ved by the pound. We were
obliged to use very bad water and drink melted snow, as there were no
springs or brooks.' It was impossible to keep warm or to sleep
soundly. The food was salt meat and vegetables, which impaired the
strength of every one and brought on scurvy. It is unnecessary to cite
here Champlain's detailed and graphic description of this dreadful
disease. The results are enough. Before the spring came two-fifths of
the colonists had died, and of those who remained half were on the
point of death. Not unnaturally, 'all this produced discontent in
Sieur de Monts and others of the settlement.'

The survivors of the horrible winter at St Croix were not freed from
anxiety until June 15, 1605, when Pontgrave, six weeks late, arrived
with fresh stores. Had De Monts been faint-hearted, he doubtless would
have seized this opportunity to return to France. As it was, he set
out in search of a place more suitable than St Croix for the
establishment of his colony. On June 18, with a party {38} which
included twenty sailors and several gentlemen, he and Champlain began a
fresh voyage to the south-west. Their destination was the country of
the Armouchiquois, an Algonquin tribe who then inhabited Massachusetts.

Champlain's story of his first voyage from Acadia to Cape Cod is given
with considerable fulness. The topography of the seaboard and its
natural history, the habits of the Indians and his adventures with
them, were all new subjects at the time, and he treats them so that
they keep their freshness. He is at no pains to conceal his low
opinion of the coast savages. Concerning the Acadian Micmacs he says
little, but what he does say is chiefly a comment upon the wretchedness
of their life during the winter. As he went farther south he found an
improvement in the food supply. At the mouth of the Saco he and De
Monts saw well-kept patches of Indian corn three feet high, although it
was not yet midsummer. Growing with the corn were beans, pumpkins, and
squashes, all in flower; and the cultivation of tobacco is also noted.
Here the savages formed a permanent settlement and lived within a
palisade. Still farther south, in the neighbourhood of Cape Cod, {39}
Champlain found maize five and a half feet high, a considerable variety
of squashes, tobacco, and edible roots which tasted like artichokes.

But whether the coast Indians were Micmacs or Armouchiquois, whether
they were starving or well fed, Champ