[ganong] stone medallion OF LAKE UTOPIA 97 



that it "had numerous joiners, carpenters, masons (massons), stone- 

 cutters {tailleurs de pierres), locksmiths," etc., {Champlain Society's 

 Edition, II, 318). That these stone-cutters exercised their art not 

 upon buildings alone is shown by a statement of Father Biard, a 

 priest at Port Royal in 1612-3, who writes in his Relation of 1616 

 (Thwaites' Jesuit Relations, l\ , 45) that Argal in his expedition 

 against Acadia that year, — 



destroyed, everywhere, all monuments and evidences of the dominion of the French; 

 and this they did not forget to do here, even to making use of pick and chisel upon 

 a large and massive stone, on which were cut the names of Sieur de Monts and other 

 Captains, with the fleurs-de-lys. 



Again, Haliburton, in his well-known work on Nova Scotia of 

 1829 (II, 156), describes a stone, found at Port Royal, and known 

 to have been at the time in his possession, as follows: — 



In the year 1827 the stone was discovered on which they [the French] had 

 engraved the date of their first cultivation of the soil, in memorial of their formal 

 possession of the country. It is about two feet and a half long, and two feet broad, 

 and of the same kind as that which forms the substratum of Granville Mountain. 

 On the upper part are engraved the square and compass of the Free Mason, and in 

 the center, in large and deep Arabic figures, the date 1608. It does not appear to 

 have been dressed by a Mason, but the inscription has been cut on its natural sur- 

 face. The stone itself has yielded to the power of the climate, and both the external 

 front and the interior parts of the letters have alike suffered from exposure to the 

 weather; the seams on the back part of it have opened, and from their capacity 

 to hold water, and the operation of frost upon it when thus confined, it is probable 

 in a few years it would have crumbed to pieces. The date is distinctly visible, 

 and although the figure is worn down to one half its original depth, and the upper 

 part of the latter 6 nearly as much, yet no part of them is obliterated — they are 

 plainly discernable to the eye, and easily traced by the finger. 



This stone was found b}'- the geologist Jackson, whose account 

 of its discovery is extant and has been published, along with a half- 

 tone cut, from a photograph, of stone and inscription, (Stillson, 

 History of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted 

 Masons, 1892, 440; and especially the monographic study by R, V. 

 Harris in Trans. N. S. Lodge of Research, I, 1916, 29-39). The stone, 

 which is now embedded and lost in the walls of the building of the 

 Royal Canadian Institute at Toronto, was described by Jackson as 

 a "flat slab of trap rock common in the vicinity." 



It is thus manifest that the St. Croix — Port Royal colony of 

 1604-7 did include someone competent to engrave emblems and 

 figures in stone. Incidentally, there is suggestive resemblance 

 between the stone of 1606 and the Utopia medallion in their size, 

 marked weathering, and engraving upon a natural surface of a flat 

 slab of rock from the immediate vicinity. 



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