Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/102

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  • ence, first under De Monts, and then under his successor, Pourtrincourt,

until 1610, when some new life was infused into it by the arrival of certain Jesuit missionaries, who, at the instance of the Marquise de Guercheville, to whom De Monts had resigned his claim to Acadia, proposed making the little colony the nucleus of a church in the wilderness, into which the natives were to be gradually enticed.

The success of the first missionaries was sufficient to induce others to follow their example; and, in 1613, an earnest Frenchman named La Saussaye arrived at Port Royal, with two more Jesuit priests and thirty-eight men, with whom, having obtained a guide, he started to sail up the Penobscot, intending to plant a second church at the Indian village of Kadesquit, now Bangor.

MOUNT DESERT ISLE.

A dense fog prevented the mouth of the river being perceived; and, when it cleared away, La Saussaye found himself opposite the beautiful island of Grand Manan, already visited by Champlain, and called by him Mont Desert, with the mighty rock now known as Great Head standing out against the forest-clad buttresses of the Green and Newport Mountains. So beautiful did Grand Manan appear to the French visitors, and so wide a mission-