and deadly in its effect. Originating in the Indian camp, it
spread to the ships. In December fifty of the Stadacona Indians died,
and by the middle of February, of the hundred and ten men that made up
Cartier's expedition, only three or four remained in health. Eight were
already dead, and their bodies, for want of burial, lay frozen stark
beneath the snowdrifts of the river, hidden from the prying eyes of the
savages. Fifty more lay at the point of death, and the others, crippled
and staggering with the onslaught of disease, moved to and fro at their
tasks, their fingers numbed with cold, their hearts frozen with despair.

The plague that had fallen upon them was such as none of them had ever
before seen. The legs of the sufferers swelled to huge, unsightly, and
livid masses of flesh. Their sinews shrivelled to blackened strings,
pimpled with purple clots of blood. The awful disease worked its way
upwards. The arms hung hideous and useless at the side, the mouth
rotted till the teeth fell from the putrid flesh. Chilled with the
cold, huddled in the narrow holds of the little ships fast frozen in
the endless desolation of the snow, the agonized sufferers breathed
their last, remote from aid, far from the love of women, and deprived
of the consolations of the Church. Let those who realize the full
horror of the picture think well upon what stout deeds the commonwealth
of Canada has been founded.

Without the courage and resource of their leader, whose iron
constitution kept him in full health, all would have been lost. Cartier
spared no efforts. The knowledge of his situation was concealed from
the Indians. None were allowed aboard the ships, and, as far as might
be, a great clatter of hammering was kept up whenever the Indians
appeared in sight, so that they might suppose that Cartier's men were
forced by the urgency of their tasks to remain on the ships. Nor was
spiritual aid neglected. An image of the Virgin Mary was placed against
a tree about a bow-shot from the fort, and to this all who could walk
betook themselves in procession on the Sunday when the sickness was at
its height. They moved in solemn order, singing as they went the
penitential psalms and the Litany, and imploring the intercession of
the Virgin. Thus passed the days until twenty-five of the French had
been laid beneath the snow. For the others there seemed only the
prospect of death from disease or of destruction at the hands of the
savages.

It