United States or El Salvador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was noon on the twenty-seventh when the "Jonas" passed the rocky gateway of Port Royal Basin, and Lescarbot gazed with delight and wonder on the calm expanse of sunny waters, with its amphitheatre of woody hills, wherein he saw the future asylum of distressed merit and impoverished industry.
One member of the little community of Frenchmen was Lescarbot, a lawyer, who was talented, poetical, and did much to enliven the others during the absence of their leader, who, on his return, was received by a procession of masqueraders, headed by Neptune and tritons, reciting verses written by Lescarbot.
It is reserved for Lescarbot to give us the picture which no one can forget the Atoctegic, or ruler of the feast, leading the procession to dinner 'napkin on shoulder, wand of office in hand, and around his neck the collar of the Order, which was worth more than four crowns; after him all the members of the Order, carrying each a dish. Around stand the savages, twenty or thirty of them, 'men, women, girls, and children, all waiting for scraps of food.
For us it is the more needful to lay stress upon the merits of Lescarbot, because he tends to be eclipsed by the greater reputation of Champlain, and also because his style is sometimes so diffuse as to create prejudice. But at his best he is admirable, and without him we should know much less than we do about that Acadian experience which holds such a striking place in the career of Champlain.
Beneath the arms of de Monts was placed this inscription: Dabit Deus his quoque finem. The arms of Poutrincourt were wreathed with crowns of leaves, with his motto: In via virtuti nulla est via. Lescarbot had composed a short drama for the occasion, entitled, Le Théâtre de Neptune. The winter of 1606-07 was not very severe.
These wise words of Lescarbot, in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, might have been used by Valdivia, so exactly do they correspond with and express his sentiments.
Or rather, there are times when his Doric simplicity of style seems jejune beside the flowing periods and picturesque details of Lescarbot. No better illustration of this difference in style, arising from fundamental difference in temperament, can be found than the description which each gives of the Ordre de Bon Temps.
Rochelle was the centre and citadel of Calvinism, a town of austere and grim aspect, divided, like Cisatlantic communities of later growth, betwixt trade and religion, and, in the interest of both, exacting a deportment of discreet and well-ordered sobriety. "One must walk a strait path here," says Lescarbot, "unless he would hear from the mayor or the ministers."
"He turned him back, 'O master dear, We are but men misled; And thou hast sought a city here To find a grave instead. * "'No builded wonder of these lands My weary eyes shall see; A city never made with hands Alone awaiteth me." So Champlain, in 1604, could find no trace of it, and said that "no such marvel existed," while Mark Lescarbot, the Parisian advocate, writing in 1609, says, "If this beautiful town ever existed in nature, I would like to know who pulled it down, for there is nothing here but huts made of pickets and covered with the barks of trees or skins."
In fact, he belongs to the small and distinguished class of those who have recorded their own discoveries in a suitable and authentic narrative, for in few cases have geographical results of equal moment been described by the discoverer himself. Among the many writings which are available for comparison and contrast one turns, singularly yet inevitably, to Lescarbot.
Word Of The Day