les with provisions, furniture, goods,
and munitions for Port Royal, descended the rivers Aube and Seine, and
reached Dieppe safely with his charge. Here his ship was awaiting him;
and on the twenty-sixth of February he set sail, giving the slip to the
indignant Jesuit at Bordeaux.

The tedium of a long passage was unpleasantly broken by a mutiny among
the crew. It was suppressed, however, and Poutrincourt entered at length
the familiar basin of Port Royal. The buildings were still standing,
whole and sound save a partial falling in of the roofs. Even furniture
was found untouched in the deserted chambers. The centenarian Membertou
was still alive, his leathern, wrinkled visage beaming with welcome.

Pontrincourt set himself without delay to the task of Christianizing New
France, in an access of zeal which his desire of proving that Jesuit
aid was superfluous may be supposed largely to have reinforced. He had a
priest with him, one La Fleche, whom he urged to the pious work. No
time was lost. Membertou first was catechised, confessed his sins, and
renounced the Devil, whom we are told he had faithfully served during a
hundred and ten years. His squaws, his children, his grandchildren, and
his entire clan were next won over. It was in June, the day of St.
John the Baptist, when the naked proselytes, twenty-one in number,
were gathered on the shore at Port Royal. Here was the priest in the
vestments of his office; here were gentlemen in gay attire, soldiers,
laborers, lackeys, all the infant colony. The converts kneeled; the
sacred rite was finished, Te Deum was sung, and the roar of cannon
proclaimed this triumph over the powers of darkness. Membertou was named
Henri, after the King; his principal squaw, Marie, after the Queen. One
of his sons received the name of the Pope, another that of the Dauphin;
his daughter was called Marguerite, after the divorced Marguerite de
Valois, and, in like manner, the rest of the squalid company exchanged
their barbaric appellatives for the names of princes, nobles, and ladies
of rank.

The fame of this chef-d'aeuvre of Christian piety, as Lescarbot
gravely calls it, spread far and wide through the forest, whose
denizens,--partly out of a notion that the rite would bring good luck,
partly to please the French, and partly to share in the good cheer with
which the apostolic efforts of Father La Fleche had been sagaciously
seconded--came flocking to enroll themselves under the banners of