1 Canada had been discovered by Cabot in 1497; and in 1535 James Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence and, taking possession of the country in the name of Francis I., called it La Nouvelle France.  Seven years later a gentleman of Picardy, named John Francis de La Roque, Lord of Robertval, accompanying Cartier, established a colony on the Isle Royale, and subsequently built the fort of Charlebourg.  One of his pilots, named Alphonse of Saintonge, meanwhile reconnoitred the coasts both of Canada and Labrador.  About this time (1542) the incidents related in the above tale must have occurred.—­L.

The poor folk, finding themselves all alone and surrounded by wild and cruel beasts, had no recourse but to God, who had ever been this poor woman’s steadfast hope; and, since she found all her consolation in Him, she carried the New Testament with her for safeguard, nourishment and consolation, and in it read unceasingly.  Further, she laboured with her husband to make them a little dwelling as best they might, and when the lions (2) and other animals came near to devour them, the husband with his arquebuss and she with stones made so stout a defence that not only were the beasts afraid to approach, but often some were slain that were very good for food.  And on this flesh and the herbs of the land, they lived for some time after their bread failed them.

2 This mention of lions on a small desert island in the Canadian seas would be rather perplexing did we not know how great at that time was the general ignorance on most matters connected with natural history.  Possibly the allusion may be to the lion marin, as the French call the leonine seal.  This, however, is anything but an aggressive animal.  Curiously enough, Florimond de Remond, the sixteenth century writer, speaks of a drawing of a “marine lion” given to him “by that most illustrious lady Margaret Queen of Navarre, to whom it had been presented by a Spanish gentleman, who was taking a second copy of it to the Emperor Charles V., then in Spain.”—­Ed.

At last, however, the husband could no longer endure this nutriment, and by reason of the waters that they drank became so swollen that in a short while he died, and this without any service or consolation save from his wife, she being both his doctor and his confessor; and when he had joyously passed out of the desert into the heavenly country, the poor woman, left now in solitude, buried him in the earth as deeply as she was able.  Nevertheless the beasts quickly knew of it, and came to eat the dead body; but the poor woman, firing with the arquebuss from her cabin, saved her husband’s flesh from finding such a grave.