. People go there to be cured of colic."

Helene drew a long breath. She did not believe that Lescarbot had found
that story in any book of legends of the saints, but she liked it none
the worse for that.

"I wonder if Sainte Marthe blessed this garden?" she said.

"I have no doubt she did, and that is why it flourishes from Easter to
Michaelmas. But I came to-day for a potato. Sieur de Monts desires to
see one and to understand the method of its cultivation."

"Oh, I know that," cried Helene, eagerly, and she took one of the queer
brown roots from the willow basket by the wall. "See, these are its
eyes, one, two, three--seven eyes in this one. You must cut it in
pieces, as many pieces as it has eyes, and plant each piece separately;
and from each eye springs a plant."

"Ah!" said Lescarbot gravely, and he put the potato in his wallet.

For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and the valiant gentlemen
Samuel de Champlain, Bienville de Poutrincourt, and others of his
company, had been striving to maintain a settlement in the grant of La
Cadie or L'Acadie, between the fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north
latitude in the New World, of which the King had made De Monts
Lieutenant-General. De Monts engaged Champlain, who had already
explored those coasts, as chief geographer, and the merchant Pontgrave
was in charge of a store-ship laden with supplies. Fearing the severe
winter of the St. Lawrence, the party steered south along the coast and
anchored in a tranquil and beautiful harbor surrounded with forest,
green lowlands, and hills laced with waterfalls. In his delight with the
place Poutrincourt declared that he would ask nothing better than to
make it his home; and he received a grant of the harbor, which he named
Port Royal. The expedition finally came to rest on an island in a river
flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay, where they began their settlement. Their
wooden buildings--a house for their viceroy, one for Champlain and other
gentlemen, barracks, lodgings, workshops and storehouses,--surrounded a
square in the middle of which one fine cedar was left standing, while a
belt of them remained to hedge the island from the north winds. The work
done, Poutrincourt set sail for France, leaving seventy-nine men to
spend the winter at Ile Sainte-Croix. Scurvy broke out, and before
spring almost half the company were in their graves. Spring came, but no
help from France. It was June 16 before Poutrincourt returned