The French now settled down into their winter quarters. They seem for some time to have mingled freely with the Indians of the Stadacona settlement, especially during the month which yet remained before the rigour of winter locked their ships in snow and ice. Cartier, being of an observing and accurate turn of mind, has left in his narrative some interesting notes upon the life and ideas of the savages. They had, he said, no belief in a true God. Their deity, Cudragny, was supposed to tell them the weather, and, if angry, to throw dust into their eyes. They thought that, when they died, they would go to the stars, and after that, little by little, sink with the stars to earth again, to where the happy hunting grounds lie on the far horizon of the world. To correct their ignorance, Cartier told them of the true God and of the verities of the Christian faith. In the end the savages begged that he would baptize them, and on at least one occasion a great flock of them came to him, hoping to be received into the faith. But Cartier, as he says, having nobody with him 'who could teach them our belief and religion,' and doubting, also, the sincerity of their sudden conversion, put them off with the promise that at his next coming he would bring priests and holy oil and cause them to be baptized. The Stadacona Indians seem to have lived on terms of something like community of goods. Their stock of food--including great quantities of pumpkins, peas, and corn--was more or less in common. But, beyond this and their lodges, their earthly possessions were few. They dressed somewhat scantily in skins, and even in the depth of winter were so little protected from the cold as to excite the wonder of their observers. Women whose husbands died never remarried, but went about with their faces smeared thick with mingled grease and soot. One peculiar custom of the natives especially attracted the attention of their visitors, and for the oddity of the thing may best be recorded in Cartier's manner. It is an early account of the use of tobacco. 'There groweth also,' he wrote, 'a certain kind of herb, whereof in summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great account of it, and only men use it, and first they cause it to be dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks, wrapped in a little beast's skin made like a little bag, with a hollow piece of wood or stone like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it, at the other end suck so long that they fill their bodies full of smoke till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the funnel of a chimney. They say that it doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and, having put it in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper.'