Poutrincourt and Champlain, bent on finding a better
site for their settlement in a more southern latitude, set out on a
voyage of discovery, in an ill-built vessel of eighteen tons, while
Lescarbot remained in charge of Port Royal. They had little for their
pains but danger, hardship, and mishap. The autumn gales cut short their
exploration; and, after visiting Gloucester Harbor, doubling Monoinoy
Point, and advancing as far as the neighborhood of Hyannis, on the
southeast coast of Massachusetts, they turned back, somewhat disgusted
with their errand. Along the eastern verge of Cape Cod they found the
shore thickly studded with the wigwams of a race who were less hunters
than tillers of the soil. At Chatham Harbor--called by them Port
Fortune--five of the company, who, contrary to orders, had remained on
shore all night, were assailed, as they slept around their fire, by a
shower of arrows from four hundred Indians. Two were killed outright,
while the survivors fled for their boat, bristling like porcupines with
the feathered missiles,--a scene oddly portrayed by the untutored
pencil of Champlain. He and Poutrincourt, with eight men, hearing the
war-whoops and the cries for aid, sprang up from sleep, snatched their
weapons, pulled ashore in their shirts, and charged the yelling
multitude, who fled before their spectral assailants, and vanished in
the woods.
Pages:
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264