tward is another river, known to-day as the
Ste. Croix, the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. Dochet Island
at its mouth seems to offer what to a soldier is an ideal site. A fort
here could command either Fundy Bay or the upland country, which Indians
say leads back to the St. Lawrence. Thinking more of fort than farms, De
Monts plants his colony on Ste. Croix River, on an island composed mainly
of sand and rock.

While workmen labor to erect a fort on the north side, the pilot is sent
back to Nova Scotia to prospect for minerals. As {36} the vessel coasts
near St. Mary's Bay, a black object is seen moving weakly along the
shore. Sailors and pilot gaze in amazement. A hat on the end of a pole
is waved weakly from the beach. The men can scarcely believe their
senses. It must be the priest, though sixteen days have passed since he
disappeared. For two weeks Aubry had wandered, living on berries and
roots, before he found his way back to the sea.

[Illustration: PORT ROYAL OR ANNAPOLIS BASIN, 1609 (From Lescarbot's
map)]

Here, then, at last, is founded the first colony in Canada, a little
palisaded fort of seventy-nine men straining longing eyes at the sails of
the vessel gliding out to sea; for Pontgrave has taken one vessel up the
St. Lawrence to trade, and Poutrincourt has gone back to France with the
other for supplies. A worse beginning could hardly have been made. The
island was little better than a sand heap. No hills shut out the cold
winds that swept down the river bed from the north, and the tide carried
in ice jam from the south. As the snow began to fall, padding the
stately forests with a silence as of death, whitening the gaunt spruce
trees somber as funereal mourners, the colonists felt the icy loneliness
of winter in a forest chill their hearts. {37} Cooped up on the island
by the ice, they did little hunting. Idleness gives time for repinings.
Scurvy came, and before spring half the colonists had peopled the little
cemetery outside the palisades. De Monts has had enough of Ste. Croix.
When Pontgrave comes out with forty more men in June, De Monts prepares
to move. Champlain had the preceding autumn sailed south seeking a
better site; and now with De Monts he sails south again far as Cape Cod,
looking for a place to plant the capital of New France. It is amusing to
speculate that Canada might have included as far south as Boston, if they
had found a harbor to their liking; bu