I cannot tell what government they have, but I think that in this respect they resemble their neighbours, who have none at all. They know not how to worship or pray; yet, like the other savages, they have some superstitions, which I shall describe in their place. As for weapons, they have only pikes, clubs, bows and arrows. It would seem from their appearance that they have a good disposition, better than those of the north, but they are all in fact of no great worth. Even a slight intercourse with them gives you at once a knowledge of them. They are great thieves, and if they cannot lay hold of any thing with their hands, they try to do so with their feet, as we have oftentimes learned by experience. I am of opinion that if they had any thing to exchange with us they would not give themselves to thieving. They bartered away to us their bows, arrows, and quivers for pins and buttons; and if they had had any thing else better they would have done the same with it. It is necessary to be on one's guard against this people and live in a state of distrust of them, yet without letting them perceive it. {40} This passage at least shows that Champlain sought to be just to the savages of the Atlantic. Though he found them thieves, he is willing to conjecture that they would not steal if they had anything to trade. The thieving habits of the Cape Cod Indians led to a fight between them and the French in which one Frenchman was killed, and Champlain narrowly escaped death through the explosion of his own musket. At Cape Cod De Monts turned back. Five of the six weeks allotted to the voyage were over, and lack of food made it impossible to enter Long Island Sound. Hence 'Sieur de Monts determined to return to the Island of St Croix in order to find a place more favourable for our settlement, as we had not been able to do on any of the coasts which he had explored during this voyage.' We now approach the picturesque episode of Port Royal. De Monts, having regained St Croix at the beginning of August, lost no time in transporting his people to the other side of the Bay of Fundy. The consideration which weighed most with him in establishing his headquarters was that of trade. Whatever his own preferences, he could not forget that his partners in France expected a return {41} on their investment. Had he been in a position to found an agricultural colony, the maize fields he had seen to the south-west might have proved attractive. But he depended largely upon trade, and, as Champlain points out, the savages of Massachusetts had nothing to sell. Hence it was unwise to go too far from the peltries of the St Lawrence. To find a climate less severe than that of Canada, without losing touch with the fur trade, was De Monts' problem. No one could dream of wintering again at St Croix, and in the absence of trade possibilities to the south there seemed but one alternative--Port Royal.