fed fires, shivering in the icy currents that pierced their rude
tenements, many sank into a desperate apathy.

Soon the scurvy broke out, and raged with a fearful malignity. Of the
seventy-nine, thirty-five died before spring, and many more were brought
to the verge of death. In vain they sought that marvellous tree which
had relieved the followers of Cartier. Their little cemetery was peopled
with nearly half their number, and the rest, bloated and disfigured with
the relentless malady, thought more of escaping from their woes than
of building up a Transatlantic empire. Yet among them there was one,
at least, who, amid languor and defection, held to his purpose with
indomitable tenacity; and where Champlain was present, there was no room
for despair.

Spring came at last, and, with the breaking up of the ice, the melting
of the snow, and the clamors of the returning wild-fowl, the spirits
and the health of the woe-begone company began to revive. But to misery
succeeded anxiety and suspense. Where was the succor from France? Were
they abandoned to their fate like the wretched exiles of La Roche? In
a happy hour, they saw an approaching sail. Pontgrave, with forty men,
cast anchor before their island on the sixteenth of June; and they
hailed him as the condemned hails the messenger of his pardon.

Weary of St. Croix, De Monts resolved to seek out a more auspicious
site, on which to rear the capital of his wilderness dominion. During
the preceding September, Champlain had ranged the westward coast in a
pinnace, visited and named the island of Mount Desert, and entered
the mouth of the river Penobscot, called by him the Pemetigoet, or
Pentegoet, and previously known to fur-traders and fishermen as the
Norembega, a name which it shared with all the adjacent region. [27]
Now, embarking a second time, in a bark of fifteen tons, with De Monts,
several gentlemen, twenty sailors, and an Indian with his squaw, he set
forth on the eighteenth of June on a second voyage of discovery. They
coasted the strangely indented shores of Maine, with its reefs and
surf-washed islands, rocky headlands, and deep embosomed bays, passed
Mount Desert and the Penobscot, explored the mouths of the Kennebec,
crossed Casco Bay, and descried the distant peaks of the White
Mountains. The ninth of July brought them to Saco Bay. They were now
within the limits of a group of tribes who were called by the French the
Armouchiquois, and who included those