its size was greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They manned all their canoes[14] and came out in a flotilla to express their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from an unknown world.
Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped, heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out with them into the fields when they were working, so that the Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their clothes.
In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins, Jerusalem artichokes[15], radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled with oaks, walnut trees[16], and the red "cedar" of North America, really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red, black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs, bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great king-crab[17].
These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after travelling in an open boat—a chaloupe—round the coast of Nova Scotia they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE POUTRINCOURT[18] (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration, because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden (fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly and charter were cancelled by Henry IV, and that all the colony was to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,[19] and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and remarkable results.
The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in the greatest possible quantity".
Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal, and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese[20] which he had reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to renew his colonies in New France.
The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and also sent out Du Pont Gravé in command of the second vessel, as head of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Gravé proceeded to take very strong measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed to continue their whale fishery.
Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China". However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish Basques, they might enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to overcome Du Pont Gravé, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France, but would live here independent of outside interference. A conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had been in a place a few days. He went about his business very discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Gravé, and sent three others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds and vines for coming up in the spring.
In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers—Des Marais and La Routte—and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
The
