For authorities for this tale see "Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,"
translated by Charles Pomeroy Otis, Ph.D., with memoir by the Rev. E. F.
Slafter, A.M., Boston, 1880 (I. pp. 116, 289, II. p. 52). The incident of
the disguised Indians occurred, however, to the earlier explorer, Jacques
Cartier. (See my "Larger History of the United States," p. 112.)
XIX. ISLAND OF DEMONS
The tale of the Isle of Demons is founded on a story told first by
Marguerite of Navarre in her "Heptameron" (LXVII. Nouvelle), and then
with much variation and amplification by the very untrustworthy traveller
Thevet in his "Cosmographie" (1571), Livre XXIII. c. vi. The only copy of
the latter work known to me is in the Carter-Brown Library at Providence,
R.I., and the passage has been transcribed for me through the kindness of
A. E. Winship, Esq., librarian, who has also sent me a photograph of a
woodcut representing the lonely woman shooting at a bear. A briefer
abstract of the story is in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History" (IV.
p. 66, note), but it states, perhaps erroneously, that Thevet knew
Marguerite only through the Princess of Navarre, whereas that author
claims--though his claim is never worth much--that he had the story from
the poor woman herself, "_La pauvre femme estant arriuvee en France ...
et venue en la ville de Nautron, pays de Perigort lors que i'y estois, me
feit le discours de toutes ses fortunes passées_."
The Island of Demons appears on many old maps which may be found engraved
in Winsor, IV. pp. 91, 92, 93, 100, 373, etc.; also as "Isla de demonios"
in Sebastian Cabot's map (1544) reprinted in Dr. S. E. Dawson's valuable
"Voyages of the Cabots," in the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Canada for 1897. He also gives Ruysch's map (1508), in which a cluster of
islands appears in the same place, marked "Insulae daemonum." Harrisse,
in his "Notes sur la Nouvelle France" (p. 278), describes the three
sufferers as having been abandoned by Roberval _à trente six lieues des
côtes de Canada, dans une isle deserte qui fut depuis désignée sous le nom
de l'Isle de la Demoiselle, pres de l'embouchure de la Rivière St. Paul ou
des Saumons_. I have not, however, been able to identify this island.
Parkman also says ("Pioneers of France," p. 205) that Roberval's pilot, in
his _routier_, or logbook, speaks often of "Les Isles de la
Demoiselle," evidently referring to Marguerite. The brief account by the
Princess of Navarre follows:--
LXVII NOUVELLE
Une pauvre femme, pour sauver la vie de son mary, hasarda la sienne, et
ne l'abandonna jusqu'à la mort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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