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On Cartier's return to Stadacona he found that his officers had become suspicious of the intentions of the Indians and had raised a rude fort near the junction of the river of St. Croix and the little stream called the Lairet. Here the French passed a long and dreary winter, doubtful of the friendship of the Indians, and suffering from the intense cold to which they were unaccustomed.
Mention has been made of the temporary residence in the convent of the Récollets, and of a building which was erected for themselves at about two hundred feet from the shore, near the junction of the river Lairet and the river St. Charles. The Jesuits received a concession of this land which was bounded on the west by a stream called St. Michel, and the river St. Mary or Beauport on the east.
Amelie had risen from pleasant dreams. The tender flush of yesterday's walk on the banks of the Lairet lingered on her cheek all night long, like the rosy tint of a midsummer's sunset. The loving words of Pierre floated through her memory like a strain of divine music, with the sweet accompaniment of her own modest confessions of love, which she had so frankly expressed.
They abandoned the little Hermine, as the crew had been so weakened by sickness and death. In the vicinity of the fort, at the meeting of the St. Croix and Lairet, Cartier raised a cross, thirty-five feet in height under the cross-bar of which there was a wooden shield, showing the arms of France and the inscription
They had seldom met save in the presence of others, and except for a few chance but blissful moments, Pierre had not been favored with the company all to himself of his betrothed. Amelie was not unmindful of that when she gave a willing consent to-day to walk with him along the banks of the Lairet, under the shady elms, birches, and old thorns that overhung the path by the little stream.
They were, however, received by the Recollets, who had removed to a convent, Notre-Dame des Anges, which they had built by the St. Charles, of sufficient strength to resist an attack which, it is reported on sufficiently good authority, the Iroquois made in 1622. The first Jesuit establishment was built in 1625 on the point at the meeting of the Lairet and St.
Cartier appears again in July, 1536, before the ramparts of St. Malo with two of his vessels. The savages on the St. Charles, at the mouth of the rivulet known as the Lairet. These precious relics were found buried under five feet of mud, and were divided into two portions, one of which was placed in the museum of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, and destroyed by fire in 1854.
The pastoral Lairet was seen mingling its waters with the St. Charles in a little bay that preserves the name of Jacques Cartier, who with his hardy companions spent their first winter in Canada on this spot, the guests of the hospitable Donacana, lord of Quebec and of all the lands seen from its lofty cape.
Pierre and Amelie had been tempted by the beauty of the Indian summer to dismount and send their horses forward to the city in charge of a servant while they walked home by way of the fields to gather the last flowers of autumn, which Amelie said lingered longest in the deep swales of the Lairet.
It was situated near the entrance of the river Lairet, about two hundred paces from the shore. We shall meet them there a little later, working hard, in common with the Récollets with whom they were good friends, for the civilization of the Indians.
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