explorations where the two rivers invited to the west and northwest, so
Cartier joined the companions who had been left near Quebec to build a
fort and make ready for the winter. As if to recall that bitter weather,
the hail beat upon the windows of the museum at St. Malo on the day when I
was examining there the relics of the vessel which Cartier was obliged to
leave in the Canadian river, because so many of his men had died of scurvy
and exposure that he had not sufficient crew to man the three ships home.
And probably not a man would have been left and not even the _Grande
Hermine_ would have come back if a specific for scurvy had not been found
before the end of the winter--a decoction learned of the Indians and made
from the bark or leaves of a tree so efficacious that if all the "doctors
of Lorraine and Montpellier had been there, with all the drugs of
Alexandria, they could not have done so much in a year as the said tree
did in six days; for it profited us so much that all those who would use
it recovered health and soundness, thanks to God."

Cartier appears again in July, 1536, before the ramparts of St. Malo with
two of his vessels. The savages on the St. Charles were given the _Petite
Hermine_, [Footnote: James Phinney Baxter, "A Memoir of Jacques Cartier,"
p. 200, writes: "The remains of this ship, the _Petite Hermine_, were
discovered in 1843, in the river St. Charles, at the mouth of the rivulet
known as the Lairet. These precious relics were found buried under five
feet of mud, and were divided into two portions, one of which was placed
in the museum of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, and
destroyed by fire in 1854. The other portion was sent to the museum at St.
Malo, where it now remains. For a particular account _vide Le Canadien_ of
August 25, and the _Quebec Gazette_ of August 30, 1843; 'Transactions of
the Quebec Literary and Historical Society for 1862'; and 'Picturesque
Quebec,' Le Moine, Montreal, 1862, pp. 484-7."] its nails being accepted
in part requital for the temporary loss of their chief. Donnacona, whom