When De Monts And His Party Were Ready To Continue Their Cruise From
This Sheltered Haven, Behold!
One of their company - a priest - was
missing; and though they waited several days, making signals and firing
guns, such sounds were drowned by the roar of the surf, and never
reached the ears of the poor man lost in the woods.
At last, supposing
that the wanderer had fallen a prey to wild animals, the explorers
sailed away, and, finding the entrance to Annapolis Basin, began to
make preparation for colonizing at Port Royal.
Sixteen days after the disappearance of the priest, some of De Monts'
men returning to this Bay to examine the minerals more thoroughly, were
attracted by a signal fluttering on the shore, and, hurrying to land,
there found the poor priest, emaciated and exhausted. What strange
sensations the distracted wanderer must have experienced in these forest
wilds, with starvation staring him in the face! No charms did he see
in this scene which now delights us; and doubtless, with Selkirk, would
have exclaimed, "Better dwell in the midst of alarms, than to live in
this beautiful place."
This strange wild coast and the Cod Banks of Newfoundland were known to
and visited by foreign fishermen at a very early date. "The Basques,
that primeval people, older than history," frequented these shores; and
it is supposed that such fisheries existed even before the voyage of
Cabot (1497). There is strong evidence of it in 1504; while in 1527
fourteen fishing vessels - Norman, Portuguese, and Breton - were seen at
one time in the Bay of Fundy, near the present site of St. John.
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