trusted, he made up his mind to depend upon no one but himself, and put to sea on the twenty-sixth of February; the [13] weather being very unfavorable, he made the longest voyage of which I have ever heard; certainly our own, three years ago, was tedious enough, when we drifted about upon the sea for the space of two months and a half before reaching Port Royal. But this one lasted three whole months, so that one reckless man was about to mutiny, going so far as to form wicked conspiracies; but Sieur de Poutrincourt's kindness, and respect for the place where he lived in Paris, served as a shield to protect his life. [_Terrir, meaning to discover the land._] The first coast which Sieur de Poutrincourt discovered was port Mouton; there, among the fogs which are very common in this sea during the Summer, he encountered serious dangers, principally in the neighborhood of Cape Sable, where his ship came near foundering. [_History of New France, book 2, chap. 37, p. 527._] Thence, in trying to reach Port Royal, he was carried by violent winds forty leagues beyond, namely to the Norombega river,[11] so celebrated and so fabulously described by Geographers and Historians, as I have shown in my said History, where this voyage may be seen in the geographical Chart [14] which I have inserted therein. Thence he came to the river saint John, which is opposite Port Royal beyond French Bay,[12] where he found a ship from St. Malo trading with the Savages of the country. Here complaint was made to him by a Captain of the Savages, that one of the crew of the said ship had stolen away his wife and was abusing her: the Sieur informed himself about the matter and then made a prisoner of the malefactor and seized the ship.[13] But he released the ship and the sailors, contenting himself by retaining the guilty one, who escaped, however, in a shallop, and went off with the Savages, prejudicing them against the French, as we shall relate hereafter. Arrived at last at Port Royal, it is impossible to describe the joy with which these poor people received the Sieur and his company. And, in truth, there was still greater reason for this joy, since they had lost all hope of ever again seeing the French live among them. They had had some experience of our kind treatment while we were there, and, seeing themselves deprived of it, they wept bitterly when we left them three years ago.