De Monts was anxious to ascertain the location of a mine of pure copper which had been spoken of, and accordingly he despatched Champlain, with a savage named Messamouet, who asserted that he could find the place. At about eight leagues from the island, near the river St. John, they found a mine of copper, which, however, was not pure, though fairly good. According to the report of the miner, it would yield about eighteen per cent. Lescarbot says that amidst the rocks, diamonds and some blue and clear stones could be found as precious as turquoises. Champdore, one of the carpenters, took one of these stones to France, and had it divided into many fragments and mounted by an artist. De Monts and Poutrincourt, to whom they were presented, considered these gems so valuable that they offered them to the king. A goldsmith offered Poutrincourt fifteen crown pieces for one of them. Agriculture did not flourish on the island of Ste. Croix, which is about half a league in circumference. The rays of the sun parched the sand so that the gardens were entirely unproductive, and there was a complete dearth of water. At the commencement there was a fair quantity of wood, but when the buildings were finished there was scarcely any left; the inhabitants, consequently, nearly perished from cold in the winter. All the liquor, wine and beer became frozen, and as there was no water the people were compelled to drink melted snow. A malignant epidemic of scurvy broke out, and of seventy-nine persons thirty-five died from the disease and more than twenty were at the point of death. This disease proved one of the obstacles to rapid colonization in New France. It was epidemic, contagious and often fatal. It is a somewhat remarkable fact that the epidemic was prevalent amongst the French only when they were established on the soil, being rarely discovered on ship-board. Jacques Cartier had experienced the horrors of this disease in the winter of 1535-6, when out of his one hundred and ten men twenty-five died, and only three or four remained altogether free from attack. During the year 1542-3, Roberval saw fifty persons dying of the disease at Charlesbourg Royal. At Ste. Croix the proportion of deaths was still greater, thirty-five out of seventy-nine. There was a physician attached to de Monts' party, but he did not understand the disease, and therefore could not satisfactorily prescribe for it. De Monts also consulted many physicians in Paris, but he did not receive answers that were of much service to him. At the commencement of the seventeenth century scientific men distinguished scurvy on land from scurvy on sea. They laboured under the false impression that the one differed from the other. Champlain called the disease _mal de terre_. It is certain, however, that the symptoms did not vary in either case, as we may ascertain from the descriptions furnished by Jacques Cartier and Champlain.