182 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
good, and gratifyingly productive. For the sieur de Monts having had a cer- 
tain piece of land there’ eultivated and sown with rye (I have not seen any 
wheat there), he was not able to await its ripening before gathering it, but 
nevertheless the grain grew to excess, and reproduced so wonderfully that 
two years’ afterwards we gathered it as fine, large and heavy as it ever is in 
France which the land had produced without cultivation, and at present it 
continues to multiply every year. The said island is about a half league in 
circuit, and at the end of it, on the sea side, there is a hillock, as it were a 
separated islet,* where the Sieur de Monts placed his cannon, and there also 
is the little chapel built after the Indian fashion.* At its foot are shellfish so 
many that it is wonderful, which are gathered at low water, but they are 
small. I believe that the men of the Sieur de Monts were careful to take the 
larger, leaving there the spawn and the smaller generation. Now as to the 
activities and occupation of our Frenchmen whilst they were on the Island, 
we shall give a summary after we have followed the ships back to France. 
Tihe ships of Sieur de Monts returning to Franee left him there 
in a desolate place with one boat and a barque only.® 

* Apparently he is here referring to the land cultivated at the Falls of 
River des Etchemins, 1.e., on the present site of Calais or St. Stephen, as men- 
tioned by Champlain (earlier, page 168), though he may refer to the land culti- 
vated near the camping place just mentioned, in which case it would be the 
place at Johnsons Cove mentioned in Note 2 above. 
? His visit to the Island two years later is described later in this paper, 
page 192. 
#5 Wrongly shown as connected with the main island on Champlain’s map 
(Fig. 8) ; compare earlier, note 1, page 161. 
* Lescarbot seems to imply that the chapel was on the islet with the can- 
non, but Champlain’s map (Fig. 8) shows that this was not the case, and 
probably Lescarbot means to say merely that it was at the same end of the 
island as the islet. Another possible but less likely explanation is that the 
chapel shown by Champlain on his map, was a more pretentious structure, 
used by the French, and that there was another, merely a wigwam for the 
Indians on the same islet with the cannon. It is furthermore possible that 
the building shown on the plan of the settlement (Fig. 9) as attached to the 
house of the priest was a chapel. In any case, there is surprisingly little 
reference to the chapel, or to any religious matters, in the narratives, a fact 
easily explained on reflection, since de Monts was a Protestant as were others 
of his company, and they were accompanied both by a priest and a Protestant 
minister. The silence of both Champlain and Lescarbot as to religious mat- 
ters is due no doubt to the fact that Protestant influence was prominent in 
the settlement, and they were writing in and for a country overwhelmingly 
Roman Catholic. Compare also the incident later, on page Loi 
5 On the shell fish, see earlier, page 140. This selection of the largest, 
leaving the smallest to breed, here mentioned, represents the first attempts 
at molluse culture in the New World, as pointed out in the Bulletin of the 
Natural History Society of New Brunswick, No. VIII., page 16. 
5 Presumably the barque was hauled from the water for the winter, leav- 
ing them but the one small boat in which to bring wood and water from the 
mainland. This is implied in a statement in Le Mercure Francois (see earlier 
page 173). 
