It appears that the adventurers left France in the early part of April. When the King had been once won over to the project, he consented to give De Monts and his associates an entire monopoly of the fur-trade throughout the wide domain of which he was to be the viceroy. The expedition was chiefly supported by the merchants of the Protestant town of La Rochelle, and was regarded with much jealousy by other commercial cities. Protestants were to enjoy in the new colony all the advantages they were then allowed in France. The Catholics were appeased by the condition that the conversion of the natives should be reserved especially for the priests of their own church. The man of most note, after De Monts and Champlain, was Jean de Biencourt, a rich nobleman of Picardy, better known in Acadian history as the Baron de Poutrincourt, who had distinguished himself as a soldier in the civil wars. A man of energy and enterprise, he was well fitted to assist in the establishment of a colony. De Monts and his associates reached without accident the low fir-covered shores of Nova Scotia, visited several of its harbours, and finally sailed into the Bay of Fundy, which was named Baie Francaise. The French explored the coast of the bay after leaving Port Royal, and discovered the river which the Indians called Ouigoudi, or highway, and De Monts renamed St. John, as he saw it first on the festival of that saint. Proceeding along the northern shores of the bay the expedition came to a river which falls into Passamaquoddy Bay, and now forms the {54} boundary between the United States and the eastern provinces of Canada. This river ever since has been called the river of the Holy Cross (Sainte-Croix) though the name was first given by De Monts to an islet, well within the mouth of the stream, which he chose as the site of the first French settlement on the northeast coast of America. Buildings were soon erected for the accommodation of some eighty persons, as well as a small fort for their protection on the rocky islet. [1] While the French settlement was preparing for the winter, Champlain explored the eastern coast from the St. Croix to the Penobscot, where he came to the conclusion that the story of a large city on its banks was evidently a mere invention of the imaginative mind. He also was the first of Europeans, so far as we know, to look on the mountains and cliffs of the island--so famous as a summer resort in these later times--which he very aptly named Monts-Deserts. During the three years Champlain remained in Acadia he made explorations and surveys of the southern coasts of Nova Scotia from Canseau to Port Royal, of the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and of the coast of New England from the St. Croix to Vineyard Sound.