"Jean de Biencourt, Baron de Poutrincourt, a gentleman of Picardy, a brave chevalier, had carried arms against Henry IV. in the ranks of the Catholics, during the wars of the League. Lescarbot tells how 'The king, holding him besieged in his castle of Beaumont, wished to give him the dukedom of this place in order to attach him to his service.' Poutrincourt refused. But, when the king had abjured his faith, he served this prince loyally and followed him to battle, where he accumulated more honor than fortune. In 1603, he lived in retirement with his wife, Jeanne de Salazar, and his children, in his barony of Saint-Just, in Champagne, struggling painfully against the difficulties of an embarrassed situation, and striving to improve the tillage and crops of his little domain. It was here that De Monts, his former companion in arms, found him. He knew his courage, his intelligence, and his activity, and did not doubt that a voyage to Canada and an agricultural colony in these distant lands, so fertile and primeval, would appeal to his ardent soul. Poutrincourt, in fact, received with enthusiasm the plan of his old friend; however, before binding himself definitely, he wished to find out, on his own account, something about the state of the country, and for this purpose to make a trial voyage."—Rochemonteix's Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1896), vol. i., p. 11.
Pleased with Annapolis harbor, Poutrincourt decided to settle there with his family, and De Monts gave him a grant of the place. In 1606, Poutrincourt made a second voyage to Port Royal, exploring the coast with Champlain and Lescarbot. After the abandonment of the colony (1607), he went to France, returning to Acadia in 1610, inspired with zeal to convert the savages, but without the aid of the Jesuits. See Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World (ed. 1885, which will hereafter be cited, unless otherwise noted), pp. 244-322; also Shea's ed. of Charlevoix's History of New France, vol. i., p. 260. By the destruction of Port Royal in 1613, he was the heaviest loser—the total loss to the French, according to Charlevoix, being a hundred thousand crowns. In 1614, Poutrincourt visited the ruins of Port Royal for the last time, thence returning to France to engage in the service of the king. He was fatally wounded by a treacherous shot after the taking of Méry (1615). Baird (Hug. Emig., vol. i., p. 94), says: "This nobleman, if nominally a Roman Catholic, appears to have been in full sympathy with his Huguenot associates, De Monts and Lescarbot. His hatred of the Jesuits was undisguised." Lescarbot's account of Poutrincourt's dispute with them differs essentially from that given by Biard, post.
[3.] (p. [55])—Marc Lescarbot (or L'Escarbot), parliamentary advocate, was born at Vervins, France, between 1570 and 1580. He was more given to literature than to law, and appears to have been a man of judgment, tact, and intelligence. He spent the winter of 1606-07 at Port Royal, which Slafter (Prince Soc. ed. of Voyages of Samuel Champlain, vol. ii., p. 22, note 56) locates "on the north side of the bay [Annapolis Basin] in the present town of Lower Granville; not, as often alleged, at Annapolis." See Bourinot's "Some Old Forts by the Sea," in Trans. Royal Society of Canada, sec. ii, pp. 72-74, for description of Port Royal, which he places on the site of the present Annapolis. In the spring of 1607, Lescarbot explored the coast between the harbor of St. John, N. B., and the River St. Croix. On the abandonment of De Monts' colony, the same year, he returned to France, where he wrote much on Acadia and in praise of Poutrincourt. Larousse gives the date of his death as 1630. Parkman's Pioneers, pp. 258 et seq., gives a lively account of Lescarbot's winter at the colony. Abbé Faillon, in Histoire de la Colonie Française en Canada (Montreal, 1865), vol. i, p. 91, says he has given us the best accounts extant (in the present document, his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1609, and his Les Muses de la Nouvelle France, 1618) of the enterprises of De Monts and Poutrincourt; and that while a Catholic in name, he was a Huguenot at heart.
[4.] (p. [57])—Clameur de Haro, Chartre Normand, an expression used in all the privileges or licenses granted by the king to booksellers. The latter phrase refers to a deed containing numerous privileges or concessions, accorded to the inhabitants of Normandy by Louis X., Mar. 19, 1313, and repeatedly confirmed afterward. Haro is supposed to be derived from, Ha Rou! or Ha Rollo! Hence an appeal to Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy.
[5.] (p. [59])—The first attempt of the Huguenots to establish a colony in America was at Rio Janeiro, under Villegagnon (1555). A reinforcement was sent thither in 1557, and among its Calvinist preachers was Jean de Léri, the historian of the disastrous undertaking. See his Historia Navigationis in Brasiliam (1586), quoted in Parkman's Pioneers, p. 28.
[6.] (p. [61])—The St. Lawrence; so named by Cartier (1535), but frequently called "The Great River," "The River of the Great Bay," etc., by early annalists. In the account of his second voyage, Cartier styles it le grand fleuve de Hochelaga. See Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. iv., p. 163; also his Cartier to Frontenac, p. 28.
[7.] (p. [61])—Concerning early European acquaintance with American Indians:
"In the yeere 1153 ... it is written, that there came to Lubec, a citie of Germanie, one Canoa with certaine Indians, like vnto a long barge: which seemed to haue come from the coast of Baccalaos, which standeth in the same latitude that Germanie doth." (Antoine Galvano, in Goldsmid's ed. of Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. xvi., p. 293.)
Harrisse (Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, no. 71) cites the Chronicon of Eusebius (Paris, 1512) as having, "under the date 1509, a notice saying that there had been brought to Rouen seven Savages from North America."
The Indians of Newfoundland, when first discovered by the French, called codfish bacalos, which Lescarbot and other early French writers say is identical with the Basque word for codfish. Many evidences led Cartier, upon his first voyage (1534), to believe that the natives had had previous intercourse with Europeans.