There was plenty of leeway to the
southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south
as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been
accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.
Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had
already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting
it. The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the
quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the
arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a
path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion
matched it, mounting the four cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and
provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men's
quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men
of the company, who now numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men
to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others
broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and
he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.
"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the
thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn
among his neatly-arranged plots.
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