no further satisfaction than the restoration of the vessel. The French ambassador complained of the outrage, but answer was postponed, and in the troubled state of France the matter appears to have been dropped. Argol, whose violent and crafty character was offset by a gallant bearing in various traits of martial virtue, became deputy governor of Virginia and under a military code ruled the colony with a rod of iron. He enforced the observance of Sunday with an edifying rigor. Those who absented themselves from a church were, for the first offence, imprisoned for the night, and reduced to slavery for a week. For the second offence enslaved a month and for the third a year. Nor was he less strenuous in his devotion to mammon. He enriched himself by extortion and a wholesale speculation, and his audacious dexterity aided by the countenance of the Earl of Warwick, who is said to have had a trading connection with him, thwarted all the efforts of the company to bring him out. In sixteen twenty-three he was knighted by the hand of King James. Early in the spring following the English attack Putrincourt came to Port Royal. He found the place in ashes and his unfortunate son, with the men under his command, wandering houseless in the forests. They had passed a winter of extreme misery, sustaining their wretched existence with roots, the buds of trees, and lichens peeled from the rocks. Despairing of his enterprise Putrincourt returned to France. In the next year, sixteen, fifteen, during the civil disturbances which followed the marriage of the king, command was given him of the royal forces destined for the attack on Marie, and here, happier in his death and in his life, he fell sword in hand. In spite of the reverses the French kept hold on Acadia. Biencourt, partially at least, rebuilt Port Royal, while winter after winter the smoke of fur traders' huts curled into the still, sharp air of these frosty wilds, till at length, with happier auspices, plans of settlement were resumed. Rude hands strangled the northern Paraguay in its birth. Its beginnings had been feeble, but behind were the forces of a mighty organization, at once devoted and ambitious, enthusiastic and calculating. Seven years later the Mayflower landed her immigrants at Plymouth. What would have been the issues had the zeal of the pious lady of honour with the Jesuit colony? In an obscure stroke of lawless violence began the strife of France and England, Protestantism and Rome, which for a century and a half shook the struggling communities of North America, and closed at last in the memorable triumph on the plains of Abraham.