nces they were brought
to the whipping-post, cast into the guardhouse, chained hand and foot,
or led shivering to the gallows. Scurvy, too, broke out, and no Indian
could be found to direct them to the tree whose virtues had once saved
the remnants of Cartier's crew. They fell like the brown leaves before
the frosts of autumn; and the feeble arms of their suffering and
half-starved comrades made the walls resound with the dull thud of the
pick, as they almost daily cut into the hard, frozen ground, to make
ready graves. Those of gentler blood had nearly all succumbed, and no
priest was left to give the last rites to the dead. When spring came,
almost half the colony had disappeared, and those who survived were
naught but living skeletons.

When the ice had left the river, and the snows the land, Roberval
determined to make an effort to explore the great inland seas which had
been depicted on Cartier's map, and if possible to find the spot where
the nugget of gold had been discovered. But he had no idea of the
distances in this vast continent; and after a month's struggling up
turbulent rivers, and over rugged stretches where the foot of white man
had never before trod, he returned disheartened to his settlement. Here
he found that the men he had left in charge had been taking advantage of
his absence to hold high revels, and the wildest confusion reigned in
the fort. Disgusted and hopeless, he resolved to break up his colony and
return to France, his ambition thwarted, his hopes rudely shattered,
and his dreams of glory and renown in the New World faded into nothing
but bitter memories and unvailing regrets.

As he sailed down the Gulf of St Lawrence with the handful of men who
were left to him, he resolved to make one more effort to return to the
Isle of Demons, and learn, at any rate, what he could of the fate of the
three women--though he had no thought of the possibility that they might
have survived. But when the crew learned whither they were bound, they
rose in a body and mutinied. A few of those on board stood by Roberval
in his resolve, but they were overborne, some of them struck down; and
De Roberval, seeing his own life in danger, ordered Jehan Alfonse, who
had returned to his allegiance, a sadder and a wiser man--like his
commander--to steer away for France.

And thus, while Charles skirted the north of Newfoundland, De Roberval
was leaving the mouth of the Hochelaga; and, sailing westward past the
islan