Nevertheless, whatever the Astrologers may say, it must be confessed that that country (generally speaking, and as it is at present) is colder than our France, and that they differ greatly from each other in regard to weather and seasons. The causes thereof not being in the sky, we must seek them upon the earth. I shall show accurately some experiments I made continuously for two years and a half, I might say three years and a half, only I consumed nearly a year at various times in voyages away from the Mainland. The place [11] where I remained the longest was Port Royal, almost on the 45th parallel of north latitude. Now at that place the snow came towards the end of November, and it never entirely thawed in the woods until about the last of February, unless, as often happened, a heavy rain, or strong South wind came to melt it. But no sooner did this snow melt than more fell. Outside the woods, and in the open places, it did not last any longer than it does in France, but it snows oftener there than it usually does in France. The deepest snow I have seen in that country was not quite a foot and a half. When the Northwest wind (which we call here Galerne) lashes itself into a fury, the cold there is insufferable, but it lasts only eight or ten days at the most, then the weather becomes milder for a while, as it is in France, [12] and people would no longer be prevented from going on with their work, or even from going back and forth, as in France, if they had the same accommodations we have here. But whatever I saw here was extreme poverty. Some wretched cabins, open in many places; our food, peas and beans, rather scarce in quantity; our drink, pure water; the clothes of our people all in rags; our supplies found in the woods from day to day; our medicine a glass of wine on great holidays; our restoratives, perchance a trifle from the chase of a little feathered game; the place uninhabited, no footprints upon the paths, our shoes only fit for the fireside. After this, go and say there is no winter in Canada. But at least do not say that the water there is not [13] excellent, and the air not healthful; for it is certainly wonderful that, notwithstanding all these discomforts, we always kept our health, being never less than twenty in number, and that in three years only two of us died of disease, one a man from St. Malo and the other a Breton; yet the latter died more for want of a little bread and wine to restore him (there being a dearth of all those things) than from the gravity of the symptoms or malignancy of the disease.