It was on a lovely summer day in 1604, that the Sieur de Monts and his comrades, Champlain and the Baron de Poutrincourt, beating about the shores of Nova Scotia, were invited by the rocky gateway of the Port Royal Basin.  They entered the small inlet, says Mr. Parkman, when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquil basin, compassed with sunny hills, wrapped with woodland verdure and alive with waterfalls.  Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene, and would fain remove thither from France with his family.  Since Poutrincourt’s day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees, and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such a gray sky as we saw.

The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy of Acadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentiment is the one thing to be shunned in these days.  Yet I cannot but stay, though the train should leave us, to pay my respectful homage to one of the most heroic of women, whose name recalls the most romantic incident in the history of this region.  Out of this past there rises no figure so captivating to the imagination as that of Madame de la Tour.  And it is noticeable that woman has a curious habit of coming to the front in critical moments of history, and performing some exploit that eclipses in brilliancy all the deeds of contemporary men; and the exploit usually ends in a pathetic tragedy, that fixes it forever in the sympathy of the world.  I need not copy out of the pages of De Charlevoix the well-known story of Madame de la Tour; I only wish he had told us more about her.  It is here at Port Royal that we first see her with her husband.  Charles de St. Etienne, the Chevalier de la Tour,—­there is a world of romance in these mere names,—­was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and of La Hive, from Louis XIII.  He ceded La Hive to Razilli, the governor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for a residence.  He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when the Chevalier d’Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli at La Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal.  De Charnise was a Catholic; the difference in religion might not have produced any unpleasantness, but the two noblemen could not agree in dividing the profits of the peltry trade,—­each being covetous, if we may so express it, of the hide of the savage continent, and determined to take it off for himself.  At any rate, disagreement arose, and De la Tour moved over to the St. John, of which region his father had enjoyed a grant from Charles I. of England,—­whose sad fate it is not necessary now to recall to the reader’s mind,—­and built a fort at the mouth of the river.  But the differences of the two ambitious Frenchmen could not be composed.  De la Tour obtained aid from Governor Winthrop at Boston, thus verifying the Catholic prediction that the Huguenots would side with the enemies of France on occasion.  De Charnise received orders from