On the 24th May, in the midst of these agricultural enterprises, a boat arrived in the bay, in charge of a young man from St. Malo, named Chevalier, who had come out in command of the "Jonas," which he had left at Canseau engaged in fishing for the purpose of making up a return cargo of that commodity. Chevalier brought two items of intelligence of great interest to the colonists, but differing widely in their character. The one was the birth of a French prince, the Duke of Orleans; the other, that the company of De Monts had been broken up, his monopoly of the fur-trade withdrawn, and his colony ordered to return to France. The birth of a prince demanded expressions of joy, and the event was loyally celebrated by bonfires and a _Te Deum_. It was, however, giving a song when they would gladly have hung their harps upon the willows. While the scheme of De Monts's colonial enterprise was defective, containing in itself a principle which must sooner or later work its ruin, the disappointment occasioned by its sudden termination was none the less painful and humiliating. The monopoly on which it was based could only be maintained by a degree of severity and apparent injustice, which always creates enemies and engenders strife. The seizure and confiscation of several ships with their valuable cargoes on the shores of Nova Scotia, had awakened a personal hostility in influential circles in France, and the sufferers were able, in turn, to strike back a damaging blow upon the author of their losses. They easily and perhaps justly represented that the monopoly of the fur-trade secured to De Monts was sapping the national commerce and diverting to personal emolument revenues that properly belonged to the state. To an impoverished sovereign with an empty treasury this appeal was irresistible. The sacredness of the king's commission and the loss to the patentee of the property already embarked in the enterprise had no weight in the royal scales. De Monts's privilege was revoked, with the tantalizing salvo of six thousand livres in remuneration, to be collected at his own expense from unproductive sources. Under these circumstances, no money for the payment of the workmen or provisions for the coming winter had been sent out, and De Poutrincourt, with great reluctance, proceeded to break up the establishment. The goods and utensils, as well as specimens of the grain which they had raised, were to be carefully packed and sent round to the harbor of Canseau, to be shipped by the "Jonas," together with the whole body of the colonists, as soon as she should have received her cargo of fish.