"You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes," said she; and at her direction Lescarbot took up very carefully small rose-shoots that had rooted themselves around the great bushes,—bushes that bore roses white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy heart, pure snow-white, sunrise pink and deep glowing crimson with a purple shade.
If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might have been inclined to gloom during his first sea-voyage, for the ship in which he and Poutrincourt set sail from Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was called the Jonas. But instead he joined in all the diversions possible in their two months' voyage—harpooning porpoises, fishing for cod off the Banks, or dancing on the deck in calm weather,—and in his leisure kept a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure. They ran into dense fog in which they could see nothing; they saw, when the mist cleared, a green and lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous rocks on which the breakers pounded. Then a storm broke, with rolling thunder like a salute of cannon. At last on July 27 they sailed into the narrow channel at the entrance of the harbor of Port Royal.
The flag of France, with its golden lilies on a white ground, gleamed in the noon sunlight as they came up the bay toward the little group of wooden buildings in the edge of the forest. Not a man was to be seen on the silent shore; a birch canoe, with one old Indian in it, hovered near the landing. A great fear gripped the hearts of Bienville de Poutrincourt and Marc Lescarbot. Were Pontgravé and Champlain all dead with their people? Had help come too late?
Then from the bastion of the rude fortifications a cannon barked salute, and a Frenchman with a gun in his hand came running down to the beach. The ship's guns returned the salute, and the trumpets sang loud greeting to whoever might be there to hear.
When they had landed they learned what had happened. There were only two Frenchmen in the fort; Pontgravé and the others, fearing that the supply ship would never arrive, had gone twelve days before in two small ships of their own building to look for some of the French fishing fleet who might have provisions. The two who remained had volunteered to stay and guard the buildings and stores. There was a village of friendly Indians near by, and the chief, Membertou, who was more than a hundred years old, had seen the distant sail of the Jonas and come to warn the white men, who were at dinner. Not knowing whether the strange ship came in peace or war, one of the comrades had gone to the platform on which the cannon were mounted, and stood ready to do what he could in defense, while the other ran down to the shore. When they saw the French flag at the mast-head the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.
All was now eager life and activity. Poutrincourt sent out a boat to explore the coast, which met the two little ships of Pontgravé and Champlain and told the great news. Lescarbot, exploring the meadows under the guidance of some of Membertou's people, saw moose with their young feeding peacefully upon the lush grass, and beavers building their curious habitations in a swamp. Pontgravé took his departure for France in the Jonas, and Champlain and Poutrincourt began making plans.
The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than the terrible first winter of the settlement, on the St. Croix, but the two leaders decided to take one of the ramshackle little ships and make another exploring voyage along the coast, to see whether some more comfortable site for the colony could not be found. There was plenty of leeway to the southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.
Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting it. The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion matched it, mounting the four cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men's quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men of the company, who now numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.
"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn among his neatly-arranged plots. "If you are too zealous you may never see France again." Lescarbot laughed and dug a little grave in his plantation. "What in heaven's name are those?"
"Potatoes," answered the lawyer-gardener. "The Peruvian root they are planting in Ireland."