When he landed, the sun of his prosperity had set. Creditors swooped down upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of four survivors, eight years afterward.[3] {103} Five years went by, and twelve uncouth creatures stood before Henry the Fourth, clad in shaggy skins, and with long, unkempt beards. They were the remnant of La Roche's jailbirds. He had at last gained a hearing from the King, and a vessel had been sent to Sable Island to bring home the survivors of his party. What a story they told! When months passed, and La Roche came not, they thought they were left to their fate. They built huts of the timbers of a wreck which lay on the beach--for there was not a tree on the island--and so faced the dreary winter. With trapping foxes, spearing seals, and hunting wild cattle, descendants of some which a certain Baron de Lery had left eight years before, they managed to eke out existence, not without quarrels and murders among themselves. At last the remnant was taken off by the vessel which Henry sent for them. Shaggy and uncouth as they looked, they had a small fortune in the furs which they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice of the thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. But the King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge his plunder, but aided {104} its owners with a pension in setting up in the fur-trade. Such dismal experiences filled more than fifty years of futile effort to colonize New France. Cold and scurvy as effectually closed the North to Frenchmen as Spanish savagery the South. Then, in this disheartening state of affairs, appeared the man who well deserves the title of the "Father of New France," since his courage and indomitable will steered the tiny "ship of state" through a sea of discouragements.