for
the last time, to find his son and followers wanderers in the woods,
and only piles of ashes marking the site of the buildings on which he
and his friends had expended so much time and money. The fate of Port
Royal may be very briefly told. The Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas
Dale, was exceedingly irate when he heard of the encroachments of
France on what he considered to be British territory by right of prior
discovery--that of John Cabot--and immediately sent Argall, after his
return from St. Sauveur, on an expedition to the northward. Argall
first touched at St. Sauveur, and completed the work of destruction,
and next stopped at St. Croix, where he also destroyed the deserted
buildings. To such an extent did he show his enmity, that he even
erased the fleur-de-lis and the initial of De Monts and others from the
massive stone on which they had been carved. Biencourt and nearly all
the inmates of the fort were absent some distance in the country, and
returned to see the English in complete possession.

The destruction of Port Royal by Argall ends the first period in the
history of Acadia as a French colony. Poutrincourt bowed to the
relentless fate that {66} drove him from the shores he loved so well,
and returned to France, where he took employment in the service of the
king. Two years later he was killed at the siege of Meri on the upper
Seine, during the civil war which followed the successful intrigues of
Marie de' Medici with Spain, to marry the boy king, Louis XIII., to
Anne of Austria, and his sister, the Princess Elisabeth, to a Spanish
prince. On his tomb at St. Just, in Champagne, there was inscribed an
elaborate Latin epitaph, of which the following is a translation:

"Ye people so dear to God,
inhabitants of New France,
whom I brought over to the
Faith of Christ. I am Poutrincourt, your
great chief, in whom was once your hope.
If envy deceived you, mourn for me.
My courage destroyed me. I could not
hand to another the glory
that I won among you.
Cease not to mourn for me.

Port Royal, in later years, arose from its ashes, and the fleur-de-lis,
or the red cross, floated from its walls, according as the French or
the English were the victors in the long struggle that ensued for the
possession of Acadia. But before we continue the story of its varying
fortunes in later times, we must proceed to the banks of the St.
Lawrence, wher