CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
Volume 2
THE MARINER OF ST MALO
A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
By
STEPHEN LEACOCK
TORONTO, 1915
CONTENTS
I EARLY LIFE
II THE FIRST VOYAGE--NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
III THE FIRST VOYAGE--THE GULF OF ST LAWRENCE
IV THE SECOND VOYAGE--THE ST LAWRENCE
V THE SECOND VOYAGE--STADACONA
VI THE SECOND VOYAGE--HOCHELAGA
VII THE SECOND VOYAGE--WINTER AT STADACONA
VIII THE THIRD VOYAGE
IX THE CLOSE OF CARTIER'S CAREER
ITINERARY OF CARTIER'S VOYAGES
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
In the town hall of the seaport of St Malo there hangs a portrait of
Jacques Cartier, the great sea-captain of that place, whose name is
associated for all time with the proud title of 'Discoverer of Canada.'
The picture is that of a bearded man in the prime of life, standing on
the deck of a ship, his bent elbow resting upon the gunwale, his chin
supported by his hand, while his eyes gaze outward upon the western
ocean as if seeking to penetrate its mysteries. The face is firm and
strong, with tight-set jaw, prominent brow, and the full, inquiring eye
of the man accustomed both to think and to act. The costume marks the
sea-captain of four centuries ago. A thick cloak, gathered by a belt at
the waist, enwraps the stalwart figure. On his head is the tufted
Breton cap familiar in the pictures of the days of the great
navigators. At the waist, on the left side, hangs a sword, and, on the
right, close to the belt, the dirk or poniard of the period.
How like or unlike the features of Cartier this picture in the town
hall may be, we have no means of telling. Painted probably in 1839, it
has hung there for more than seventy years, and the record of the
earlier prints or drawings from which its artist drew his inspiration
no longer survives. We know, indeed, that an ancient map of the eastern
coast of America, made some ten years after the first of Cartier's
voyages, has pictured upon it a group of figures that represent the
landing of the navigator and his followers among the Indians of Gaspe.
It was the fashion of the time to attempt by such decorations to make
maps vivid. Demons, deities, mythological figures and naked savages
disported themselves along the borders of the maps and helped to
decorate unexplored spaces of earth and ocean. Of this sort is the
illustration on the map in question. But it is generally agreed that we
have no right to identify Cartier with any of the figures in the scene,
although the group as a whole undoubtedly typifies his landing upon the
seacoast of Canada.
There is rumour, also, that the National Library at Paris contains an
old print of Cartier, who appears therein as a bearded man passing from
the prime of life to its decline. The head is slightly bowed with the
weight of years, and the face is wanting in that suggestion of
unconquerable will which is the dominating feature of the portrait of
St Malo. This is the picture that appears in the form of a medallion,
or ring-shaped illustration, in more than one of the modern works upon
the great adventurer. But here again we have no proofs of identity, for
we know nothing of the origin of the portrait.
Curiously enough an accidental discovery of recent years seems to
confirm in some degree the genuineness of the St Malo portrait. There
stood until the autumn of 1908, in the French-Canadian fishing village
of Cap-des-Rosiers, near the mouth of the St Lawrence, a house of very
ancient date. Precisely how old it was no one could say, but it was
said to be the oldest existing habitation of the settlement. Ravaged by
perhaps two centuries of wind and weather, the old house afforded but
little shelter against the boisterous gales and the bitter cold of the
rude climate of the Gulf. Its owner decided to tear it down, and in
doing so he stumbled upon a startling discovery. He found a dummy
window that, generations before, had evidently been built over and
concealed. From the cavity thus disclosed he drew forth a large wooden
medallion, about twenty inches across, with the portrait of a man
carved in relief. Here again are the tufted hat, the bearded face, and
the features of the picture of St Malo. On the back of the wood, the
deeply graven initials J. C. seemed to prove that the image which had
lain hidden for generations behind the woodwork of the old Canadian
house is indeed that of the great discoverer. Beside the initials is
carved the date 1704.. This wooden medallion would appear to have once
figured as the stern shield of some French vessel, wrecked probably
upon the Gaspe coast. As it must have been made long before the St Malo
portrait was painted, the resemblance of the two faces perhaps
indicates the existence of some definite and genuine portrait of
Jacques Cartier, of which the record has been lost.
It appears, therefore, that we have the right to be content with the
picture which hangs in the town hall of the seaport of St Malo. If it
does not show us Cartier as he was,--and we have no absolute proof in
the one or the other direction,--at least it shows us Cartier as he
might well have been, with precisely the face and bearing which the
hero-worshipper would read into the character of such a discoverer.
The port of St Malo, the birthplace and the home of Cartier, is
situated in the old province of Brittany, in the present department of
Ille-et-Vilaine. It is thus near the lower end of the English Channel.
To the north, about forty miles away, lies Jersey, the nearest of the
Channel Islands, while on the west surges the restless tide of the
broad Atlantic. The situation of the port has made it a nursery of
hardy seamen. The town stands upon a little promontory that juts out as
a peninsula into the ocean. The tide pours in and out of the harbour
thus formed, and rises within the harbour to a height of thirty or
forty feet. The rude gales of the western ocean spend themselves upon
the rocky shores of this Breton coast. Here for centuries has dwelt a
race of adventurous fishermen and navigators, whose daring is
unsurpassed by any other seafaring people in the world.
The history, or at least the legend, of the town goes back ten
centuries before the time of Cartier. It was founded, tradition tells
us, by a certain Aaron, a pilgrim who landed there with his disciples
in the year 507 A.D., and sought shelter upon the sea-girt promontory
which has since borne the name of Aaron's Rock. Aaron founded a
settlement. To the same place came, about twenty years later, a bishop
of Castle Gwent, with a small band of followers. The leader of this
flock was known as St Malo, and he gave his name to the seaport.
But the religious character of the first settlement soon passed away.
St Malo became famous as the headquarters of the corsairs of the
northern coast. These had succeeded the Vikings of an earlier day, and
they showed a hardihood and a reckless daring equal to that of their
predecessors. Later on, in more settled times, the place fell into the
hands of the fishermen and traders of northern France. When hardy
sailors pushed out into the Atlantic ocean to reach the distant shores
of America, St Malo became a natural port and place of outfit for the
passage of the western sea.
Jacques Cartier first saw the light in the year 1491. The family has
been traced back to a grandfather who lived in the middle of the
fifteenth century. This Jean Cartier, or Quartier, who was born in St
Malo in 1428, took to wife in 1457 Guillemette Baudoin. Of the four
sons that she bore him, Jamet, the eldest, married Geseline Jansart,
and of their five children the second one, Jacques, rose to greatness
as the discoverer of Canada. There is little to chronicle that is worth
while of the later descendants of the original stock. Jacques Cartier
himself was married in 1519 to Marie Katherine des Granches. Her father
was the Chevalier Honore des Granches, high constable of St Malo. In
all probability he stood a few degrees higher in the social scale of
the period than such plain seafaring folk as the Cartier family. From
this, biographers have sought to prove that, early in life, young
Jacques Cartier must have made himself a notable person among his
townsmen. But the plain truth is that we know nothing of the
circumstances that preceded the marriage, and have only the record of
1519 on the civil register of St Malo: 'The nuptial benediction was
received by Jacques Cartier, master-pilot of the port of Saincte-Malo,
son of Jamet Cartier and of Geseline Jansart, and Marie Katherine des
Granches, daughter of Messire Honore des Granches, chevalier of our
lord the king, and constable of the town and city of Saint-Malo.'
Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no direct
descendants. But the branches of the family descended from the original
Jean Cartier appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other
places in some profusion during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The family seems to have died out, although not many years
ago direct descendants of Pierre Cartier, the uncle of Jacques, were
still surviving in France.
It is perhaps no great loss to the world that we have so little
knowledge of the ancestors and relatives of the famous mariner. It is,
however, deeply to be deplored that, beyond the record of his voyages,
we know so little of Jacques Cartier himself. We may take it for
granted that he early became a sailor. Brought up at such a time and
place, he could hardly have failed to do so. Within a few years after
the great discovery of Columbus, the Channel ports of St Malo and
Dieppe were sending forth adventurous fishermen to ply their trade
among the fogs of the Great Banks of the New Land. The Breton boy, whom
we may imagine wandering about the crowded wharves of the little
harbour, must have heard strange tales from the sailors of the new
discoveries. Doubtless he grew up, as did all the seafarers of his
generation, with the expectation that at any time some fortunate
adventurer might find behind the coasts and islands now revealed to
Europe in the western sea the half-fabled empires of Cipango and
Cathay. That, when a boy, he came into actual contact with sailors who
had made the Atlantic voyage is not to be questioned. We know that in
1507 the Pensee of Dieppe had crossed to the coast of Newfoundland and
that this adventure was soon followed by the sailing of other Norman
ships for the same goal.
We have, however, no record of Cartier and his actual doings until we
find his name in an entry on the baptismal register of St Malo. He
stood as godfather to his nephew, Etienne Nouel, the son of his sister
Jehanne. Strangely enough, this proved to be only the first of a great
many sacred ceremonies of this sort in which he took part. There is a
record of more than fifty baptisms at St Malo in the next forty-five
years in which the illustrious mariner had some share; in twenty-seven
of them he appeared as a godfather.
What voyages Cartier actually made before he suddenly appears in
history as a pilot of the king of France and the protege of the high
admiral of France we do not know. This position in itself, and the fact
that at the time of his marriage in 1519 he had already the rank of
master-pilot, would show that he had made the Atlantic voyage. There is
some faint evidence that he had even been to Brazil, for in the account
of his first recorded voyage he makes a comparison between the maize of
Canada and that of South America; and in those days this would scarcely
have occurred to a writer who had not seen both plants of which he
spoke. 'There groweth likewise,' so runs the quaint translation that
appears in Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' 'a kind of Millet as big as peason
[i.e. peas] like unto that which groweth in Bresil.' And later on, in
the account of his second voyage, he repeats the reference to Brazil;
then 'goodly and large fields' which he saw on the present site of
Montreal recall to him the millet fields of Brazil. It is possible,
indeed, that not only had he been in Brazil, but that he had carried a
native of that country to France. In a baptismal register of St Malo is
recorded the christening, in 1528, of a certain 'Catherine of Brezil,'
to whom Cartier's wife stood godmother. We may, in fancy at least,
suppose that this forlorn little savage with the regal title was a
little girl whom the navigator, after the fashion of his day, had
brought home as living evidence of the existence of the strange lands
that he had seen.
Out of this background, then, of uncertainty and conjecture emerges, in
1534, Jacques Cartier, a master-pilot in the prime of life, now sworn
to the service of His Most Christian Majesty Francis I of France, and
about to undertake on behalf of his illustrious master a voyage to the
New Land.