CHAPTER V.

STAMPING A FRENCH NAME ON THE

MAP OF

AMERICA.

HO puts names on our maps?

WHO

Did you

ever think? If you could have looked into a certain house in the wastes of Nova Scotia one winter day two hundred and seventy-seven years ago, you would have seen such a man. Let us take a glimpse of him through the spectacles of the fascinating historian of "The Pioneers of France in the New World." We must, however, look on the map of Nova Scotia first, to see just where the place is of which we are speaking. There is a great arm of the sea called the Bay of It has rather a droll or Fundy. funny" name, some of us think. It is a corruption of the one the French stamped upon it years ago. When a name is stamped on a coin it does not always remain clear and readable, and thus it is with the

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names given to bays and towns and lands. The first settlers of Canada called the region New France, but few think of that name now. They sailed up to the end of the Bay of Fundy and named the waters there la Fond de la Baie, which is the French for the bottom or end of the bay. After a while people began to call it " Fond d'la Baie," then "Fondy Bay," and at last," Bay of Fundy," which means nothing at all. In the course of time the name was given to the whole body of water.

On the western shore of this great bay, you will notice a narrow inlet admitting ships to a great sound called Annapolis basin. On the shore of this basin, at about the present site of the town of Annapolis, there was, at the time of which I am writing, a fort called after the body of water on which it lay, Port Royal. There was a quadrangle of wooden buildings enclosing a large court, protected by palisades and by cannon mounted on a bastion. There were such storehouses and quarters for soldiers as one often sees connected with fortifications, though they were rude and new.

There were garden patches, and that sad necessity, a cemetery, and beyond that the ground was marked by the decaying stumps of the trees that had been cut for the purposes of the fort and the buildings connected with it. It was not an attractive place on the outside.

Let us open the door of one of the buildings. It is a dining-hall, and there are tokens that a feast is soon to begin. It is noon. A procession appears at the hall door. A French "Grand Master " leads. A napkin is thrown over his shoulder, the staff indicative of his office is in his hand, and about his neck is displayed a costly collar - the collar of his order for he belongs to a

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brotherhood established here in the wilderness. Each member of the order follows, bearing a dish which he places smoking on the table. When all are in the room, we find that there are fifteen Frenchmen, a few Indian chiefs, invited by them, and, about the room, crouching perhaps in the corners, are Indian braves, squaws, and even children, looking with pleased expressions of anxiety for the coveted luxuries that they expect to drop

from the well-furnished table into their hands, for they know that the gay feasters have a kind heart for them on account of the help they give in hunting and trapping expeditions.

On this table might be seen from time to time all the juicy game of the northern forests, all the luscious fish of the clear waters of the rivers and bay, and the few vegetables that the new gardens, rescued from the forest, could afford. The fifteen men form the Order of Luxurious Leisure, or, as they expressed it in French, L' Ordre de Bon-Temps. They were Pathfinders in the woods of New France, but they did not think it necessary to give up all of the comforts of life because they were engaged in a serious work. It was the man who stamped his name on our map who formed the new order. He knew how to manage men, and he made it one of the rules of the order that each member should be Grand Master in turn, holding office but for a day. He ordained that this official should be autocrat in the kitchen and responsible for the dinners and suppers of the others, and thus he insured good meals every day; for of course

each member wished to keep up his credit with
the others and to make sure that his dinners should
not be inferior to any that should be provided by
his fellows. Was it not an ingenious device?

Breakfast and supper were not so formal as din-
ner, of course, but at night all gathered about the
great fire on the hearth and talked as the flames
crackled and the sparks thronged up the wide-
mouthed chimney, seemingly hurrying to get out
into the frosty air. The brown wild men of the
forest wrapped in their robes joined as well as

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they could in the good fellowship, until at the
evening's close, the Grand Master passed to his
successor the collar and the staff of office, and
pledged him in a glass of wine, for French wine
was so plenty in the woods that there was always
enough and to spare.

Spring came after that winter of festivity, and
all were on the alert. They built mills, laid out
gardens, enclosed larger fields, gathered turpen-
tine, and engaged in all the processes of primitive
agriculture, and in the works that were appropri-
ate to build up a colony. It was noptohet

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