It was only by locating these points on Champlain's map of Port Royal that
I was able to find in 1911 the site of the ancient fort, garden, fish-
pond, and cemetery. The men unloading a schooner a few rods away seemed
not to know of Lescarbot or Poutrincourt or even Champlain, but that was
perhaps because they were not accustomed to my tongue.
The unquiet Champlain left Acadia in the summer of 1607, the charter
having been withdrawn by the king. In the winter of 1607-8 he walked the
streets of Paris as in a dream, we are told, longing for the northern
wilderness, where he had left his heart four years before. In the spring
of 1608 the white whales are floundering around his lonely ship in the
river of his dreams. At the foot of the gray rock of Quebec he makes the
beginning of a fort, whence he plans to go forth to trace the rivers to
their sources, discover, perchance, a northern route to the Indies, and
make a path for the priests to the countless savages "in bondage of
Satan." Parkman speaks of him as the "Aeneas of a destined people," and he
is generally called the "father of Canada.
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