ossession of their empire
beyond sea. Contributions were asked, and not in vain; for the sagacious
fathers, mindful of every spring of influence, had deeply studied the
mazes of feminine psychology, and then, as now, were favorite confessors
of the fair. It was on the twelfth of March, 1613, that the "Mayflower"
of the Jesuits sailed from Honfleur for the shores of New England. She
was the "Jonas," formerly in the service of De Monts, a small craft
bearing forty-eight sailors and colonists, including two Jesuits, Father
Quentin and Brother Du Thet. She carried horses, too, and goats, and was
abundantly stored with all things needful by the pious munificence
of her patrons. A courtier named La Saussaye was chief of the colony,
Captain Charles Fleury commanded the ship, and, as she winged her way
across the Atlantic, benedictions hovered over her from lordly halls and
perfumed chambers.

On the sixteenth of May, La Saussaye touched at La Heve, where he
heard mass, planted a cross, and displayed the scutcheon of Madame de
Guercheville. Thence, passing on to Port Royal, he found Biard, Masse,
their servant-boy, an apothecary, and one man beside. Biencourt and
his followers were scattered about the woods and shores, digging the
tuberous roots called ground-nuts, catching alewives in the brooks, and
by similar expedients sustaining their miserable existence. Taking the
two Jesuits on board, the voyagers steered for the Penobscot. A fog rose
upon the sea. They sailed to and fro, groping their way in blindness,
straining their eyes through the mist, and trembling each instant lest
they should descry the black outline of some deadly reef and the ghostly
death-dance of the breakers, But Heaven heard their prayers. At night
they could see the stars. The sun rose resplendent on a laughing sea,
and his morning beams streamed fair and full on the wild heights of the
island of Mount Desert. They entered a bay that stretched inland between
iron-bound shores, and gave it the name of St. Sauveur. It is now called
Frenchman's Bay. They saw a coast-line of weather-beaten crags set thick
with spruce and fir, the surf-washed cliffs of Great Head and Schooner
Head, the rocky front of Newport Mountain, patched with ragged woods,
the arid domes of Dry Mountain and Green Mountain, the round bristly
backs of the Porcupine Islands, and the waving outline of the
Gouldsborough Hills.

La Saussaye cast anchor not far from Schooner Head, and here he