just begun on Mount Desert Island the mission of St
Sauveur. This Argall raided and destroyed. He then went
on and ravaged Port Royal. And its occupants, young
Biencourt and a handful of companions, were forced to
take to a wandering life among the Indians.

Twenty years passed before the French made another
organized effort to colonize Acadia. The interval, however,
was not without events which had a bearing on the later
fortunes of the colony. Missionaries from Quebec, both
Recollets and Jesuits, took up their abode among the
Indians, on the river St John and at Nipisiguit on Chaleur
Bay. Trading companies exploited the fur fields and the
fisheries, and French vessels visited the coasts every
summer. It was during this period that the English Puritans
landed at Plymouth (1620), at Salem (1628), and at Boston
(1630), and made a lodgment there on the south-west flank
of Acadia. The period, too, saw Sir William Alexander's
Scots in Nova Scotia and saw the English Kirkes raiding
the settlements of New France. [Footnote: See The Jesuit
Missions in this Series, chap. iv.]

The Baron de Poutrincourt died in 1615, leaving his estate
to his son Biencourt. And after Biencourt's own death in
1623, it was found that he had bequeathed a considerable
fortune, including all his property and rights in Acadia,
to his friend and companion, that interesting and
resourceful adventurer, Charles de la Tour. This man,
when a lad of fourteen, and his father, Claude de la
Tour, had come out to Acadia in the service of Poutrincourt.