round our buildings, on the outside, at the second storey,
which proved very convenient. There were also ditches,
fifteen feet wide and six deep. On the outer side of the
ditches I constructed several spurs, which enclosed a
part of the dwelling, at the points where we placed our
cannon. Before the habitation there is a place four
fathoms wide and six or seven long, looking out upon the
river-bank. Surrounding the habitation are very good
gardens.'

Three dwellings of eighteen by fifteen feet each were a
sufficiently modest starting-point for continental
ambitions, even when supplemented by a storehouse of
thirty-six feet by eighteen. In calling the gardens very
good Champlain must have been speaking with relation to
the circumstances, or else they were very small, for
there is abundant witness to the sufferings which Quebec
in its first twenty years might have escaped with the
help of really abundant gardens. At St Croix and Port
Royal an attempt had been made to plant seeds, and at
Quebec Champlain doubtless renewed the effort, though
with small practical result. The point is important in
its bearing on the nature of the settlement. Quebec,
despite such gardens as surrounded the habitation, was
by origin an outpost of the fur trade, with a small,
floating, and precarious population. Louis Hebert, the
first real colonist, did not come till 1617.

Lacking vegetables, Quebec fed itself in part from the
river and the forest. But almost all the food was brought