satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.

[Footnote 18: Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
de Saint-Just, were his full titles.]

On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
(fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
and charter were _cancelled_ by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,[19]
and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
remarkable results.

[Footnote 19: You will observe that neither the French nor the English
sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
people pay.]

The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
the greatest possible quantity".

Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which