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.

The position of the settlement was soon proved to be untenable, and de
Monts was certainly to blame for this unhappy state of affairs. Why did
he abandon Port Royal, where he had found abundant water? Champlain,
however, defends the action of his chief.