1604, 1605.
ACADIA OCCUPIED.
De Monts, with one of his vessels, sailed from Havre de Grace on the
seventh of April, 1604. Pontgrave, with stores for the colony, was to
follow in a few days.
Scarcely were they at sea, when ministers and priests fell first to
discussion, then to quarrelling, then to blows. "I have seen our
cure and the minister," says Champlain, "fall to with their fists on
questions of faith. I cannot say which had the more pluck, or which hit
the harder; but I know that the minister sometimes complained to the
Sieur de Monts that he had been beaten. This was their way of settling
points of controversy. I leave you to judge if it was a pleasant thing
to see."
Sagard, the Franciscan friar, relates with horror, that, after their
destination was reached, a priest and a minister happening to die at the
same time, the crew buried them both in one grave, to see if they would
lie peaceably together.
De Monts, who had been to the St. Lawrence with Chauvin, and learned
to dread its rigorous winters, steered for a more southern, and, as he
flattered himself, a milder region. The first land seen was Cap la Heve,
on the southern coast of Nova Scotia. Four days later, they entered a
small bay, where, to their surprise, they saw a vessel lying at anchor.
here was a piece of good luck. The stranger was a fur-trader, pursuing
her traffic in defiance, or more probably in ignorance, of De Monts's
monopoly. The latter, as empowered by his patent, made prize of ship and
cargo, consoling the commander, one Rossignol, by giving his name to the
scene of his misfortune. It is now called Liverpool Harbor.
In an adjacent harbor, called by them Port Mouton, because a sheep here
leaped overboard, they waited nearly a month for Pontgrave's store-ship.
At length, to their great relief, she appeared, laden with the spoils
of four Basque fur-traders, captured at Cansean. The supplies delivered,
Pontgrave sailed for Tadoussac to trade with the Indians, while De
Monts, followed by his prize, proceeded on his voyage.
He doubled Cape Sable, and entered St. Mary's Bay, where he lay two
weeks, sending boats' crews to explore the adjacent coasts. A party
one day went on shore to stroll through the forest, and among them was
Nicolas Aubry, a priest from Paris, who, tiring of the scholastic haunts
of the Rue de la Sorbonne and the Rue d'Enfer, had persisted, despite
the remonstrance of his friends, in joining the expedition. Thirsty
with a long walk, under the sun of June, through the tangled and
rock-encumbered woods, he stopped to drink at a brook, laying his sword
beside him on the grass. On rejoining his companions, he found that he
had forgotten it; and turning back in search of it, more skilled in the
devious windings of the Quartier Latin than in the intricacies of the
Acadian forest, he soon lost his way. His comrades, alarmed, waited
for a time, and then ranged the woods, shouting his name to the echoing
solitudes. Trumpets were sounded, and cannon fired from the ships, but
the priest did not appear. All now looked askance on a certain Huguenot,
with whom Aubry had often quarrelled on questions of faith, and who was
now accused of having killed him. In vain he denied the charge. Aubry
was given up for dead, and the ship sailed from St. Mary's Bay; while
the wretched priest roamed to and fro, famished and despairing, or,
couched on the rocky soil, in the troubled sleep of exhaustion, dreamed,
perhaps, as the wind swept moaning through the pines, that he heard once
more the organ roll through the columned arches of Sainte Genevieve.
The voyagers proceeded to explore the Bay of Fundy, which De Monts
called La Baye Francoise. Their first notable discovery was that
of Annapolis Harbor. A small inlet invited them. They entered, when
suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquil basin,
compassed by sunny hills, wrapped in woodland verdure, and alive with
waterfalls. Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene. The fancy seized
him of removing thither from France with his family and, to this end, he
asked a grant of the place from De Monts, who by his patent had nearly
half the continent in his gift. The grant was made, and Poutrincourt
called his new domain Port Royal.
Thence they sailed round the head of the Bay of Fundy, coasted its
northern shore, visited and named the river St. John, and anchored at
last in Passamaquoddy Bay.
The untiring Champlain, exploring, surveying, sounding, had made charts
of all the principal roads and harbors; and now, pursuing his research,
he entered a river which he calls La Riviere des Etechemins, from
the name of the tribe of whom the present Passamaquoddy Indians are
descendants. Near its mouth he found an islet, fenced round with rocks
and shoals, and called it St. Croix, a name now borne by the river
itself. With singular infelicity this spot was chosen as the site of
the new colony. It commanded the river, and was well fitted for defence:
these were its only merits; yet cannon were landed on it, a battery
was planted on a detached rock at one end, and a fort begun on a rising
ground at the other.
At St. Mary's Bay the voyagers thought they had found traces of iron
and silver; and Champdore, the pilot, was now sent back to pursue the
search. As he and his men lay at anchor, fishing, not far from land,
one of them heard a strange sound, like a weak human voice; and, looking
towards the shore, they saw a small black object in motion, apparently a
hat waved on the end of a stick. Rowing in haste to the spot, they
found the priest Aubry. For sixteen days he had wandered in the woods,
sustaining life on berries and wild fruits; and when, haggard and
emaciated, a shadow of his former self, Champdore carried him back to
St. Croix, he was greeted as a man risen from the grave.
In 1783 the river St. Croix, by treaty, was made the boundary between
Maine and New Brunswick. But which was the true St. Croix? In 1798, the
point was settled. De Monts's island was found; and, painfully searching
among the sand, the sedge, and the matted whortleberry bushes, the
commissioners could trace the foundations of buildings long crumbled
into dust; for the wilderness had resumed its sway, and silence
and solitude brooded once more over this ancient resting-place of
civilization.
But while the commissioner bends over a moss-grown stone, it is for us
to trace back the dim vista of the centuries to the life, the zeal, the
energy, of which this stone is the poor memorial. The rock-fenced islet
was covered with cedars, and when the tide was out the shoals around
were dark with the swash of sea-weed, where, in their leisure moments,
the Frenchmen, we are told, amused themselves with detaching the limpets
from the stones, as a savory addition to their fare. But there was
little leisure at St. Croix. Soldiers, sailors, and artisans betook
themselves to their task. Before the winter closed in, the northern end
of the island was covered with buildings, surrounding a square, where a
solitary tree had been left standing. On the right was a spacious house,
well built, and surmounted by one of those enormous roofs characteristic
of the time. This was the lodging of De Monts. Behind it, and near
the water, was a long, covered gallery, for labor or amusement in foul
weather. Champlain and the Sieur d'Orville, aided by the servants of the
latter, built a house for themselves nearly opposite that of De Monts;
and the remainder of the square was occupied by storehouses, a magazine,
workshops, lodgings for gentlemen and artisans, and a barrack for the
Swiss soldiers, the whole enclosed with a palisade. Adjacent there was
an attempt at a garden, under the auspices of Champlain; but nothing
would grow in the sandy soil. There was a cemetery, too, and a small
rustic chapel on a projecting point of rock. Such was the "Habitation
de l'Isle Saincte-Croix," as set forth by Champlain in quaint plans and
drawings, in that musty little quarto of 1613, sold by Jean Berjon, at
the sign of the Flying Horse, Rue St. Jean de Beauvais.
Their labors over, Poutrincourt set sail for France, proposing to
return and take possession of his domain of Port Royal. Seventy-nine
men remained at St. Croix. Here was De Monts, feudal lord of half
a continent in virtue of two potent syllables, "Henri," scrawled on
parchment by the rugged hand of the Bearnais. Here were gentlemen of
birth and breeding, Champlain, D'Orville, Beaumont, Sourin, La Motte,
Boulay, and Fougeray; here also were the pugnacious cure and his fellow
priests, with the Hugnenot ministers, objects of their unceasing ire.
The rest were laborers, artisans, and soldiers, all in the pay of the
company, and some of them forced into its service.
Poutrincourt's receding sails vanished between the water and the sky.
The exiles were left to their solitude. From the Spanish settlements
northward to the pole, there was no domestic hearth, no lodgement of
civilized men, save one weak band of Frenchmen, clinging, as it were
for life, to the fringe of the vast and savage continent. The gray and
sullen autumn sank upon the waste, and the bleak wind howled down the
St. Croix, and swept the forest bare. Then the whirling snow powdered
the vast sweep of desolate woodland, and shrouded in white the gloomy
green of pine-clad mountains. Ice in sheets, or broken masses, swept
by their island with the ebbing and flowing tide, often debarring all
access to the main, and cutting off their supplies of wood and water. A
belt of cedars, indeed, hedged the island; but De Monts had ordered them
to be spared, that the north wind might spend something of its force
with whistling through their shaggy boughs. Cider and wine froze in the
casks, and were served out by the pound. As they crowded round their
half-fed fires, shivering in the icy currents that pierced their rude
tenements, many sank into a desperate apathy.
Soon the scurvy broke out, and raged with a fearful malignity. Of the
seventy-nine, thirty-five died before spring, and many more were brought
to the verge of death. In vain they sought that marvellous tree which
had relieved the followers of Cartier. Their little cemetery was peopled
with nearly half their number, and the rest, bloated and disfigured with
the relentless malady, thought more of escaping from their woes than
of building up a Transatlantic empire. Yet among them there was one,
at least, who, amid languor and defection, held to his purpose with
indomitable tenacity; and where Champlain was present, there was no room
for despair.
Spring came at last, and, with the breaking up of the ice, the melting
of the snow, and the clamors of the returning wild-fowl, the spirits
and the health of the woe-begone company began to revive. But to misery
succeeded anxiety and suspense. Where was the succor from France? Were
they abandoned to their fate like the wretched exiles of La Roche? In
a happy hour, they saw an approaching sail. Pontgrave, with forty men,
cast anchor before their island on the sixteenth of June; and they
hailed him as the condemned hails the messenger of his pardon.
Weary of St. Croix, De Monts resolved to seek out a more auspicious
site, on which to rear the capital of his wilderness dominion. During
the preceding September, Champlain had ranged the westward coast in a
pinnace, visited and named the island of Mount Desert, and entered
the mouth of the river Penobscot, called by him the Pemetigoet, or
Pentegoet, and previously known to fur-traders and fishermen as the
Norembega, a name which it shared with all the adjacent region. [27]
Now, embarking a second time, in a bark of fifteen tons, with De Monts,
several gentlemen, twenty sailors, and an Indian with his squaw, he set
forth on the eighteenth of June on a second voyage of discovery. They
coasted the strangely indented shores of Maine, with its reefs and
surf-washed islands, rocky headlands, and deep embosomed bays, passed
Mount Desert and the Penobscot, explored the mouths of the Kennebec,
crossed Casco Bay, and descried the distant peaks of the White
Mountains. The ninth of July brought them to Saco Bay. They were now
within the limits of a group of tribes who were called by the French the
Armouchiquois, and who included those whom the English afterwards called
the Massachusetts. They differed in habits as well as in language from
the Etechemins and Miemacs of Acadia, for they were tillers of the
soil, and around their wigwams were fields of maize, beans, pumpkins,
squashes, tobacco, and the so-called Jerusalem artichoke. Near Pront's
Neck, more than eighty of them ran down to the shore to meet the
strangers, dancing and yelping to show their joy. They had a fort of
palisades on a rising ground by the Saco, for they were at deadly war
with their neighbors towards the east.
On the twelfth, the French resumed their voyage, and, like some
adventurous party of pleasure, held their course by the beaches of
York and Wells, Portsmouth Harbor, the Isles of Shoals, Rye Beach, and
Hampton Beach, till, on the fifteenth, they descried the dim outline
of Cape Ann. Champlain called it Cap aux Isles, from the three adjacent
islands, and in a subsequent voyage he gave the name of Beauport to
the neighboring harbor of Gloucester. Thence steering southward and
westward, they entered Massachusetts Bay, gave the name of Riviere
du Guast to a river flowing into it, probably the Charles; passed the
islands of Boston Harbor, which Champlain describes as covered with
trees, and were met on the way by great numbers of canoes filled with
astonished Indians. On Sunday, the seventeenth, they passed Point
Allerton and Nantasket Beach, coasted the shores of Cohasset, Scituate,
and Marshfield, and anchored for the night near Brant Point. On the
morning of the eighteenth, a head wind forced them to take shelter in
Port St. Louis, for so they called the harbor of Plymouth, where the
Pilgrims made their memorable landing fifteen years later. Indian
wigwams and garden patches lined the shore. A troop of the inhabitants
came down to the beach and danced; while others, who had been fishing,
approached in their canoes, came on board the vessel, and showed
Champlain their fish-hooks, consisting of a barbed bone lashed at an
acute angle to a slip of wood.
From Plymouth the party circled round the bay, doubled Cape Cod, called
by Champlain Cap Blanc, from its glistening white sands, and steered
southward to Nausett Harbor, which, by reason of its shoals and
sand-bars, they named Port Mallebarre. Here their prosperity deserted
them. A party of sailors went behind the sand-banks to find fresh water
at a spring, when an Indian snatched a kettle from one of them, and its
owner, pursuing, fell, pierced with arrows by the robber's comrades. The
French in the vessel opened fire. Champlain's arquebuse burst, and was
near killing him, while the Indians, swift as deer, quickly gained the
woods. Several of the tribe chanced to be on board the vessel, but flung
themselves with such alacrity into the water that only one was caught.
They bound him hand and foot, but soon after humanely set him at
liberty.
Champlain, who we are told "delighted marvellously in these
enterprises," had busied himself throughout the voyage with taking
observations, making charts, and studying the wonders of land and sea.
The "horse-foot crab" seems to have awakened his special curiosity, and
he describes it with amusing exactness. Of the human tenants of the
New England coast he has also left the first precise and trustworthy
account. They were clearly more numerous than when the Puritans landed
at Plymouth, since in the interval a pestilence made great havoc among
them. But Champlain's most conspicuous merit lies in the light that he
threw into the dark places of American geography, and the order that he
brought out of the chaos of American cartography; for it was a result of
this and the rest of his voyages that precision and clearness began
at last to supplant the vagueness, confusion, and contradiction of the
earlier map-makers.
At Nausett Harbor provisions began to fail, and steering for St. Croix
the voyagers reached that ill-starred island on the third of August.
De Monts had found no spot to his liking. He now bethought him of that
inland harbor of Port Royal which he had granted to Poutrincourt, and
thither he resolved to remove. Stores, utensils, even portions of the
buildings, were placed on board the vessels, carried across the Bay of
Fundy, and landed at the chosen spot. It was on the north side of the
basin opposite Goat Island, and a little below the mouth of the river
Annapolis, called by the French the Equille, and, afterwards, the
Dauphin. The axe-men began their task; the dense forest was cleared
away, and the buildings of the infant colony soon rose in its place.
But while De Monts and his company were struggling against despair at
St. Croix, the enemies of his monopoly were busy at Paris; and, by a
ship from France, he was warned that prompt measures were needed to
thwart their machinations. Therefore he set sail, leaving Pontgrave to
command at Port Royal: while Champlain, Champdore, and others, undaunted
by the past, volunteered for a second winter in the wilderness.