3^2 LAHONTAN. 



and the manner of the savages are to my taste." He is now at 

 Nantes expecting to sail in a few days from St. Nazere in a vessel 

 supplied by the government to the Messrs. d'Angui, merchants of 

 Nantes, who, in return for a royal monopoly granted them, under- 

 take to maintain the garrison at Placentia. In letter twenty-five he 

 informs his friend that after a detention of some fifteen days at St. 

 Nazere he sailed on the 12th of May. He arrives at Placentia on 

 the 20th of June, having captured on the Banks, an English ship 

 laden with tobacco. " After landing," he says, " I went to salute 

 M. Brouillon, Governor of Placentia, and declared to him how glad 

 I was to obey the orders of so wise a commander. He answered that 

 he was much surprised to find that I had solicited to be employed 

 there without acquainting him with it the preceding year, and that 

 he now plainly perceived that the project about the lakes of Canada, 

 which I had mentioned to him, was a mere sham pretence. I 

 endeavoured in vain to persuade him to the contrary, for it was not 

 possible for me to undeceive him. Nevertheless, he goes on to say, 

 I landed my goods and hired a private house till such time as I could 

 build one for myself, a work which I carried on with so much dili- 

 gence that it was finished in September by the assistance of the 

 ship carpenters, who were lent me gratis by all the Biscay captains 

 in the hai'bour. Irreconcileable differences arose between Lahontan 

 and his superior. These at length came to such a pass that Lahontan 

 decided to throw up his position and escape from the country, for 

 from representations sent home by Brouillon, secretly as the latter 

 mistakenly supposed, he expected that orders would come out for his 

 arrest and transhipment to France, where probably a tedious deten- 

 tion in the Bastile would be his fate. " Fancying that I had solicited 

 my employment," Lahontan says, " without taking notice of him, 

 Brouillon treated me with all manner of reproaches and outrages 

 from the time of my landing to that of my departure, and was not 

 satisfied with appropriating to himself the profits and advantages of 

 the free company that was given me, but likewise stopped without 

 any scruple the pay of the soldiers' that were employed in the cod- 

 fishing by the inhabitants, and made the rest work without wages, 

 I shall take no notice," Lahontan continues, "of his public extortion, 

 for though he has formally contravened the ten articles contained in 

 the orders of Louis XIV., yet he had so many friends in all the 



