A very remarkable instance of the infatuation which led away so many young men into the forest, is to be found in the life of Baron de Saint-Castin, a native of the romantic Bernese country, who came to Canada with the Carignan Regiment during 1665, and established himself for a time on the Richelieu. But he soon became tired of his inactive life, and leaving his Canadian home, settled on a peninsula of Penobscot Bay (then Pentagoet), which still bears his name. Here he fraternised with the Abenaquis, and led the life of a forest chief, whose name was long the terror of the New England settlers. He married the daughter of Madocawando, the implacable enemy of the English, and so influential did he become that, at his summons, all the tribes on {172} the frontier between Acadia and New England would proceed on the warpath. He amassed a fortune of three hundred thousand crowns in "good dry gold," but we are told he only used the greater part of it to buy presents for his Indian followers, who paid him back in beaver skins. His life at Pentagoet, for years, was very active and adventurous, as the annals of New England show. In 1781 he returned to France, where he had an estate, and thenceforth disappeared from history. His son, by his Abenaqui Baroness, then took command of his fort and savage retainers, and after assisting in the defence of Port Royal, and making more than one onslaught on the English settlers of Massachusetts, he returned to Europe on the death of his father. The poet Longfellow has made use of this romantic episode in the early life of the Acadian settlements: "The warm winds blow on the hills of Spain, The birds are building and the leaves are green, The Baron Castine, of St. Castine, Hath come at last to his own again." [Illustration: Canadian trapper, from La Potherie.]