[&AnoNG] DOCHET (ST. CROIX) ISLAND 159 
Here follows a description of the falls in the River of the Eteche- 
mins (St. Croix), with mention of the portages to the Norumbegue 
(Penobscot) and St. John, and of the fishing and soil, and of the 
planting of wheat there, and some minor matters, not connected with 
St. Croix Island. 
| 
Ce lieu est par la hauteur de 45. degrez vn tiers de latitude, & 17. degrez 32. 
minuttes de declinaison de la guide-ayment, 
TRANSLATION. 
This place is in latitude 45° 20’, and 17° 32° of the variation of the mag- 
netic needle.* 


vessels represented are doubtless that in which de Monts came to America, 
with the barque in which he and Champlain were exploring when they dis- 
covered the island. The animals represented are the whale and two por- 
poises, which are unmistakable (and still to be seen at times around the 
island), and a third kind of creature which seems to represent the fish called 
the sculpin more nearly than anything else that lives in this region. The 
meaning of the seated man near the ledges at the south of the island, I do 
not understand; the place is only uncovered at low tide. Nor is the meaning 
of the figure of a man, with apparently a clearing beneath him, evident, 
unless it means that the Indians had a small clearing as a sort of lookout 
on the bluff at Sandy Point. The depths given are too little (compare. 
Fig. 4). 
1 Although he has been speaking of the falls on the River of the Eteche- 
mins, he must in this sentence refer to St. Croix Island, because the deter- 
mination of latitude and magnetic variation require some time and care 
which he could give in the settlement on the island, and would not be likely 
to give on his hasty visits to the much less important place at the falls. His 
latitude, though somewhat too great (it is really 45° 07’ 44”), is yet, considering 
the imperfection of the instruments of the time, remarkably accurate. The 
variation of the magnetic needle at the island is now (1902) somewhat over 
18° 30’, and increasing slightly, west of north. Various early surveys, by 
Wright, 1772, and others later, show that it was from 13° to 14° W. somewhat 
over a century ago. Champlain’s observation here given is, of course, much 
the earliest on record for this region. A very curious fact about Champlain’s 
cbservations is that they show an increase in the variation from the east west- 
ward, thus seeming to imply that the variation was then to the eastward, and 
not to the westward. The subject has been carefully studied by C. A. Schott, 
for the United States Coast Survey, with results published in the eighth edi- 
tion of his “‘Secular Variation of the Earth’s magnetic force in the United 
States and in some adjacent foreign countries,” in the Report of the Coast 
Survey for 1895. He comes to the conclusion that Champlain’s determinations 
are as much as 6° in error, and not to be depended upon within that amount. 
The variation must then have been west, and it still remains unexplained how 
Champlain could have found the angle increasing to the westward. In a 
treatise on his two maps given at the end of his “ Voyages,’’ Champlain 
explains, with a diagram, his mode of finding the true meridian, a mode simple 
and crude enough, but doubtless the best available to travellers at that time. 
