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Port Royal National Historic Site (mid-May to mid-Oct daily 9am-6pm; $2.75), 12km west of Annapolis Royal on the opposite side of the Annapolis River, was where Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Sieur de Monts first set up camp in 1605 after their dreadful winter on the Ile Saint-Croix. Their scurvy-ridden men, scared of English attack, hastily constructed a habitation similar in design to the fortified farms of France, where a square of rough-hewn, black-painted timber buildings presented a stern, partly stockaded face to any enemy. The stronghold dominated the estuary from a low bluff, as does today's replica, a painstaking reconstruction relying solely on the building techniques of the early seventeenth century. The habitation was captured by roving Virginians in 1613 and passed over to the British, who, led by Sir William Alexander, settled the district in 1629. This venture was enthusiastically supported by King James I, who wished to found a New Scotland - in the Latin of the deeds, "Nova Scotia" - near Port Royal, but after three years of hardship and starvation, the Scots settlers were forced to withdraw, like their French predecessors. For both French and Scot settlers alike, the problem of survival was compounded by acute boredom during the months of winter isolation. To pass the time Champlain constituted the Order of Good Cheer , whose "entertainment's programme" starred the poet Marc Lescarbot - though the role hardly filled him with colonial zeal, to judge from a poem he wrote for a gang of departing buddies: We among the savages are lost
And dwell bewildered on this clammy coast
Deprived of due content and pleasures bright
Which you at once enjoy when France you sight. There are no bus services from Annapolis Royal to the habitation .
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