The winter was so
long, weary and deadly, that in the spring the survivors of the Colony
were moved to Port Royal in Acadia and the Ste. Croix was given up. This
was surely dramatic; this was tragic indeed. But in the fourth year of
this Century, the Tercentenary of this event was celebrated in Annapolis
and St. John, as the writer himself beheld, and the shouts and applause
of gathered thousands made a great and patriotic epic.
Again four years after De Monts, when knowledge of climate and
conditions had become known to the French pioneers, Samuel de Champlain
wintered with his crew and a few settlers on the site of Old Quebec, on
the St. Lawrence. Discontent and dissension led to rebellion, and blood
was shed in the execution of the plotters. Hunger, suffering and the
dreadful scurvy attacked the founder's party of less than thirty, of
whom only ten survived, and yet in July of 1908, the writer witnessed
the grand Tercentenary celebration of Champlain's settlement of Quebec,
and with the presence of the Prince of Wales, General Roberts, the idol
of the British Army, a joint fleet, of eleven English, French and
American first-class Men-of War, with pageantry and music, the Epic of
Champlain was sung at the foot of the great statue erected to his
memory.
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