[41] Letter from Father Pierre Biard, to the Very Reverend Father Claude Aquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus.
(Translated from the Latin original.)
Port Royal, June 11, 1611.
My Very Reverend Father,
The peace of Christ be with you.
After four months of very painful and perilous navigation, we have at last arrived, thanks to the protection of God and to the prayers of Your Reverence, at Port Royal, in New France, the end of our journey.
In truth we left Dieppe the 26th of January this year, 1611, and arrived May 22nd of this same year. I am giving to the Reverend Father Provincial the narrative in French of our whole undertaking, and of the condition in which we found things here. This seemed to me the more necessary and useful, as it was impossible for me to write it at the same time in Latin. I have not yet been settled a week in Port Royal, and all the time has [42] been taken up by continual interruptions and in providing the necessities of life. As to ourselves, Father Masse and I, we are feeling very well, thank God; but we have been obliged to take a servant to do the drudgery. We could not dispense with one without a great deal of anxiety and trouble.
M. de Potrincourt, who commands here in the name of the King, loves and esteems us in proportion to his piety.
We shall take the first opportunity to impart to you what may be, by the grace of God, our prospects of success in this country.
The ship has already gone. I shall be obliged to overtake it in a canoe, that it may not leave without my letters.
I conjure Your Reverence, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to remember us and these solitary lands, and to come to our aid in so far as you are able, not only by the fervent prayers of our Society, but also by the blessing and favor of our Holy Father the Pope (which I have already invoked). Surely we sow in great poverty and in tears; may the Lord grant that we some day reap in joy. Which will come to pass, as I hope and have said, [43] through the prayers and blessings of Your Reverence, which are humbly solicited by your
Unworthy son and servant,
Pierre BIARD, S. J.
Port Royal, New France, or Canada, June 11, 1611.
From Lescarbot's Histoire de la Novvelle France; Paris, 1612.
[Reduced to ⅔ the dimensions of original.]
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