Canada. John George Bourinot
stated, he had been put into prison by his creditors, and had there lain ill for some months. When he was at last liberated, and appeared once more among his friends he succeeded in obtaining some assistance, and fitting out a small vessel, with a limited supply of stores for his colony. In the spring of 1614 he entered the basin of Annapolis for the last time, to find his son and followers wanderers in the woods, and only piles of ashes marking the site of the buildings on which he and his friends had expended so much time and money. The fate of Port Royal may be very briefly told. The Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, was exceedingly irate when he heard of the encroachments of France on what he considered to be British territory by right of prior discovery—that of John Cabot—and immediately sent Argall, after his return from St. Sauveur, on an expedition to the northward. Argall first touched at St. Sauveur, and completed the work of destruction, and next stopped at St. Croix, where he also destroyed the deserted buildings. To such an extent did he show his enmity, that he even erased the fleur-de-lis and the initial of De Monts and others from the massive stone on which they had been carved. Biencourt and nearly all the inmates of the fort were absent some distance in the country, and returned to see the English in complete possession.
The destruction of Port Royal by Argall ends the first period in the history of Acadia as a French colony. Poutrincourt bowed to the relentless fate that drove him from the shores he loved so well, and returned to France, where he took employment in the service of the king. Two years later he was killed at the siege of Méri on the upper Seine, during the civil war which followed the successful intrigues of Marie de' Medici with Spain, to marry the boy king, Louis XIII., to Anne of Austria, and his sister, the Princess Elisabeth, to a Spanish prince. On his tomb at St. Just, in Champagne, there was inscribed an elaborate Latin epitaph, of which the following is a translation:
"Ye people so dear to God,
inhabitants of New France,
whom I brought over to the
Faith of Christ. I am Poutrincourt, your
great chief, in whom was once your hope.
If envy deceived you, mourn for me.
My courage destroyed me. I could not
hand to another the glory
that I won among you.
Cease not to mourn for me.
Port Royal, in later years, arose from its ashes, and the fleur-de-lis, or the red cross, floated from its walls, according as the French or the English were the victors in the long struggle that ensued for the possession of Acadia. But before we continue the story of its varying fortunes in later times, we must proceed to the banks of the St. Lawrence, where the French had laid the foundation of Quebec and New France in the great valley, while Poutrincourt was struggling vainly to make a new home for himself and family by the side of the river of Port Royal.
[1] Now known as Douchet Island; no relics remain of the French occupation.
[2] Champlain says the river was named after a little fish caught there, de grandeur d'un esplan.
VI.
SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN IN THE VALLEY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.
(1608–1635.)
When Samuel Champlain entered the St. Lawrence River for the second time, in 1608, after his three years' explorations in Acadia, and laid the foundation of the present city of Quebec, the only Europeans on the Atlantic coast of America were a few Spaniards at St. Augustine, and a few Englishmen at Jamestown. The first attempt of the English, under the inspiration of the great Raleigh, to establish a colony in the fine country to the north of Spanish Florida, then known as Virginia, is only remembered for the mystery which must always surround the fate of Virginia Dare and the little band of colonists who were left on the island of Roanoke. Adventurous Englishmen, Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, had even explored the coast of the present United States as far as the Kennebec before the voyages of Champlain and Poutrincourt, and the first is said to have given the name of Cape Cod to the point named Malebarre by the French. It was not, however, until 1607 that Captain Newport, representing the great company of Virginia, to whom King James II. gave a charter covering the territory of an empire, brought the first permanent English colony of one hundred persons up the James River in Chesapeake Bay.
Champlain.
From this time forward France and England became rivals in America. In the first years of the seventeenth century were laid the foundations not only of the Old Dominion of Virginia, which was in later times to form so important a state among the American commonwealths, but also of the New Dominion whose history may be said to commence on the shores of Port Royal. But Acadia was not destined to be the great colony of France—the centre of her imperial aspirations in America. The story of the French in Acadia, from the days of De Monts and Poutrincourt, until the beginning of the eighteenth century when it became an English possession, is at most only a series of relatively unimportant episodes in the history of that scheme of conquest which was planned in the eighteenth century in the palace of Versailles and in the old castle of St. Louis on the heights of Quebec, whose interesting story I must now tell.
When Champlain returned to France in 1607 De Monts obtained from Henry the Fourth a monopoly of the Canadian fur-trade for a year, and immediately fitted out two vessels, one of which was given to Pontgravé, who had taken part in previous expeditions to the new world. Champlain was appointed by De Monts as his representative, and practically held the position of lieutenant-governor under different viceroys, with all necessary executive and judicial powers, from this time until his death, twenty-seven years later.
Champlain arrived on the 3rd of July off the promontory of Quebec, which has ever since borne the name given to it by the Algonquin tribes, in whose language Kebec means such a strait or narrowing of a river as actually occurs at this part of the St. Lawrence. The French pioneers began at once to clear away the trees and dig cellars on an accessible point of land which is now the site of Champlain market in what is called "the lower town" of the modern city. Champlain has left us a sketch of the buildings he erected—habitation as he calls them—and my readers will get from the illustration opposite an idea of the plan he followed. Champlain made one of the buildings his headquarters for twelve years, until he built a fort on the heights, which was the beginning of that famous Fort and Castle of St. Louis to which reference is so constantly made in the histories of New France.
Champlain was obliged immediately after his arrival at Quebec to punish some conspirators who had agreed to murder him and hand over the property of the post to the Basque fishermen frequenting Tadousac. The leader, Jean du Val, was hanged after a fair trial and three of his accomplices sent to France, where they expiated their crime in the galleys. Great explorers had in those days to run such risks among their followers and crews, not affected by their own enthusiasm. Only three years later a famous sailor and discoverer of new seas and lands, was left to die among the waste of waters which ever since have recalled the name of Henry Hudson.