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There was one fire-place in the centre of each, with subdivisions of the dwelling all around the sides for the accommodation of the different families.

The town was strongly fortified, too, with a triple wall made of logs of wood, placed in such a manner as to furnish a rampart above, on which the warriors could stand to defend the place in case of an attack, and a great quantity of stones were collected on this rampart as ammunition. The stones were intended to be hurled down upon the enemy below.

There was a very high hill near the town, which Cartier named "Mont Roial," which name remains, under the form of Montreal, to this day.

FIRST OBSERVATION OF TOBACCO.

While they were at this place the party witnessed, for the first time, the Indian practice of smoking tobacco. They described it in the following language:

There groweth also a certaine kind of herbe, whereof in sommer they make great prouision for all the yeere, making great account of it, and onely men use of it, and first they cause it to be dried in the sunne, then weare it about their neckes, wrapped in a little beaft's skinne made like a little bagge, with a hollow piece of stone or

wood like a pipe; then when they please they make pouder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire upon it, at the other end sucke so long that they fill their bodies full of smoke till that it commeth out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the fonnel of a chimney. They say that this doth keep them warm and in health; they never go without some of it about them. We ourselves haue tryed the same smoke, and hauing put it in our mouthes it seemed almost as hot as pepper.

RETURN OF THE EXPEDITION DOWN THE RIVER.

The expedition remained several days at this place, and met with a variety of amusing adventures in their intercourse with the natives. At length the party re-embarked on board their boats and returned down the river to Lake St. Peter, where they had left the pinnace. They there returned on board the pinnace, and then continued on their way, meeting with no accident until they reached the river St. Croix, where the two vessels had been left.

It was so late in the season, however, when they arrived here that ice began to form in the river, and Cartier made arrangements for remaining where he was until the spring. Accordingly he put the ships into winter quarters, built a fort on the land, and made all snug for winter.

THE PESTILENCE.

Things went on very well until the middle of December, when Cartier began to hear rumors of a pestilence prevailing among the Indians on the land. It was said that great numbers had died, and that the disease was spreading. Cartier immediately made arrangements to prevent all communication between his men and the natives, but notwithstanding his utmost efforts the disease soon appeared within the fort, and there it spread so rapidly and was so terrible in its ravages, that before long the company was reduced to a condition of extreme distress.

The disease, as the narrator of the history of this voyage described it, appears to have been what is called the sea-scurvy-a dreadful pestilence which in those days often infected ships' crews on long voyages. It was caused generally by the subjects of it having been confined for a long time. to a diet consisting of salted provisions, and also to their being reduced in strength by hardships, fatigue, and exposure. The disease, when it once gets a footing in a ship's company, becomes a pestilence of the most dreadful character imaginable. The effects of it are too shocking and horrible to be described-the body becoming under it some

times a mass of living putrefaction. The disease is now no longer feared, for remedies have been discovered so efficacious that it is perfectly easy at the present day to keep it under complete control, but in the times of which we are writing it was a terrible pest, Whole crews were affected by it. Commodore Anson on one of his voyages lost fourfifths of his men; and on one occasion a Spanish ship, called the Oriflamme, was found drifting at sea, at the mercy of the winds and waves, and those who discovered her, on going on board, found dead bodies lying about upon the decks and in the cabins, but not a single man alive. The whole crew, to the very last man, had been swept away by this terrible disease.

EXTREME DISTRESS AND SUFFERING.

Cartier's company suffered dreadfully under the visitation of the malady. Out of his whole company of more than a hundred, not ten remained well. Great numbers died. Those that were well were not able to take proper care of the sick, and still less had they strength to bury the bodies of the sufferers when they were dead. So they conveyed the bodies away to some distance from the fort and covered them up in the snow. It was all that they could do.

The winter, too, was extremely cold, and this greatly increased the sufferings of the men. The ships were frozen into the ice in the middle of November, and they continued thus imprisoned until the middle of March. The ice, they said, was six feet thick. This, if their estimate was not exaggerated, proves that the winter must have been exceedingly severe.

STRATAGEMS AGAINST THE INDIANS.

Indeed, so extreme was the distress of the company, and so desperate was the condition to which they were reduced, that at one time Cartier gave up all expectation of ever seeing France again. His anxiety was greatly increased, too, by fears that the Indians might turn against him. Certain indications that he observed appeared to denote this. He resorted to a great many artful contrivances to deceive the Indians in respect to the condition of the company while the pestilence was at its height. One of these was a curious ruse that he adopted to prevent them from inferring that a great many of his men were disabled by sickness, from the fact that they saw so few of them, from day to day, outside the fort. He would send out a few well men from the fort into the neighborhood of the Indians, and then he would go after

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