The issuance of this patent was immediately followed by an attempt at settlement, de Monts and Champlain, both of whom had previously been in Canada, sailing with a hundred and twenty men in the spring following the receipt of the grant. Buildings were erected, and the first winter passed on the island of St. Croix, in the mouth of the river of the same name, which empties into Passamaquoddy Bay.[75] It was thus the first authorized attempt to colonize any part of New England. The choice of a site had been unfortunate, and in the following spring, the colony removed to Nova Scotia, where it lasted two years more before the cancellation of the grant resulted in its abandonment. A lively and entertaining account of life in the colony was written by a genial lawyer, who was one of its members, and the attention with which American affairs were then being watched is indicated by the appearance of an English translation in the same year in which the original came out in Paris.[76] During the three years of his stay, Champlain was indefatigable in exploring the coast, making three principal voyages along the shores of New England, which he described and mapped as far south as the present settlement of Chatham, in Massachusetts. Footnote 75: H. S. Burrage, _Beginnings of Colonial Maine_ (Portland, 1914), p. 32. Footnote 76: Marc Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_; Paris, 1609. The coast of Maine and the shores of Massachusetts Bay were carefully studied for sites for settlement, and the former was for long to form a debatable land between French and English. These years also saw the foundation laid of the friendship between French and Indian, which was to cost the English dear. De Monts's patent contemplated trade with the natives, rather than an agricultural colony; and the French empire in America, as has already been noted, consisted mainly of a series of trading-posts. It was to the interest of the French that the Indian should remain, as he himself wished, a hunter; whereas the growth of the English agricultural colonies denied him the possibility of continuing his savage life, without, on the other hand, absorbing him into civilization. It was not merely that the French, in the main, were tactful and friendly, accepting the Indian as he was, and even intermarrying, while the English were harsh and disdainful. It may be said that one Indian required to sustain his life approximately as many square miles as the English agriculturist, with his domestic animals, needed acres. On the other hand, the uses to which the French put the soil were identical with those for which it served the savage. The English, indeed, “bought” land, which the French never did; but the French and the Indian shared the soil to the profit of both, while the English deprived the native of his means of subsistence, in exchange for coats and beads.[77] Not that they did so intentionally; but the consequence was inevitable.