his pupils an effect the reverse of that intended. Biard's colleague,
Masse, was equally zealous, and still less fortunate. He tried a forest
life among the Indians 'with signal ill success. Hard fare, smoke,
filth, the scolding of squaws, and the cries of children reduced him to
a forlorn condition of body and mind, wore him to a skeleton, and sent
him back to Port Royal without a single convert.

The dark months wore slowly on. A band of half-famished men gathered
about the huge fires of their barn-like hall, moody, sullen, and
quarrelsome. Discord was here in the black robe of the Jesuit and the
brown capote of the rival trader. The position of the wretched little
colony may well provoke reflection. Here lay the shaggy continent, from
Florida to the Pole, outstretched in savage slumber along the sea, the
stern domain of Nature,--or, to adopt the ready solution of the Jesuits,
a realm of the powers of night, blasted beneath the sceptre of hell. On
the banks of James River was a nest of woe-begone Englishmen, a handful
of Dutch fur-traders at the mouth of the Hudson, and a few shivering
Frenchmen among the snow-drifts of Acadia; while deep within the wild
monotony of desolation, on the icy verge of the great northern river,
the hand of Champlain upheld the fleur-de-lis on the rock of Quebec.
These were the advance guard, the forlorn hope of civilization,
messengers of promise to a desert continent. Yet, unconscious of their
high function, not content with inevitable woes, they were rent by petty
jealousies and miserable feuds; while each of these detached fragments
of rival nationalities, scarcely able to maintain its own wretched
existence on a few square miles, begrudged to the others the smallest
share in a domain which all the nations of Europe could hardly have
sufficed to fill.

One evening, as the forlorn tenants of Port Royal sat together
disconsolate, Biard was seized with a spirit of prophecy. He called upon
Biencourt to serve out the little of wine that remained,--a proposal
which met with high favor from the company present, though apparently
with none from the youthful Vice-Admiral. The wine was ordered, however,
and, as an unwonted cheer ran round the circle, the Jesuit announced
that an inward voice told him how, within a month, they should see
a ship from France. In truth, they saw one within a week. On the
twentythird of January, 1612, arrived a small vessel laden with a
moderate store of provisions a