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Biencourt, partially at least, rebuilt Port Royal; while winter after winter the smoke of fur traders' huts curled into the still, sharp air of these frosty wilds, till at length, with happier auspices, plans of settlement were resumed. Rude hands strangled the "Northern Paraguay" in its birth.
Biencourt and his companions appear to have had some accessions to their number during the years that followed the Virginian's visit. They built rude cabins on the banks of the Annapolis, and cultivated patches of ground after a fashion, beside raising a fort of logs and earth near Cape Sable, called indifferently Fort Louis or Lomeron.
It was learned that their captains were not there but had gone away up the river three days before, and no one knew when they would return. Meanwhile Father Biard went away to prepare his altar and celebrate holy mass. After mass Sieur de Biencourt placed a guard at the door of the habitation and sentinels all around it. The Malouins were very much astonished at this way of doing things.
And its occupants, young Biencourt and a handful of companions, were forced to take to a wandering life among the Indians. Twenty years passed before the French made another organized effort to colonize Acadia. The interval, however, was not without events which had a bearing on the later fortunes of the colony.
After the destruction of Port Royal, Charles de la Tour had followed young Biencourt into the forest, and had lived with him the nomadic life of the Indians. Later, the elder La Tour established himself for trade at the mouth of the Penobscot, but he was driven away from this post by a party from the English colony at Plymouth.
And with him sailed in 1604 Jean de Biencourt, Seigneur de Poutrincourt, whose ancestors had been illustrious in Picardy for five hundred years. Champlain made a third, joining the expedition as geographer rather than shipmaster. Lescarbot and Hebert came two years later. The company left Havre in two ships on March 7, 1604, according to Champlain, or just a month later, according to Lescarbot.
Louis Hébert, the son of a Parisian apothecary, followed the profession of his father in Canada. He first tried to establish himself at Port Royal, where we find him in the year 1606. He left Port Royal in 1607, but he appears to have returned there, as in the year 1613 he is mentioned as acting as lieutenant in the place of Biencourt, son of Poutrincourt.
Young Biencourt was his best interpreter, and on common occasions served him well; but the moment that religion was in question he was, as it were, stricken dumb, the reason being that the language was totally without abstract terms. Biard resolutely set himself to the study of it, a hard and thorny path, on which he made small progress, and often went astray.
The colony thus formed at Port Royal in the summer of 1605 the first agricultural settlement of Europeans on soil which is now Canadian had a broken existence of eight years. Owing to intrigues at the French court, De Monts lost his charter in 1607 and the colony was temporarily abandoned; but it was re-established in 1610 by Poutrincourt and his son Charles de Biencourt.
Biencourt and la Tour such was their poverty were compelled to live after the Indian fashion, roaming through the woods from place to place. In this rude life la Tour acquired an extensive knowledge of the country and its resources, and in all probability became familiar with the St. John river region. Biencourt at his death left him all his property in Acadia.
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