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PIONEERS IN CANADA
By
SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
With Eight Coloured Illustrations by E. Wallcousins
1912
[Illustration: TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
PIONEERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
The Pioneer Library
A standard series by Sir Harry Johnston. Tastefully bound.
Pioneers in Australasia.
Pioneers in Canada.
Pioneers in South Africa.
Pioneers in West Africa.
Pioneers in Tropical America.
Pioneers in India.
PREFACE
I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
"real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
(and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
and treacherous.
A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
Ceylon, might--if they have any consciousness or care for things in
this world--be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
sowed.
It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
author of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.
I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
natural history book.
I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
to be founded.
You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
pronounced _a_ = ah, _e_ = eh, _i_ = ee, _o_ = o, _ô_ = oh,
_[¯o]_ = aw, _ö_ = u in 'hurt', and _u_ = oo, as in German, Italian, or
most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
H. H. JOHNSTON.
CONTENTS
I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA............... 15
II. JACQUES CARTIER.......................................... 29
III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA.................... 45
IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA................... 53
V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI........ 88
VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION.....120
VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO: THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA.......................................153
VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF
ALL CANADA..........................................202
IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL: ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER....211
X. SAMUEL HEARNE............................................248
XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS...........................277
XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS...................................313
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATES
Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
Sixteenth Century _Frontispiece_
Icebergs and Polar Bears
Indians hunting Bison
Indians lying in wait for Moose
Caribou swimming a River
Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear
Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains
BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
Jacques Cartier
Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder
An Amerindian Type of British Columbia
Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains
Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie
The Upper Waters of the Fraser River
The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River
A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
Blue Grouse
Map of Canada
Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia
List of the Chief Authorities
FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
UNIVERSITY
_The Saint Lawrence Basin_. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
Lawrence & Bullen.
_Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
1534_; Documents inédits, &c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
_Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534_, &c. Par H.
MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
_Champlain's Voyages_: The Publications of the Prince Society.
Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
_Voyage of Verrazano_, &c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
(Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
1909.)
_Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
Canada_. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
Newfoundland.)
_The Search for the Western Sea_. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
Alston Rivers. 1908.
_Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
France_, &c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
_Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
the years 1760 and 1776_. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
_Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
and 1793_, &c. &c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
_A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
Ocean_, &c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_. By L.R. MASSON.
Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
_New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West_: The
Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
_Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada_. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
_Henry Hudson the Navigator_, &c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
Society, 1860.
_The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
_The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator_. By Admiral Sir
ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
_The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622_. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
MARKHAM. London. 1881.
CHAPTER I
The White Man's Discovery of North America
So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
Man originated in the Old World--in Asia possibly. Long after this
wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
waves.
The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
the northern part of Europe and Asia.
It was--we think--from the far _north-west_ of Europe that America was
first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
and the Amerindian.[1] All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2]
Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
[Footnote 1: This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
"American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
States, the remainder in Central and South America.]
[Footnote 2: It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]
Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
countries by the names they still bear.
The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
(more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)--for the whole interior of
Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
to 11,000 ft.--this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased
completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (_vinbær_) on
the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
Scotia.[3]
[Footnote 3: The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
August and October. They belong to the same genus--_Vitis_--as that of
the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (_Vitis vulpina_),
the Frost Grape (_V. cordifolia_), the _V. aestivalis_, the _V.
labruska_, &c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
delicious to eat.]
This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
"Skræling",[4] who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
and carried off others into the interior.
[Footnote 4: Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name _Karalit_.]
But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
Norway and Iceland.[5] It is thought that by this means Venice became
acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
[Footnote 5: Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.]
Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
drowned savages--Amerindians--which had somehow drifted across, borne
by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
sharks.
Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)--Genoese by birth, but
a naturalized subject of Venice--came to England and offered himself
to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the _Matthew_, and a
crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named[6]) on
June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
fisheries of Britain.[7]
[Footnote 6: Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
"island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
English legends--legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
strait no broader than a river.]
[Footnote 7: Dr. S.E. DAWSON (_The St. Lawrence Basin_) says of this
voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
ocean...."]
They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
Venetian standard of St. Mark; then--perhaps after coasting a little
along Nova Scotia--fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
short of provisions, he turned the prow of the _Matthew_ eastward, and
reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
donation of £10. He was further granted a pension of £20 a year (which
he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
year.
The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
the western sea.
There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
(according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38°),
because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
York.[8]
[Footnote 8: Almost certainly this was _Conurus carolinensis_, a green
and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.]
But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
"Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
Italians, and Spaniards.[9] It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
Newfoundland--already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
Portuguese--and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
[Footnote 9: The name _America_ probably appears for the first time in
English print in the old play or masque the _Four Elements_, which was
published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
Florentine bank clerk--Amerigo Vespucci--at Seville who gave up the
counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of
St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.]
The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.[10] They may
even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
banks of Newfoundland--an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
codfish.
[Footnote 10: _Bacalhao_ in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
stickfish.]
As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
"Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,[11] and thence crossed
over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh--all the salt is left
out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
a trace.
[Footnote 11: _Labrador_ (_Lavrador_ in Portuguese) means a labourer,
a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
from this coast to be sold as slaves.]
Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
which (under the name of Terra Nova[12]) the governorship was made
hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example--the most
prominent point of the island--is really the Portuguese _Cabo
Raso_--the bare or "shaved" cape--and this was by the Spaniards
regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain--Magalhães
(Magellan)--discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
Portuguese--Estevão Gomez--to find a similar sea route through North
America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
ice.
[Footnote 12: Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
Neuve".]
Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
sticks to the locality--in Deer Island--at the present day. But this
being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
(from Portuguese word, _Fundo_, the bottom of a sack or passage),
explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
Scotia,[13] past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
[Footnote 13: The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
called by the French "Acadie".]
From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
sea and be unnavigable.
At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known--at any rate from
1504--ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango--a great merchant of Dieppe of
that day--to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
requisite funds and ships.
Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
Ocean.
Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
America to four Italians.