In Dale's years there rises above the English horizon the cloud of New
France. The old, disaster-haunted Huguenot colony in Florida was a thing of
the past, to be mourned for when the Spaniard wiped it out--for at that
time England herself was not in America. But now that she was established
there, with some hundreds of men in a Virginia that stretched from Spanish
Florida to Nova Scotia, the French shadow seemed ominous. And just in
this farther region, amid fir-trees and snow, upon the desolate Bay of
Fundy, the French for some years had been keeping the breath of life in a
huddle of cabins named Port Royal. More than this, and later than the Port
Royal building, Frenchmen--Jesuits that!--were trying a settlement on an
island now called Mount Desert, off a coast now named Maine. The Virginia
Company-doubtless with some reference back to the King and Privy
Council--De La Warr, Gates, the deputy governor, and Dale, the High
Marshal, appear to have been of one mind as to these French settlements. Up
north there was still Virginia--in effect, England! Hands off, therefore,
all European peoples speaking with an un-English tongue!

Now it happened about this time that Captain Samuel Argall received a
commission "to go fishing," and that he fished off that coast that is now
the coast of Maine, and brought his ship to anchor by Mount Desert. Argall,
a swift and high-handed person, fished on dry land. He swept into his net
the Jesuits on Mount Desert, set half of them in an open boat to meet with
what ship they might, and brought the other half captive to Jamestown.
Later, he appeared before Port Royal, where he burned the cabins, slew the
cattle, and drove into the forest the settler Frenchmen. But Port Royal and
the land about it called Acadia, though much hurt, survived Argall's
fishing.*

* Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with attacking not only
the French in Acadia but the Dutch traders on Manhattan. But there are