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When I tell him that you are a patient of mine, and that I should be obliged if he would find you some quiet lodging at Honfleur, where you can remain till your arm is better and you are fit to be about again, I have no doubt he will manage it. He is a good fellow, and I shall let him understand that you don't want inquiries made about you.
The source of the Seine is to be found near the hamlet of Envergeraux, and about two leagues and half from the village of Saint-Seine, in Burgundy. After a course of more than 200 leagues from east to west, it falls into the Ocean, between Havre and Honfleur . The depth of the Seine at Rouen allows this town to be classed amongst the principal ports of France.
In the closing years of the sixteenth century the spirit of French expansion, which had remained so strangely inactive for nearly three generations, once again began to manifest itself. The Sieur de La Roche, another Breton nobleman, the merchant traders, Pontgravé of St. Malo and Chauvin of Honfleur, came forward one after the other with plans for colonizing the unknown land.
Few people realize that 'ocean records' are a very old affair, even in Canada, where they begin with Champlain's voyage of eighteen days from Honfleur to Tadoussac and end with King George V's sixty-seven hours from land to land, when he speeded home in H.M.S. Indomitable from Champlain's tercentenary at Quebec in 1908, handling his shovel in the stokehole by the way.
At the right, close to the wharves, below the wooded heights, there loomed out a quaint and curious gateway flanked by two watchtowers, grim reminders of the Honfleur of the great days. And above and about the whole, encompassing villa-crowded hills and closely packed streets, and the forest of masts trembling against the sky, there lay a heaven of spring and summer.
Soldiers, emigrants, and sailors, two hundred and ninety in all, were embarked in three vessels; and, to the sound of cannon, drums, fifes, and trumpets, they unfurled their sails at Honfleur. They were no sooner on the high seas than the piratical character of the Norman sailors, in no way exceptional at that day, began to declare itself.
Immediately following the failure of La Roche's second expedition, Pierre Chauvin of Honfleur secured a monopoly which covered the Laurentian fur trade for ten years. The condition was that he should convey to Canada fifty colonists a year throughout the full period of his grant. So far from carrying out this agreement either in spirit or letter, he shirked it without compunction.
Champlain embarked at Honfleur with eleven artisans for Quebec, on March 7th, 1610. The rough weather experienced during the first days of the voyage rendered it necessary for the vessel to run into Portland, on the English coast, and later to seek refuge in the harbour of the Isle of Wight.
He also speaks of the birds, beasts, fishes, and other curious animals unknown in Christendom, of which Master Nicole le Fevre, of Honfleur, who was a volunteer in the voyage, had taken exact draughts.
The vessel left Honfleur on April 8th, and reached Tadousac on the 26th of the same month; which was one of the shortest passages ever made up to that time. "There were vessels," says Champlain, "which had arrived on the 18th of the month, a thing which had not been seen for more than sixty years, as the old mariners said who sail regularly to this country."
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