De Monts engaged Champlain, who had already
explored those coasts, as chief geographer, and the merchant Pontgrave
was in charge of a store-ship laden with supplies. Fearing the severe
winter of the St. Lawrence, the party steered south along the coast and
anchored in a tranquil and beautiful harbor surrounded with forest,
green lowlands, and hills laced with waterfalls. In his delight with the
place Poutrincourt declared that he would ask nothing better than to
make it his home; and he received a grant of the harbor, which he named
Port Royal. The expedition finally came to rest on an island in a river
flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay, where they began their settlement. Their
wooden buildings--a house for their viceroy, one for Champlain and other
gentlemen, barracks, lodgings, workshops and storehouses,--surrounded a
square in the middle of which one fine cedar was left standing, while a
belt of them remained to hedge the island from the north winds. The work
done, Poutrincourt set sail for France, leaving seventy-nine men to
spend the winter at Ile Sainte-Croix. Scurvy broke out, and before
spring almost half the company were in their graves. Spring came, but no
help from France. It was June 16 before Poutrincourt returned with forty
men, and two days later Champlain set sail in a fifteen-ton barque with
De Monts and several others, to explore the coast and discover if
possible a better place for the colony.
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