The survivors of the horrible winter at St Croix were not freed from anxiety until June 15, 1605, when Pontgrave, six weeks late, arrived with fresh stores. Had De Monts been faint-hearted, he doubtless would have seized this opportunity to return to France. As it was, he set out in search of a place more suitable than St Croix for the establishment of his colony. On June 18, with a party {38} which included twenty sailors and several gentlemen, he and Champlain began a fresh voyage to the south-west. Their destination was the country of the Armouchiquois, an Algonquin tribe who then inhabited Massachusetts. Champlain's story of his first voyage from Acadia to Cape Cod is given with considerable fulness. The topography of the seaboard and its natural history, the habits of the Indians and his adventures with them, were all new subjects at the time, and he treats them so that they keep their freshness. He is at no pains to conceal his low opinion of the coast savages. Concerning the Acadian Micmacs he says little, but what he does say is chiefly a comment upon the wretchedness of their life during the winter. As he went farther south he found an improvement in the food supply. At the mouth of the Saco he and De Monts saw well-kept patches of Indian corn three feet high, although it was not yet midsummer. Growing with the corn were beans, pumpkins, and squashes, all in flower; and the cultivation of tobacco is also noted. Here the savages formed a permanent settlement and lived within a palisade. Still farther south, in the neighbourhood of Cape Cod, {39} Champlain found maize five and a half feet high, a considerable variety of squashes, tobacco, and edible roots which tasted like artichokes. But whether the coast Indians were Micmacs or Armouchiquois, whether they were starving or well fed, Champlain tells us little in their praise. Of the Armouchiquois he says: