rtval,
accompanying Cartier, established a colony on the Isle
Royale, and subsequently built the fort of Charlebourg. One
of his pilots, named Alphonse of Saintonge, meanwhile
reconnoitred the coasts both of Canada and Labrador. About
this time (1542) the incidents related in the above tale
must have occurred.--L.

The poor folk, finding themselves all alone and surrounded by wild and
cruel beasts, had no recourse but to God, who had ever been this poor
woman's steadfast hope; and, since she found all her consolation in Him,
she carried the New Testament with her for safeguard, nourishment and
consolation, and in it read unceasingly. Further, she laboured with her
husband to make them a little dwelling as best they might, and when the
lions (2) and other animals came near to devour them, the husband with
his arquebuss and she with stones made so stout a defence that not only
were the beasts afraid to approach, but often some were slain that were
very good for food. And on this flesh and the herbs of the land, they
lived for some time after their bread failed them.

2 This mention of lions on a small desert island in the
Canadian seas would be rather perplexing did we not know how
great at that time was the general ignorance on most matters
connected with natural history. Possibly the allusion may be
to the _lion marin_, as the French call the leonine seal.
This, however, is anything but an aggressive animal.
Curiously enough, Florimond de Remond, the sixteenth century
writer, speaks of a drawing of a "marine lion" given to him
"by that most illustrious lady Margaret Queen of Navarre, to
whom it had been presented by a Spanish gentleman, who was
taking a second copy of it to the Emperor Charles V., then
in Spain."--Ed.

At last, however, the husband could no longer endure this nutriment,
and by reason of the waters that they drank became so swollen that in
a short while he died, and this without any service or consolation save
from his wife, she being both his doctor and his confessor; and when
he had joyously passed out of the desert into the heavenly country, the
poor woman, left now in solitude, buried him in the earth as deeply as
she was able. Nevertheless the beasts quickly knew of it, and came to
eat the dead body; but the poor woman, firing with the arquebuss from
her cabin, saved her husband's flesh from finding such a