But, whatever his religious prejudices may have been, they do not intrude themselves in any part of his career; we know him only as a pure Christian, an upright man, and a faithful friend of humanity. Like many other Frenchmen of birth and education in those days, the Baron de St. Castine had been attracted by descriptions of newly discovered countries in the western hemisphere, and fascinated by the ideal life of the children of nature. To a mind at once susceptible and heroic, impulsive by temperament, and disciplined to endure, such promptings have a charm that is irresistible. As the chronicler relates, he preferred the forests of Acadia, to the Pyrenian mountains that compassed the place of his nativity, and taking up his abode with the savages, on the first year behaved himself so among them as to draw from them their inexpressible esteem. He married a woman of the nation, and repudiating their example, did not change his wife, by which he taught his wild neighbors that God did not love inconstancy. By this woman, his first and only wife, he had one son and two daughters, the latter were afterwards married, "very handsomely, to Frenchmen, and had good dowries." Of the son there is preserved a single touching incident. In person the baron was strikingly handsome, a fine form, a well featured face, with a noble expression of candor, firmness and benevolence. Possessed of an ample fortune, he used it to enlarge the comforts of the people of his adoption; these making him a recompense in beaver skins and other rich furs, from which he drew a still larger revenue, to be in turn again devoted to the objects of his benevolence. It was said of him, "that he can draw from his coffers two or three hundred thousand crowns of good dry gold; but all the use he makes of it is to buy presents for his _fellow savages_, who, upon their return from hunting, present him with skins to treble the value." Is it then surprising that this man, so wise, so good, so faithful to his _fellow savages_, should, after twenty years, rise to the most eminent station in that unsophisticated nation? That indeed these simple Indians, who knew no arts except those of peace and war, should have looked up to him as their tutular god? By the treaty of Breda, the lands from the Penobscots to Nova Scotia had been ceded to France, in exchange for the island of St. Christopher. Upon these lands the Baron de St. Castine had peacefully resided for many years, until a new patent was granted to the Duke of York, the boundaries of which extended beyond the limits of the lands ceded by the treaty. Oh, those patents! those patents! What wrongs were perpetrated by those remorseless instruments; what evil councils prevailed when they were hatched; what corrupt, what base, what knavish hands formed them; what vile, what ignoble, what ponderous lies has history assumed to maintain, or to excuse them, and the acts committed under them?