THE THIRD VOYAGE
Nearly five years elapsed after Cartier's return to St Malo before he
again set sail for the New World. His royal master, indeed, had
received him most graciously. Francis had deigned to listen with
pleasure to the recital of his pilot's adventures, and had ordered him
to set them down in writing. Moreover, he had seen and conversed with
Donnacona and the other captive Indians, who had told of the wonders of
their distant country. The Indians had learned the language of their
captors and spoke with the king in French. Francis gave orders that
they should be received into the faith, and the registers of St Malo
show that on March 25, 1538, or 1539 (the year is a little uncertain),
there were baptized three savages from Canada brought from the said
country by 'honnete homme [honest man], Jacques Cartier, captain of our
Lord the King.'
But the moment was unsuited for further endeavour in the New World.
Francis had enough to do to save his own soil from the invading
Spaniard. Nor was it until the king of France on June 15, 1538, made a
truce with his inveterate foe, Charles V, that he was able to turn
again to American discovery. Profoundly impressed with the vast extent
and unbounded resources of the countries described in Cartier's
narrative, the king decided to assume the sovereignty of this new land,
and to send out for further discovery an expedition of some magnitude.
At the head of it he placed Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de
Roberval, whom, on January 15, 1540, he created Lord of Norumbega,
viceroy and lieutenant-general of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay,
Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and
Baccalaos. The name Norumbega is an Indian word, and was used by early
explorers as a general term for the territory that is now Maine, New
Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Baccalaos is the name often given by the
French to Newfoundland, the word itself being of Basque origin and
meaning 'codfish,' while Carpunt will be remembered as a harbour beside
Belle Isle, where Cartier had been stormbound on his first voyage.
The king made every effort to further Roberval's expedition. The Lord
of Norumbega was given 45,000 livres and full authority to enlist
sailors and colonists for his expedition. The latter appears to have
been a difficult task, and, after the custom of the day, recourse was
presently had to the prisons to recruit the ranks of the prospective
settlers. Letters were issued to Roberval authorizing him to search the
jails of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Dijon and to draw from
them any convicts lying under sentence of death. Exception was made of
heretics, traitors, and counterfeiters, as unfitted for the pious
purpose of the voyage. The gangs of these miscreants, chained together
and under guard, came presently trooping into St Malo. Among them, it
is recorded, walked a young girl of eighteen, unconvicted of any crime,
who of her own will had herself chained to a malefactor, as hideous
physically as morally, whose lot she was determined to share.
To Roberval, as commander of the enterprise, was attached Cartier in
the capacity of captain-general and master-pilot. The letters patent
which contain the appointment speak of him as our 'dear and
well-beloved Jacques Cartier, who has discovered the large countries of
Canada and Hochelaga which lie at the end of Asia.' Cartier received
from Roberval about 31,300 livres. The king gave to him for this voyage
the little ship Emerillon and commanded him to obtain four others and
to arm and equip the five. The preparations for the voyage seem to have
lasted throughout the winter and spring of the years 1540-41. The king
had urged Cartier to start by the middle of April, but it was not until
May 23, 1541, that the ships were actually able to set sail. Even then
Roberval was not ready to leave. Cannon, powder, and a varied equipment
that had been purchased for the voyage were still lying at various
points in Normandy and Champagne. Cartier, anxious to follow the king's
wishes, could wait no longer and, at length, he set out with his five
ships, leaving Roberval to prepare other ships at Honfleur and follow
as he might. From first to last the relations of Cartier and Roberval
appear to need further explanation than that which we possess. Roberval
was evidently the nominal head of the enterprise and the feudal lord of
the countries to be claimed, but Cartier seems to have been restless
under any attempt to dictate the actual plan to be adopted, and his
final desertion of Roberval may be ascribed to the position in which he
was placed by the divided command of the expedition.
The expedition left St Malo on May 23, 1541, bearing in the ships food
and victuals for two years. The voyage was unprosperous. Contrary winds
and great gales raged over the Atlantic. The ships were separated at
sea, and before they reached the shores of Newfoundland were so hard
put to it for fresh water that it was necessary to broach the cider
casks to give drink to the goats and the cattle which they carried. But
the ships came together presently in safety in the harbour of Carpunt
beside Belle Isle, refitted there, and waited vainly for Roberval. They
finally reached the harbour of the Holy Cross at Stadacona on August 23.
The savages flocked to meet the ships with a great display of joy,
looking eagerly for the return of their vanished Donnacona. Their new
chief, Agouhanna, with six canoes filled with men, women, and children,
put off from the shore. The moment was a difficult one. Donnacona and
all his fellow-captives, except only one little girl, had died in
France. Cartier dared not tell the whole truth to the natives, and he
contented himself with saying that Donnacona was dead, but that the
other Indians had become great lords in France, had married there and
did not wish to return. Whatever may have been the feeling of the tribe
at this tale, the new chief at least was well pleased. 'I think,' wrote
Cartier, in his narrative of this voyage, 'he took it so well because
he remained lord and governor of the country by the death of the said
Donnacona.' Agouhanna certainly made a great show of friendliness. He
took from his own head the ornament of hide and wampum that he wore and
bound it round the brows of the French leader. At the same time he put
his arms about his neck with every sign of affection.
When the customary ceremonies of eating and drinking, speech-making,
and presentations had ended, Cartier, after first exploring with his
boats, sailed with his ships a few miles above Stadacona to a little
river where good anchorage was found, now known as the Cap Rouge river.
It enters the St Lawrence a little above Quebec. Here preparations were
at once made for the winter's sojourn. Cannon were brought ashore from
three of the ships. A strong fort was constructed, and the little
settlement received the pretentious name Charlesbourg Royal. The
remaining part of the month of August 1541 was spent in making
fortifications and in unloading the ships. On September 2 two of the
ships, commanded by Mace Jalobert, Cartier's brother-in-law and
companion of the preceding voyage, and Etienne Nouel, his nephew, were
sent back to France to tell the king of what had been done, and to let
him know that Roberval had not yet arrived.
As on his preceding voyages, Cartier was greatly impressed by the
aspect of the country about him. All round were splendid forests of oak
and maple and cedar and beech, which surpassed even the beautiful
woodlands of France. Grape vines loaded with ripe fruit hung like
garlands from the trees. Nor was the forest thick and tangled, but
rather like an open park, so that among the trees were great stretches
of ground wanting only to be tilled. Twenty of Cartier's men were set
to turn the soil, and in one day had prepared and sown about an acre
and a half of ground. The cabbage, lettuce, and turnip seed that they
planted showed green shoots within a week.
At the mouth of the Cap Rouge river there is a high point, now called
Redclyffe. On this Cartier constructed a second fort, which commanded
the fortification and the ships below. A little spring supplied fresh
water, and the natural situation afforded a protection against attack
by water or by land. While the French laboured in building the
stockades and in hauling provisions and equipments from the ships to
the forts, they made other discoveries that impressed them more than
the forest wealth of this new land. Close beside the upper fort they
found in the soil a good store of stones which they 'esteemed to be
diamonds.' At the foot of the slope along the St Lawrence lay iron
deposits, and the sand of the shore needed only, Cartier said, to be
put into the furnace to get the iron from it. At the water's edge they
found 'certain leaves of fine gold as thick as a man's nail,' and in
the slabs of black slate-stone which ribbed the open glades of the wood
there were veins of mineral matter which shone like gold and silver.
Cartier's mineral discoveries have unfortunately not resulted in
anything. We know now that his diamonds, still to be seen about Cap
Rouge, are rock crystals. The gold which he later on showed to
Roberval, and which was tested, proved genuine enough, but the quantity
of such deposits in the region has proved insignificant. It is very
likely that Cartier would make the most of his mineral discoveries as
the readiest means of exciting his master's interest.
When everything was in order at the settlement, the provisions landed,
and the building well under way, the leader decided to make a brief
journey to Hochelaga, in order to view more narrowly the rapids that he
had seen, and to be the better able to plan an expedition into the
interior for the coming spring. The account of this journey is the last
of Cartier's exploits of which we have any detailed account, and even
here the closing pages of his narrative are unsatisfactory and
inconclusive. What is most strange is that, although he expressly says
that he intended to 'go as far as Hochelaga, of purpose to view and
understand the fashion of the saults [falls] of water,' he makes no
mention of the settlement of Hochelaga itself, and does not seem to
have visited it.
The Hochelaga expedition, in which two boats were used, left the camp
at Cap Rouge on September 7, 1541. A number of Cartier's gentlemen
accompanied him on the journey, while the Viscount Beaupre was left
behind in command of the fort. On their way up the river Cartier
visited the chief who had entrusted his little daughter to the case of
the French at Stadacona at the time of Cartier's wintering there. He
left two young French boys in charge of this Indian chief that they
might learn the language of the country. No further episode of the
journey is chronicled until on September 11 the boats arrived at the
foot of the rapids now called Lachine. Cartier tells us that two
leagues from the foot of the bottom fall was an Indian village called
Tutonaguy, but he does not say whether or not this was the same place
as the Hochelaga of his previous voyage. The French left their boats
and, conducted by the Indians, walked along the portage path that led
past the rapids. There were large encampments of natives beside the
second fall, and they received the French with every expression of
good-will. By placing little sticks upon the ground they gave Cartier
to understand that a third rapid was to be passed, and that the river
was not navigable to the country of Saguenay.
Convinced that further exploration was not possible for the time being,
the French returned to their boats. As usual, a great concourse of
Indians had come to the spot. Cartier says that he 'understood
afterwards' that the Indians would have made an end of the French, but
judged them too strong for the attempt. The expedition started at once
for the winter quarters at Cap Rouge. As they passed Hochelay--the
abode of the supposed friendly chief near Portneuf--they learned that
he had gone down the river ahead of them to devise means with Agouhanna
for the destruction of the expedition.
Cartier's narrative ends at this most dramatic moment of his
adventures. He seems to have reached the encampment at Cap Rouge at the
very moment when an Indian assault was imminent. We know, indeed, that
the attack, which, from certain allusions in the narrative, seems
presently to have been made, was warded off, and that Cartier's ships
and a part at least of his company sailed home to France, falling in
with Roberval on the way. But the story of the long months of anxiety
and privation, and probably of disease and hostilities with the
Indians, is not recorded. The narrative of the great explorer, as it is
translated by Hakluyt, closes with the following ominous sentences:
'And when we were arrived at our fort, we understood by our people that
the savages of the country came not any more about our fort, as they
were accustomed, to bring us fish, and that they were in a wonderful
doubt and fear of us. Wherefore our captain, having been advised by
some of our men which had been at Stadacona to visit them that there
was a wonderful number of the country people assembled together, caused
all things in our fortress to be set in good order.' And beyond these
words, Cartier's story was never written, or, if written, it has been
lost.