POUTRAINCOURT GOES FORTH TO ACADIA
It was a terrible era for France. Catholics and Huguenots made
fierce war upon one another, and in the midst of all the fighting and
murders and massacres such as that of St. Bartholomew, which you may
read about in French history, conquest and discovery languished.
Although the King, the Court, and the Cardinals had no time to spare
to Canada, yet you must not suppose that for the next fifty years
there was no connection at all between the New World and France. The
red-men, paddling up and down the mighty St. Lawrence, very often met
with pale-face mariners eager to exchange guns and hatchets and beads
for the furs of the animals trapped in the northern wilderness. Many
European ships--often over a hundred sail--came every year to
Newfoundland to the cod-fisheries off that coast, and some of these
sailed onward into the Gulf and on to Tadoussac, and even as far as
Three Rivers. At these places fur-trading stations were set up, and
hither repaired each season the hardy mariners, who were not slow to
discover more profit in Europe out of sable and beaver skins than out
of cod-fish. Those wild animals, whose fur was esteemed in France
and {12} other lands, were so plentiful in Canada that in course of
time the peltry trade, as it was called, grew to be the principal
business of the country. As each spring came round the savage
tribes, whose hunting-grounds were far in the interior, would pack
their furs in canoes and paddle hundreds of miles down the lakes and
rivers to the post where the white trader was awaiting them. When
the Indian had bartered his furs, back he paddled again to his own
hunting-grounds, and the trader in turn sailed back to France, to
return the next season.
Meanwhile, too, English sailors, lieges to the great Elizabeth, had
been visiting the New World which Cabot had claimed for England.
First there came Martin Frobisher in 1576, who, looking for a short
route to India, set foot on the shores of Labrador. Again, on the
other side of the continent, Sir Francis Drake, sailing round the
world, sighted the snowy peaks on the borders of British Columbia,
which afterwards became a part of the Canadian Dominion. Then came
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, with 260
men and several ships, to plant a colony in Newfoundland. Sir
Humphrey's sovereign mistress, Elizabeth, had graciously granted him
a charter of 600 miles in every direction from St. John's, whereby he
became lord and master of what we know to-day as Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and parts of Labrador and Quebec.
It was on a serene August morning that the fleet reached harbour.
Donning his most gorgeous doublet of lace and velvet, and surrounded
by his stalwart retainers, Sir {13} Humphrey landed at St. John's and
took possession of Newfoundland in Elizabeth's name. When he had
reconnoitred the coast, our courtier resolved to return with his
people to England for provisions and reinforcements. Nowadays many
of our bravest sailors would be afraid to trust themselves in the
little ships that formed his fleet. They were very short, curved,
and blunt, and, compared to our modern floating castles, were only
giant cockle-shells. A few days out a hurricane arose, and in the
midst of the raging seas Sir Humphrey's ship, the _Squirrel_, was
doomed. But not even his dreadful fate, when it loomed around him,
could fill the brave commander's soul with fear. With waves
careering mast-high he sat placidly on deck with a Bible on his lap.
"Cheer up, lads," cried he to his sailors, "we are as near heaven on
sea as on land." And so the cruel billows rolled over the
_Squirrel_, and it and the brave souls it bore were lost for ever.
The expedition from which so much had been hoped in England was an
utter failure. It was the sons of France who were destined to found
and people Canada, and to perform such deeds of daring valour and
endurance as are not to be surpassed in the history of our own island
motherland. Englishmen, it is true, were to have all Canada at last,
but nearly two hundred years were to roll by before their soldiers
could wrest the mainland from their hereditary rivals.
Fifteen years had passed since Sir Humphrey Gilbert went down in the
little _Squirrel_, when a French noble, the Marquis de la Roche,
received a commission from King Henry the Fourth of France {14} to
colonise Canada. With the commission in his pocket the Marquis knew
not which way to turn. It was not easy in those days to find
Frenchmen ready to live in a country supposed to be ice and snow the
whole year round. But "where there's a will there's a way," and the
Marquis at last chose fifty sturdy convicts from the prisons and
galleys, and, embarking with his retinue, set sail for the West. A
long low sandbank called Sable Island guards the entrance to St.
Lawrence Gulf, and here the Viceroy set forty of his convicts ashore
while he explored the waters roundabout. At first the marooned
convicts were delighted with their freedom. They roamed hither and
thither, finding a lagoon of fresh water, frequented by wild cattle
and coveys of wild ducks. Sweet berries flourished in abundance.
During all that summer the convicts amused themselves, keeping a
sharp look-out for the return of their lord and master, the Marquis,
who had gone to find them a haven to settle in and build their
dwellings. Day succeeded day, week followed week, but the Marquis
never came back. A violent storm had arisen which drove his vessel
eastward across the wide Atlantic to the very shores of France, where
the hapless nobleman was seized by a powerful enemy and cast into
prison. Can you not picture the rage and despair of the unhappy men
on Sable Island when they realised their plight? Winter was fast
approaching, and they had neither proper food, fuel, nor raiment.
Quarrelling fiercely, they slew one another, while those who were
left, huddled together in rude huts formed of wreckage, lived on raw
{15} flesh and dressed themselves in the hides of wild cattle. They
gave themselves up for lost, but at length the Marquis de la Roche,
far away in France, was able to tell the King of the predicament of
the abandoned convicts. A ship was sent out to rescue them, and,
like so many wild animals, with long matted hair and beards, they
grovelled at the feet of their deliverers. After such hardships as
they had undergone, King Henry was not the one to send them back to
prison; he pardoned them instead, and all who had survived went back
to their homes. De la Roche, broken in health and fortune, died soon
after, so this project for starting a colony was, as you see, not a
whit luckier than Cartier's or Roberval's or Sir Humphrey Gilbert's
had been. Was the next attempt to reap greater success?
In that summer of 1599, when the convicts were still on Sable Island,
to the north of them, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, fur-trading ships
pressed forward under full canvas to the westward. These ships were
owned by two men of King Henry's Huguenot subjects, named Pontgravé
and Chauvin, who had formed themselves into a partnership to buy and
sell furs. No trader could lift a finger in those days without a
royal charter or patent, and these men were influential enough to get
a charter from the King bestowing upon them the exclusive right to
the fur trade of Canada. It was hardly likely they could really make
good such a right, or that the other Frenchmen who had been buying
furs from the Indians would thereafter stop buying them on account of
it. But it was a safe precaution, and {16} made their rivals'
operations illegal. On their part Pontgravé and Chauvin promised the
King that they would settle in Canada 500 colonists. In this they
were promising more than they could perform; the most they actually
did do was to induce sixteen men to remain all winter at Tadoussac,
with insufficient food, clothing, and shelter. Alas! when the ships
from France appeared in the St. Lawrence next year, the last year of
the sixteenth century, they found most of the sixteen dead. Their
surviving companions had married native wives and gone to live in the
wigwams of the Indians. Once more you see this enterprise had not
fared any better than those which had gone before, and, like the
others, Chauvin died recognising bitterly that his scheme was a
failure.
How was it with his partner, Pontgravé? Pontgravé was only a trader,
but he was of dogged tenacity. He saw that if Canada could be
colonised by his countrymen, there was a great fortune to be made out
of the fur trade, and the way to do it, he reasoned, was to bring his
chief rivals together to form a company, so that, instead of being
enemies, all would work together to keep out the smaller traders or
"pirates," and gradually establish proper trading-posts in Canada.
An influential and wealthy old soldier named Aymar de Chastes,
Governor of Rouen, interested himself in the scheme, and, being high
in favour with the King of France, he procured a charter and set
about seeing if he and his friends could not succeed where the others
had been so signally defeated.
{17}
We have now reached the point in our story at which Samuel de
Champlain, the real founder of New France, enters upon the scene.
For Aymar de Chastes, casting about for an experienced and
adventurous spirit to help in the new enterprise, bethought him of a
valorous naval captain who had recently returned from Mexico and the
Spanish main, ready for anything which would fill his purse or
increase his renown. Captain de Champlain was a truly great man, no
mere hot-blooded, roystering swashbuckler, as many adventurers were
in those days, but romantic, pious, and humane. He was then about
thirty-six years old. Offering with alacrity his sword and his skill
on an exploring expedition up the St. Lawrence, Champlain went, in
company with Pontgravé and another adventure-loving nobleman of the
Court, Pierre du Gast, better known as the Sieur de Monts. When
these pioneers reached Tadoussac they left their ships and ascended
the river in boats to the farthest point yet reached, the Rapids,
just above Hochelaga, now the city of Montreal. Just as Jacques
Cartier had done nearly seventy years before, Champlain toiled up the
forest-clad slopes of Mount Royal in order to obtain a good view of
the surrounding country. He, too, was charmed with all that met his
eye, and having drawn up a map and written down a narrative of all he
had seen, Champlain and his companions re-embarked in the autumn,
when the Canadian woods were brilliant in their browns and purples,
yellow and crimson foliage, and sailed back across the salt seas to
France. What was their mortification to discover that during {18}
their absence their patron, De Chastes, had died, and the company he
had exerted himself to make prosperous was all but broken up. But
Champlain was not to be beaten. He showed his narrative and his maps
to the good and wise King Henry, who was perfectly satisfied of his
good faith, and agreed to allow De Monts and his friends to continue
the work of colonising Canada and organising the fur trade. De
Monts, who was a Huguenot, was forthwith appointed the King's Viceroy
in New France, on condition that he and the others bore all the cost
of the expedition, and by and by, in the spring of 1604, four vessels
once more sailed away. It was arranged that two of the ships should
engage in the fur trade on the St. Lawrence, while the other two were
to carry out the colonists, soldiers, work-people, priests,
gentlemen, and, as always happened, as always must happen, a few
rogues, to whichever spot De Monts selected for the purpose. The
little fleet steered farther south than was done in the last voyage,
and thus it came to pass that it finally reached that part of New
France then called Acadia, and to-day marked Nova Scotia on the map.
How it came by its name of Nova Scotia you shall hear later on. One
day, just before De Monts and his heterogeneous crew landed, they
anchored in a harbour where one of their sheep (_moutons_) jumped
overboard. So De Monts, who was not without a vein of humour in
these matters, christened the harbour Port Mouton. All were
delighted with the beauty of the landscape, the grassy meadows, the
silvery streams replete with fish, the wooded mountains.
{19}
Besides De Monts and Champlain there was a third leader of the
expedition, a certain rich nobleman of Picardy named Baron de
Poutraincourt. It was Poutraincourt who named the place where he
wished to found a colony Port Royal. It was, wrote Champlain
afterwards, "the most commodious, pleasant place that we had yet seen
in this country." Unhappily the leaders could not instantly make up
their minds, and the landing and settlement actually took place many
leagues farther along on the banks of a river which now forms the
boundary between the two great countries of America and Canada, which
river was then, and ever since has been, called the Holy Cross (Ste.
Croix) River. What a scene of joyous bustle ensued! Eighty people
disembarked from the ships, and were soon hard at work building the
little fort and houses of the first French settlement on the coast of
the North-American Continent. While the colony was thus
industriously making ready for the winter, Champlain, thinking he
might be better employed, went off exploring the coast in his ship,
sailing up and down what was destined to become long before he died
the territory of New England.
Great trials were in store for the little colony. Very quickly the
settlers found that Holy Cross River was a very uncomfortable place,
lacking sufficient shelter, with little or no fuel handy. What was
far worse than the winter's cold, scurvy broke out amongst them, and
by the time the leaves were putting forth their first blossoms
thirty-six persons had perished of this disease. Poutraincourt's
choice, {20} Port Royal, after all, was best, and there in late
spring they began to construct a town near what is now called
Annapolis. De Monts and Poutraincourt returned in the autumn to
France, and after much labour and trouble managed to induce a large
number of mechanics and workers to come out to Acadia. It must be
confessed that there were on board Poutraincourt's ship, the _Jonas_,
which sailed from Rochelle in May 1600, some very reckless, unruly
characters. But their leader felt convinced that they would make
good colonists, if they were only shown the way. Amongst those to
help him he had brought a very clever man, Lescarbot, a lawyer and
poet, full of enthusiasm for the new project.
In the meantime what of the founders and original settlers of Port
Royal? Thinking they had been deserted by their leaders, and lacking
provisions and clothing, they became almost as discouraged as the
poor convicts had been on Sable Island.
As the summer season wore on they constructed two little craft--the
very first ships ever built in Canada--and straightway sailed for the
Newfoundland fishery banks to seek some of their countrymen, leaving
two only of their number and a wise old Indian chief, named
Meinbertou, to greet the newcomers on board the _Jonas_. A peal of a
cannon from the little fort testified to the joy of its inmates that
the long-expected succour was at last at hand. A party was sent to
overtake the little Port Royal ship to bring back the colonists. No
sooner were they landed than Poutraincourt broached a hogshead of
wine, and Port Royal became a scene of mirth {21} and festivity.
When Champlain and Poutraincourt went off to make further
exploration, Lescarbot was left in charge of the colony. He set
briskly to work to show the people how they should become prosperous.
He ordered crops of wheat, rye, and barley to be sown in the rich
meadows and gardens to be planted. Some he cheered, others he shamed
into industry, never sparing himself, so that by and by it was not
wonderful that everybody loved the merry, witty, bustling Lescarbot.
Not a day passed but he set going some new and useful work. Until
now the people had ground their corn with hand-mills, as their
fathers and grandfathers had done for hundreds of years; Lescarbot
showed them how to make a water-mill. He also taught them how to
make fire-bricks and a furnace, and how to turn the sap of the trees
into tar and turpentine. No wonder the Indians, astonished to see so
many novel industries growing up before their eyes, cried out, "How
many things these Normans know!" When the explorers returned to Port
Royal, rather dispirited, Lescarbot arranged a masquerade to welcome
them back, and all the ensuing winter, which was extremely mild, was
given up to content and good cheer. Then it was that Champlain
started his famous "Order of a Good Time," of which many stories have
come down to us. The members of this order were the fifteen leading
men of Port Royal. They met in Poutraincourt's great hall, where the
great log fire roared merrily. For a single day each of the members
was saluted by the rest as Grand Master and wore round his neck the
splendid collar of office, while he busied himself {22} with the duty
of providing dinner and entertainment. One and all declared the fish
and game were better than in Paris, and plenty of wine there was to
toast the King and one another in turn. At the right hand of the
Grand Master sat the guest of honour, the wrinkled sagamore,
Membertou, nearly one hundred years old, his eyes gleaming with
amusement as toast, song, and tale followed one another. On the
floor squatted other Indians who joined in the gay revels. As a
final item on the programme, the pipe of peace, with its huge
lobster-like bowl, went round, and all smoked it in turn until the
tobacco in its fiery oven was exhausted. Then, and not till then,
the long winter evening was over.
[Illustration: 'The Order of a Good Time' 1606]
What jolly times those were! If only they could have lasted! Port
Royal might have become a great city and Acadia a populous province.
But bad tidings for Port Royal came from France. The next ship that
sailed into the harbour brought word that De Monts' charter had been
revoked by the King, and his friends would support his scheme with no
more money. So there appeared nothing to do but to bid good-bye to
Port Royal and their Indian friends, who watched them depart with
sadness, promising to look after the fort and its belongings until
the white men should return from over the wide sea.
Champlain had already in his heart chosen another field--the lands
far inland on the St. Lawrence; but as for Poutraincourt, he swore to
deal a blow at his enemies in France and come back to take deep root
in the fertile Acadian soil. While, therefore, Champlain {23} was
with his followers founding Quebec, and De Monts, discouraged, had
lost all interest in Acadia, Poutraincourt busied himself to such
purpose that three years later (1610), in spite of all the baffling
obstacles he met with, he set out again for his promised land with a
fresh shipload of settlers.
At this time King Henry the Fourth was surrounded by members of the
Society of Jesus (called Jesuits), who had made themselves already
very powerful in the politics of Europe. The King ordered
Poutraincourt to take out a Jesuit priest to Acadia, but
Poutraincourt, distrusting the Jesuits, evaded the priest who had
been chosen to accompany him at Bordeaux, and took out one of his own
choosing instead, Father La Flèche. What was their joy when they
landed in midsummer to find everything at Port Royal just as they had
left it! One may be sure the Indians gave their pale-face friends a
cordial greeting. Old Membertou, still alive, embraced Poutraincourt
and declared that now he was ready to be baptized a Christian. The
christening duly took place, and the ancient sagamore was renamed
Henri, after the King, and his chief squaw was christened Marie,
after the Queen. There were numerous other Indian converts, and
great celebrations took place, for the colonists were religious
enthusiasts and believed such doings would give great satisfaction to
the King.
But, alas, the King was never to hear of it! Even while all this was
happening, while the future of the colony promised so well, a
terrible blow had fallen upon it and the realm of France. The brave
and {24} humane Henry the Fourth had been stabbed to death by the
dagger of the assassin Ravaillac. The new King, Louis the
Thirteenth, being only a little boy, all the power and influence of
the Court fell into the hands of the Queen Dowager, Marie de Medici,
a false and cruel woman. Her closest friends and advisers were the
Jesuit priests. Now these Jesuits, although professing Christianity
and brotherly love, held in horror anybody who did not think exactly
as they did. They wanted especially, by whatever means, to make
converts of the Canadian savages. They wanted too, being very
ambitious, to get the direction of the affairs of the New World into
their own hands.
Yet ignorant of the royal tragedy, Poutraincourt sent his son,
Biencourt, a fine youth of eighteen, back in the ship to France, to
report to his Majesty the success at Port Royal in converting the
natives. Whereupon the Jesuits decided that the time had come to
supplant Poutraincourt. They announced that they would send back two
of their priests with young Biencourt. A number of rich and pious
Catholic ladies of the Court, headed by Madame de Guercheville,
interested themselves so far in the work as to buy up all the rights
of Poutraincourt's friends and partners, including De Monts, as
proprietors of Acadia. Henceforward Poutraincourt was to be under
the dependence of the Jesuits. That was the unwelcome news his son
sailed back to tell him. The two priests whom he was obliged to
receive--Biard and Ennemond Massé--were the very first members of
their famous order to engage in the {25} work of converting the
North-American Indians. You will see as our story progresses what a
terrible and dangerous task this was, and how it demanded men of
boundless zeal and courage to undertake it.
Under the circumstance, quarrels were to be expected; and quarrels
enough came. The Jesuits at Court, finding Poutraincourt
insubordinate, seized the trading vessels destined for Port Royal on
one pretext or another, and brought about so many imprisonments and
lawsuits, that at last Poutraincourt was ruined. No longer could he
send out supplies of provisions, and his people at Port Royal had to
subsist through a whole winter upon acorns, beech-nuts, and wild
roots. When Madame de Guercheville and her Jesuit friends had thus
crippled poor Poutraincourt, she withdrew the priests to other
localities named in her charter, over which she really supposed she
had control. As for the sturdy old sagamore, Membertou or Chief
Henri, he soon breathed his last. On his deathbed he prayed to be
buried with his forefathers, but of course the priests overcame his
scruples, and his wrinkled body was laid in the little cemetery at
Port Royal.
You may be interested to know what were the French Jesuit rights in
North-America. The charter the young king, or rather the Queen
Dowager, gave to Madame de Guercheville actually included nearly all
the territory from the St. Lawrence River to Florida. Was there no
one at hand to remind the crafty Marie that the continent she thus
complacently handed over was not hers or {26} her son's to bestow;
that the English had a far better right than the French to its
possession; that in that very year an English colony had been settled
in Virginia, chartered by King James the First of England? Curious
to relate, the land which the English king granted was as wide in
extent, in truth it was almost the very same region as that claimed
by the French. So here we have the cause and beginning of a quarrel
which occasioned seas of bloodshed, and was to last, very nearly
without interruption, for just a century and a half, between the
French and the English colonists in North-America.
In the spring of 1613 the Jesuits despatched a new expedition under a
courtier named La Saussaye, who, having landed at Port Royal to take
on board the two priests there, sailed on and founded a new colony at
Mount Desert, now in the American State of Maine. They had just
commenced to erect buildings and put up the walls of a fort, when,
greatly to their surprise, a strange war-ship appeared in the little
harbour. It drew nearer, and they saw, with misgivings, the
blood-red cross of St. George floating from the mast-head. The
captain of the war-ship turned out to be Samuel Argall, a young and
daring English mariner, who had joined his fortunes to those of
Virginia. While he was cruising with sixty men off the coast of
Maine on the lookout for codfish, some friendly Indians boarded the
ship and told him that French intruders were hard by, building a
fort. By no means a kind, indulgent young man was Argall, and his
eyes kindled angrily.
{27}
"Oho!" he exclaimed, with an oath, "how dare these rascals venture
into King James, my master's territory!" Whereupon, stimulated by
hopes of plunder, he unmuzzled his fourteen cannon and assaulted and
sacked the yet defenceless French settlement, killing several,
including one of the priests, and making prisoners of the rest. This
done, he destroyed every trace of the colony. Fifteen Frenchmen,
including La Saussaye, he turned adrift in an open boat, while the
others he took back with him to Virginia. Those whom Argall
abandoned to their fate would surely have perished had it not been
for friendly Indians, who gave them food and helped them on their way
north. There they eventually met a trading vessel and were carried
back to France. As to the prisoners, on landing at Jamestown they
were treated as pirates by the English settlers there. Although
afterwards released, the Virginian governor, Sir Thomas Dale, was so
incensed at hearing from one of them about Port Royal, that he bade
Argall return, with three armed ships, and sweep every Frenchman out
of Acadia. Argall carried out his instructions only too well; he set
fire to the fort and settlement of Port Royal, and in a few hours the
entire place, the gallant Poutraincourt's hope and pride, was a mass
of smoking ruins. Luckily for themselves, most of the French
happened to be away in the forest at the time, and so saved their
lives. Some took permanent refuge with the Indians, and amongst
these was young Biencourt. Others found their way to the colony
which, as we shall now narrate, Champlain had by {28} this time
formed far away at Quebec. But it was all over with Port Royal, at
least for the present. With a heavy heart Poutraincourt sailed away
to France, and soon afterwards in battle laid down his life for his
sovereign.
So ends the first chapter in the story of that part of Canada then
called Acadia. We will return to it again, for the adventurous young
Biencourt is still there roaming in the woods with a handful of
faithful followers, ready to found Port Royal anew. In the meantime
what was happening to Champlain, who a few years before had sailed a
thousand miles up the mighty St. Lawrence to found a colony? It is
high time that we should now turn to his adventures.
{29}