It was the custom of the Indian tribes, after the gathering and storing away of their harvests, to commence hunting with the first fall of the leaves, probably about the middle of September. The chase, during this period, was seldom such as to carry them far from the fields which they had watched during the summer. Near at hand, for a season at least, the game was in sufficient quantity to supply their wants. But, as the season advanced, and towards the months of January, February and March, they gradually passed into the deeper thickets, and disappeared from their temporary habitations. During this period, they build up new abodes, which are equally frail, in the regions to which they go, and which are contiguous to the hunting-grounds which they are about to penetrate. To these retreats the whole tribe retires; and hither they carry all the commodities which are valuable in their eyes. Their summer dwellings are thus as completely stripped as if the region were abandoned forever. This removal, for which their previous experience should sufficiently have prepared our Frenchmen, was yet destined to have for them some very pernicious results. We have seen that certain subsidies of corn and beans had been procured from various tribes and nations; enough, according to Laudonniere, to serve them until the arrival of expected succors from France. But, calculating on these succors, and confident of their arrival during the month of April, our Frenchmen had become profligate of their stores. April found them straitened for provisions, and not an Indian could be seen. April passed slowly and brought no succor. With the month of May the Indians had returned to their former abodes; but, by this time, their remaining stock of grain had mostly found its way into the ground, in the setting of another crop. From the savages, accordingly, nothing but scanty supplies of fish could be procured, without which, says Laudonniere, "assuredly wee had perished from famine." Of the incompetence of this captain, and the wretched order which prevailed among his garrison, his incapacity and other incompetence, this statement affords sufficient proof. They neither tilled the earth for its grain, nor sounded the river for its finny tribes; though these realms were quite as much under their dominion as that of the savages; but they relied solely upon this capricious and inferior race, in the exploration of land and sea, for maintaining them against starvation. May succeeded to April, and still in vain did our Frenchmen look forth upon the sea, for the ships of their distant countrymen. June came, and their wants increased. They fell finally into famine, of which Laudonniere himself affords us a sufficiently impressive picture.