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Exulting at their good fortune, Argall's men butchered or carried off the animals, ransacked the buildings, plundered them even to the locks and bolts of the doors, and then laid the whole in ashes; "and may it please the Lord," adds the pious Biard, "that the sins therein committed may likewise have been consumed in that burning."
"Now I could not describe to you," Biard goes on to say, "what a night this was; for it passed in continual alarms, gun shots and rash acts on the part of some of the men; so that it was feared with good reason that the prognostications seen in the heavens the night before would have their bloody fulfilment upon earth. I do not know that there was one who closed his eyes during the night.
One evening, as the forlorn tenants of Port Royal sat together disconsolate, Biard was seized with a spirit of prophecy. He called upon Biencourt to serve out the little of wine that remained, a proposal which met with high favor from the company present, though apparently with none from the youthful Vice-Admiral.
In the summer time, when the annual ships arrived from France, the Indians gathered in large numbers at the various trading posts. They came from far and near, and for several weeks indulged in feasting and revelry. Pierre Biard comments severely on their folly. He says: "They never stop gorging themselves excessively during several weeks.
Biard in his narrative terms them "the Malouins" or people of St. Malo. "We were still," he says, "one league and a half from the island when the twilight ended and night came on.
In the year 1611 Biard described them as so few in number that they might be said to roam over rather than to possess the country. He estimated the Maliseets, or Etchemins, as less than a thousand in number "scattered over wide spaces, as is natural for those who live by hunting and fishing."
In 1611 two Jesuit priests, Biard and Masse, came over, under the patronage of Madame de Guercheville, and in 1613 they planted a Jesuit station at Mount Desert Island, on the coast of Maine. Champlain did not return to Port Royal, but was employed in another direction. In April, 1608, De Monts sent out Champlain and Pontgravé to establish a colony on the St.
But there was no gunner to obey, till Du Thet seized and applied the match. "The cannon made as much noise as the enemy's," writes Biard; but, as the inexperienced artillerist forgot to aim the piece, no other result ensued. Another storm of musketry, and Brother Gilbert du Thet rolled helpless on the deck. The French ship was mute.
Malo had a small settlement in the year 1611 probably the first European settlement within the confines of the province. It was here the Jesuit missionary, Father Biard, held the first religious service on the St. John river of which we have any record.
Biard visited the St. John River in October, 1611, and stayed a day or two at a small trading post on an island near Oak Point. One of the islands in that vicinity the early English settlers afterwards called "Isle of Vines," from the circumstance that wild grapes grew there in great profusion.
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