age to him, which they did in full armor with their vizors 

 down. Their castle was stormed by Richard Coeur de Lion 

 in 1 179, and was surged around successively by French and 

 English in the wars of Aquitaine. 



To-day the place is an attractive city still, with picturesque 

 ruins of the old chateau and later buildings of the 15th and 

 1 6th centuries, now used as a Hotel de Ville, which were 

 de Monts' official residence no doubt when not across the 

 sea. 



Delightful gardens, overgrown with roses, occupy in part 

 the ancient castle site, with a stern old 12th century ''keep" 

 beside them, while the castle chapel, of a later date, opens 

 through a noble romanesque portal onto a lower garden. A 

 clear river flows beneath, from whose vanished bridge of 

 Roman empire date, the early city drew its name: Pons or 

 ''Bridge." It is an ancient land throughout, of ruins and rich 

 pasturages and productive vineyards, to whose western bound- 

 ary come the breezes, the salt air and breaking surf of the At- 

 lantic, and from whose shore the waves stretch off unbroken- 

 ly toward America and the Acadian coasts. 



De Monts brought out to America with him, as lieutenant 

 and cartographer, Samuel Champlain — his chronicler and 

 fast friend thereafter — who, older than he by half a dozen 

 years, was born in the little salt-gathering and exporting town 

 of Brouage on the Bay of Biscay shore, not far from Pons and 

 in a district subject to its lords. Near by was the mouth of 

 the Charente — declared by Henry IV to be "the finest stream 

 in the Kingdom" — with the ancient city of Saintes not far 

 above, the capital of the Gallic Santones whose name it has 

 brought down to us from Caesar's time. 



Of Brouage, an antiquarian neighbor of it wrote three 

 quarters of a century ago: "On a plain that the waves cov- 

 ered twice a day, and along the border of a canal which brought 

 into its midst the highway of the ocean, salt evaporated from 

 the sea was gathered and the vessels which came to carry it 

 away left behind upon the bank the stones and gravel brought 

 for ballast. Little by little a mound, not over 80 paces long, 



15 



