fire upon it, at the other end suck so long that they fill their bodies
full of smoke till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even
as out of the funnel of a chimney. They say that it doth keep them warm
and in health: they never go without some of it about them. We
ourselves have tried the same smoke, and, having put it in our mouths,
it seemed almost as hot as pepper.'

In spite of the going and coming of the Indians, Cartier from first to
last was doubtful of their intentions. Almost every day in the autumn
and early winter some of them appeared with eels and fish, glad to
exchange them for little trinkets. But the two interpreters endeavoured
to make the Indians believe that the things given them by the French
were of no value, and Donnacona did his best to get the Indian children
out of the hands of the French. Indeed, the eldest of the children, an
Indian girl, escaped from the ships and rejoined her people, and it was
only with difficulty that Cartier succeeded in getting her back again.
Meanwhile a visiting chief, from the country farther inland, gave the
French captain to understand that Donnacona and his braves were waiting
only an opportunity to overwhelm the ships' company. Cartier kept on
his guard. He strengthened the fort with a great moat that ran all
round the stockade. The only entry was now by a lifting bridge; and
pointed stakes were driven in beside the upright palisade. Fifty men,
divided into watches, were kept on guard all night, and, at every
change of the watch, the Indians, across the river in their lodges of
the Stadacona settlement, could hear the loud sounds of the trumpets
break the clear silence of the winter night.

We have no record of the life of Cartier and his followers during the
winter of their isolation among the snows and the savages of Quebec. It
must, indeed, have been a season of dread. The northern cold was soon
upon them in all its rigour. The ships were frozen in at their moorings
from the middle of November till April 15. The ice lay two fathoms
thick in the river, and the driving snows and great drifts blotted out
under the frozen mantle of winter all sight of land and water. The
French could scarcely stir from their quarters. Their fear of Indian
treachery and their ignorance of the trackless country about them held
them imprisoned in their ships. A worse peril was soon added. The
scourge of scurvy was laid upon them--an awful disease, hideous in its
form