This was an account of the settlement of De Monts in Acadia, which was translated into English by a Protestant clergyman named Pierre Erondelle, and which gives a very vivid picture of the life at Port Royal.[421] He appears to have been a man of more than ordinary ability, with not a little of the French vivacity, and altogether well suited to be a pioneer in Western civilization. His narrative covers only a brief period, and after the failure of the colony under De Monts, he ceased to have any relations with Acadia. He is supposed to have died about 1630.
The advent of the Jesuits in 1611 introduces the Relations of their order as a source of the first importance; but a detailed account of these documents belongs to another chapter.[422] From the first of the series, by Father Biard, and from his letters in Carayon’s Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada, a collection published in Paris in 1864, and drawn from the archives of the Order at Rome, we have the sufferers’ side of the story of Argall’s incursion; while from the English marauder’s letters, published in Purchas, vol. iv., we get the other side.[423]
PART OF LESCARBOT’S MAP, 1609.
There is a modern reproduction of Lescarbot’s entire map in Faillon, Colonie Française, i. 85.
ACADIE.
[This is a section of La Hontan’s map, Carte Generale de Canada, which appeared in his La Haye edition, 1709, vol. ii. p. 5; and was re-engraved in the Mémoires, vol. iii. Amsterdam, 1741. La Hontan was in the country from 1683 till after 1690. The double-dotted line indicates the southern limits of the French claim.—Ed.]