ould in defense,
while the other ran down to the shore. When they saw the French flag at
the mast-head the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.

All was now eager life and activity. Poutrincourt sent out a boat to
explore the coast, which met the two little ships of Pontgrave and
Champlain and told the great news. Lescarbot, exploring the meadows
under the guidance of some of Membertou's people, saw moose with their
young feeding peacefully upon the lush grass, and beavers building their
curious habitations in a swamp. Pontgrave took his departure for France
in the _Jonas_, and Champlain and Poutrincourt began making plans.

The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than the terrible first
winter of the settlement, on the St. Croix, but the two leaders decided
to take one of the ramshackle little ships and make another exploring
voyage along the coast, to see whether some more comfortable site for
the colony could not be found. There was plenty of leeway to the
southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south
as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been
accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.

Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had
already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting
it. The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the
quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the
arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a
path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion
matched it, mounting the four cannon. The storehouses for ammunition and
provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men's
quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men
of the company, who now numbered fifteen. Lescarbot set some of the men
to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others
broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and
he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.

"Do not overtask yourself," warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the
thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn
among his neatly-arranged plots. "If you are too zealous you may never
see France again." Lescarbot laughed and dug a little grave in his
plantation. "What in heaven's name are those?"

"Potatoes," answered the lawyer-gardener. "The Peruvian r