128 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



importance as settling a iiuostion as to the concluding years of one, who 

 liorc a part of some interest in the lirst attempted settlement on the 

 shores of the northern parts of America, and thus throwing a little light 

 on part of the histoiy itself. That is Charles de Biencourt. He was the 

 second son of the Sieur de Poutrincourt who had come in the first ex- 

 pedition under De Monts for the settlement of Acadia in 1G05, and who 

 subsefpiently obtained a seigneury at Port Eoyal and took an active pai't 

 in the establishing and advancing the infant colony there. The eldest 

 son must have died young, for we find Charles assuming his father's title 

 after the latter's death, and he uses it in the above document. He is 

 generally said to have come to Port Ro^'al in 1(510, but Champlain writ- 

 ing in 1(!24, says he liad been eighteen years in Acadia, according to 

 which he must have come with the first colony in 1605. At all events 

 I he lather returned to France in Kill; leaving Charles in command at 

 I'orl lioyal. M. Suite (Tran.sactions of Royal Society, 11 (1) 33) asserts 

 that the former was married in lâîtO. so that his second son could not at 

 thi> lime have been nu^re than eighteen years of- age. But another 

 ilocument to be referred to presently, described him as born in 1583. 

 which would make him at this time about twenty-eight. This we deem 

 more likely. At all events his father never returned, having been killed 

 in 1»m'5, in the service of the King of France at the siege of Mery-sur- 

 Soinc, and the settlers were left to maintain themselves as best they 

 might. In the year l(il3 came the raid of Argall, by which it was 

 supposed that the settlement was wiped out of existence. Biencourt and 

 a few Frenchmen however continued to occupy the ground, and on the 

 1st September, I(!l8. he writes to tlie authorities of the City of Paris, a 

 patriotic and earnest letter urging them to .send out colonists and to 

 adopt other measures for the advancement of French colonization and 

 the Christian religion in these regions. This is the last definite infor- 

 mation we have hitherto had of him. It has been supposed that he 

 continued at Port Hoj'al till his death and this is a.sserted by bcveral 

 writers. M. Suite in the article already (quoted, says that he died at Port 

 Royal in 1(!23. posioned acc(jrding to report. 



This is now |»rove<l to be incorrect. We have here a receipt signed 

 by him and dated hecember. I(i21. for three thousand livres, being his 

 salary iis director of the Koyal Academy of Paris. Champlain indeed 

 speaks of him in ](i:i4 as having lived in Acadia for eighteen years, as if he 

 were still there, liut as he had been away from that province for years 

 he might naturally be unaware of his having left. At all events, this 

 shows him to have left I'ort Royal for good as early as the year 1()21, 

 and to have settled down in F^aris, whei'e he had influence enough to obtain 

 an office of respectability and emolument. This he seems to have held 

 for about seventeen years or till his death, about ](J3S. At all events 

 according to another manuscript document dated April <^f that year, 



