CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THE original authorities for the early history of the French settlements in Acadia[419] are the contemporaneous narratives of Samuel de Champlain and Marc Lescarbot. Though Champlain comes within our observation as a companion of De Monts, a separate chapter in this volume is given to his personal history and his writings.
Of the personal history of Marc Lescarbot we know much less than of that of Champlain. He was born at Vervins, probably between 1580 and 1590, and was a lawyer in Paris, where he had an extensive practice, and was the author of several works; only one, or rather a part of one, concerns our present inquiry.[420]
This was an account of the settlement of De Monts in Acadia, which was translated into English by a Protestant clergyman named Pierre Erondelle, and which gives a very vivid picture of the life at Port Royal.[421] He appears to have been a man of more than ordinary ability, with not a little of the French vivacity, and altogether well suited to be a pioneer in Western civilization. His narrative covers only a brief period, and after the failure of the colony under De Monts, he ceased to have any relations with Acadia. He is supposed to have died about 1630.
The advent of the Jesuits in 1611 introduces the _Relations_ of their order as a source of the first importance; but a detailed account of these documents belongs to another chapter.[422] From the first of the series, by Father Biard, and from his letters in Carayon’s _Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada_, a collection published in Paris in 1864, and drawn from the archives of the Order at Rome, we have the sufferers’ side of the story of Argall’s incursion; while from the English marauder’s letters, published in Purchas, vol. iv., we get the other side.[423]
[Illustration: PART OF LESCARBOT’S MAP, 1609.
There is a modern reproduction of Lescarbot’s entire map in Faillon, _Colonie Française_, i. 85.]
[This is a section of La Hontan’s map, _Carte Generale de Canada_, which appeared in his La Haye edition, 1709, vol. ii. p. 5; and was re-engraved in the _Mémoires_, vol. iii. Amsterdam, 1741. La Hontan was in the country from 1683 till after 1690. The double-dotted line indicates the southern limits of the French claim.—ED.]]