[Footnote 8: "There groweth also 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 bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and 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 tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
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." The foregoing is
one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.]

As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
smoked provisions--forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
had been greeted, the Amerindians--notably the two interpreters who
had been to France and returned--showed at intervals signs of disquiet
and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and