d'Orville, aided by the servants of the
latter, built a house for themselves nearly opposite that of De Monts;
and the remainder of the square was occupied by storehouses, a magazine,
workshops, lodgings for gentlemen and artisans, and a barrack for the
Swiss soldiers, the whole enclosed with a palisade. Adjacent there was
an attempt at a garden, under the auspices of Champlain; but nothing
would grow in the sandy soil. There was a cemetery, too, and a small
rustic chapel on a projecting point of rock. Such was the "Habitation
de l'Isle Saincte-Croix," as set forth by Champlain in quaint plans and
drawings, in that musty little quarto of 1613, sold by Jean Berjon, at
the sign of the Flying Horse, Rue St. Jean de Beauvais.

Their labors over, Poutrincourt set sail for France, proposing to
return and take possession of his domain of Port Royal. Seventy-nine
men remained at St. Croix. Here was De Monts, feudal lord of half
a continent in virtue of two potent syllables, "Henri," scrawled on
parchment by the rugged hand of the Bearnais. Here were gentlemen of
birth and breeding, Champlain, D'Orville, Beaumont, Sourin, La Motte,
Boulay, and Fougeray; here also were the pugnacious cure and his fellow
priests, with the Hugnenot ministers, objects of their unceasing ire.
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. From the Spanish settlements
northward to the pole, there was no domestic hearth, no lodgement of
civilized men, save one weak band of Frenchmen, clinging, as it were
for life, to the fringe of the vast and savage continent. The gray and
sullen autumn sank upon the waste, and the bleak wind howled down the
St. Croix, and swept the forest bare. Then the whirling snow powdered
the vast sweep of desolate woodland, and shrouded in white the gloomy
green of pine-clad mountains. Ice in sheets, or broken masses, swept
by their island with the ebbing and flowing tide, often debarring all
access to the main, and cutting off their supplies of wood and water. A
belt of cedars, indeed, hedged the island; but De Monts had ordered them
to be spared, that the north wind might spend something of its force
with whistling through their shaggy boughs. Cider and wine froze in the
casks, and were served out by the pound. As they crowded round their
half-