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For the present it is enough to note that both men sat at Poutrincourt's table and adorned the Order of Good Cheer. Meanwhile De Monts was in France, striving with all the foes of the monopoly. Thanks to the fur trade, his company had paid its way during the first two years, despite the losses at St Croix.
Since Poutrincourt's day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees, and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such a gray sky as we saw. The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy of Acadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentiment is the one thing to be shunned in these days.
That is to say, both were in Acadia at the same time, sat together at Poutrincourt's table, gazed on the same forests and clearings, met the same Indians, and had a like opportunity of considering the colonial problems which were thrust upon the French in the reign of Henry IV. It would be hard to find narratives more dissimilar, and the contrast is not wholly to the advantage of Champlain.
Unlike the Micmacs, the Armouchiquois were 'not so much hunters as good fishermen and tillers of the land. Their numbers also were greater; in fact, Champlain speaks of seeing five or six hundred together. At first they did not interfere with Poutrincourt's movements, even permitting him to roam their land with a body of arquebusiers.
Of wine, in particular, the supply was so generous, that every man in Port Royal was served with three pints daily. The principal persons of the colony sat, fifteen in number, at Poutrincourt's table, which, by an ingenious device of Champlain, was always well furnished. He formed the fifteen into a new order, christened "L'Ordre de Bon-Temps."
After tarrying at Gloucester two or three days Poutrincourt reached Cape Cod on October 2, and on the 20th he stood off Martha's Vineyard, his farthest point. Champlain's chronicle of this voyage contains more detail regarding the Indians than will be found in any other part of his Acadian narratives. Chief among Poutrincourt's adventures was an encounter with the natives of Cape Cod.
Thus did Poutrincourt's table groan beneath all the luxuries of the winter forest, flesh of moose, caribou, and deer, beaver, otter, and hare, bears and wild-cats; with ducks, geese, grouse, and plover; sturgeon, too, and trout, and fish innumerable, speared through the ice of the Equille, or drawn from the depths of the neighboring bay.
The rest were laborers, artisans, and soldiers, all in the pay of the company, and some of them forced into its service. Poutrincourt's receding sails vanished between the water and the sky. The exiles were left to their solitude.
But, finding none which they deemed suitable, they decided to tempt fortune at Poutrincourt's domain of Port Royal. Thither, then, in August the colonists moved, carrying their implements and stores across the Bay of Fundy, and landing on the north side of the Annapolis Basin, opposite Goat Island, where the village of Lower Granville now stands.
"They say" that an aged sachem, when dying, asked if he should have pies in heaven as good as those which he had eaten at Poutrincourt's table! To the Indians, the greatest delicacy of all on the table was bread.
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