[420] Histoire de la Nouvelle France, contenant les navigations, découvertes, et habitations faits par les Francois és Indes Occidentales & Nouvelle France souz l’avoeu & l’authorité de noz Rois Tres Chrétiens, et les diverses fortunes d’iceux en l’execution de ces choses, depuis cent ans jusques à hui. En quoy est comprise l’Histoire Morale, Naturelle & Geographique de la dite province. Avec les Tables & Figures a’icelle. Par Marc Lescarbot, Avocat en Parlement, Temoin oculaire d’vne partie des choses ici recitées. A Paris, chez Jean Milot, tenant sa boutique sur les degrez de la grand’ salle du Palais. 1609. 8vo. pp. 888.
[Lescarbot was in the country with De Monts, and again with Poutrincourt in 1606-7. Charlevoix calls his narrative “sincere, well-informed, sensible, and impartial.” The third book covers Cartier’s voyage; the fourth and fifth cover those of De Monts, Poutrincourt, Champlain, etc.; while the sixth is given to the natives. The first edition (1609) is very rare. Rich in 1832 priced it at £1 1s. Recent sales much exceed that sum: Bolton Corney, in 1871, £27; Leclerc, no. 749, 1,200 francs, and no. 2,836, 450 francs; Quaritch, £40; another London Catalogue, in 1878, £45. Cf. Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, nos. 16 and 17; Sabin’s Dictionary, no. 40,169; Ternaux-Compans, Bibl. Amér. no. 321; Faribault, pp. 86-87. There are copies in the Carter-Brown (Catalogue, ii. 87) and Murphy collections.
This edition, as well as the later ones, usually has bound with it a collection of Lescarbot’s verses, Les Muses de la Nouvelle France, and among them a commemorative poem on a battle between Membertou, a chief of the neighborhood, and the “Sauvages Armor-chiquois.”
The later editions of the history were successively enlarged; that of 1618 much extended, and of a different arrangement. The edition of 1611 is priced by Dufossé, 580 francs. There are copies in the Library of Congress, and in the Murphy and Carter-Brown (Catalogue, ii. 117) collections; cf. Harrisse, no. 23.
The edition of 1612 was the one selected by Tross, of Paris, in 1866, to reprint. There are copies in the Astor and Harvard College Libraries; cf. Harrisse, no. 25; Field’s Indian Bibliography, no. 917; Brinley Catalogue, no. 103. It seems to be the same as the 1611 edition, with the errata corrected.
The edition of 1618 contains, additionally, the second voyage of Poutrincourt; and entering into his dispute with the Jesuits, Lescarbot takes sides against the latter. This edition is severally priced by Leclerc, no. 2,837, at 850 francs; by Dufossé, at 950 francs. Rich had priced it in 1832 at £1 10s. There are copies in the Library of Congress and in the Carter-Brown (Catalogue, ii. 201) Collection; cf. Harrisse, no. 31; Field’s Indian Bibliography, no. 915. Some authorities report copy or copies with 1617 for the date.
It is somewhat doubtful if more maps than the general one and another appeared in the original 1609 edition; Sabin and the Huth Catalogue give three. In the 1611 edition there is reference in the text to three maps; but another map (Port Royal) is often found in it, and the 1618 edition has usually the four maps. The Huth Catalogue says that no map belonged to the English edition; the map found in the Grenville copy, as in the Massachusetts Historical Society copy, belonging to the French original. Sabin, however, gives it a map. The general map is reproduced in Tross’s reprint, in Faillon’s Colonie Française au Canada, and in the Popham Memorial; and a part of it in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 49. The Catalogue of the Library of Parliament (Canadian), 1858, p. 1614, shows two maps of the St. Lawrence River and gulf, copied from originals by Lescarbot in the Paris archives.
Among the other productions of Lescarbot is the La Conversion des Sauvages qui ont été baptistes dans la Nouvelle France cette anne 1610, avec un recit du Voyage du Sieur de Poutrincourt, which Sabin calls “probably the rarest of Lescarbot’s books;” cf. Harrisse, no. 21. Another tract, published in Paris in 1612—Relation derniere de ce qui c’est passe au voyage du Sieur de Poutrincourt en la Nouvelle France depuis vingt mois en ça, supplementing his larger work—has been reprinted in the Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France, vol. xv. In 1618 he printed a tract—Le Bout de l’an, sur le repos de la France, par le Franc Gaulois—addressed to Louis XIII., urging him to the conquest of the savages of the west; Sunderland Catalogue, no. 4,933, £10, 10s. It is translated in Poor’s Gorges in the Popham Memorial, p. 140.
Another nearly contemporary account of the De Monts expedition is found in Cayet’s Chronologie Septenaire 1609 (Sabin’s Dictionary, vol. iii. no. 11,627) a precursor of the Mercure Française, which for a long while chronicled the yearly events. Cf. an English version from the Mercure in Magazine of American History, ii. 49.
Lescarbot’s account of the natives may be supplemented by that in Biard’s Relation. Hannay (chap. ii.) and the other historians of Acadia treat this subject, and Father Vetromile, S. J., at one time a missionary among the present remnants of the western tribes of Acadia, prepared an account of their history, which was printed in the Maine Hist. Coll., vol. vii.; and in 1866 he issued the Abnakis and their History. He died in 1881, and his manuscript Dictionary of the Abenaki Dialects is now in the archives of the Department of the Interior at Washington; Proceedings of the Numismatic Society of Philadelphia, 1881, p. 33; cf. also Maurault, Histoire des Abênaquis. Williamson, History of Maine, vol. i. ch. xvii., etc., enlarges on the tribal varieties of the Indians of the western part of Acadia, and (p. 469) on the Etechemins, or those east of the Penobscot; and later (p. 478), on the Micmacs or Souriquois, who were farther east. Williamson’s references are useful.