rows of palisades arranged like a pyramid, crossed at the top, with the
middle stakes standing perpendicular, and the others at an angle on
each side, all being well joined and fastened after the Indian fashion.
The inclosing wall was of the height of two lances, or about twenty
feet, and there was only one entrance through a door generally kept
barred. At several points within the inclosure there were platforms or
stages reached by ladders, for the purpose of protecting the town with
arrows, and rocks, piles of which were close at hand. The town
contained fifty houses, each about one hundred feet in length and
twenty-five or thirty in width, and constructed of wood, covered with
bark and strips of board. These "long houses" were divided into
several apartments, belonging to each family, but all of them assembled
and ate in common. Storehouses for their grain and food were provided.
They dried and smoked their fish, of which they had large quantities.
They pounded the grain between flat stones and made it into dough which
they cooked also on hot rocks. This tribe lived, Cartier tells us, "by
ploughing and fishing alone," and were "not nomadic like the natives of
Canada and the Saguenay."
{41}
Cartier and several of his companions were taken by the Indians to the
mountain near the town of Hochelaga, and were the first Europeans to
look on that noble panorama of river and forest which stretched then
without a break over the whole continent, except where the Indian
nations had made, as at Hochelaga, their villages and settlements.
From that day to this the mountain, as well as the great city which it
now overlooks in place of a humble Indian town, has borne the name
which Cartier gave as a tribute to its unrivalled beauty. As we look
from the royal mountain on the beautiful elms and maples rising in the
meadows and gardens of an island, bathed by the waters of two noble
rivers--the green of the St. Lawrence mingling with the blue of the
Ottawa--on the many domes and towers of churches, convents, and
colleges, on the stately mansions of the rich, on the tall chimneys of
huge factories and blocks upon blocks of massive stores and warehouses,
on the ocean steamers on their way to Europe by that very river which
Cartier would not ascend with the _Emérillon_; as we look on this
beauteous and inspiriting scene, we may well understand how it is that
Canada has placed on Montreal the royal crown which Cartier first gave
to the mountain he saw on a glorious October day when the foliage was
wearing the golden and crimson tints of a Canadian autumn.
On Cartier's return to Stadacona he found that his officers had become
suspicious of the intentions of the Indians and had raised a rude fort
near the junction of the river of St. Croix and the little stream {42}
called the Lairet. Here the French passed a long and dreary winter,
doubtful of the friendship of the Indians, and suffering from the
intense cold to which they were unaccustomed. They were attacked by
that dreadful disease, the scurvy, which caused the death of several
men, and did not cease its ravages until they learned from an Indian to
use a drink evidently made from spruce boughs. Then the French
recovered with great rapidity, and when the spring arrived they made
their preparations to return to France. They abandoned the little
_Hermine_, as the crew had been so weakened by sickness and death.
They captured Donnacona and several other chiefs and determined to take
them to France "to relate to the king the wonders of the world
Donnacona [evidently a great story-teller] had seen in these western
countries, for he had assured us that he had been in the Saguenay
kingdom, where are infinite gold, rubies, and other riches, and white
men dressed in woollen clothing." In the vicinity of the fort, at the
meeting of the St. Croix and Lairet, Cartier raised a cross,
thirty-five feet in height under the cross-bar of which there was a
wooden shield, showing the arms of France and the inscription
FRANCISCUS PRIMUS DEI GRATIA FRANCORUM REX REGNAT.
When three centuries and a half had passed, a hundred thousand French
Canadians, in the presence of an English governor-general of Canada, a
French Canadian lieutenant-governor and cardinal {43} archbishop, many
ecclesiastical and civil dignitaries, assisted in the unveiling of a
noble monument in memory of Jacques Cartier and his hardy companions of
the voyage of 1535-36, and of Jean de Brebeuf, Ennemond Massé, and
Charles Lalemant, the missionaries who built the first residence of the
Jesuits nearly a century later on the site of the old French fort, and
one of whom afterwards sacrificed his life for the faith to which they
were all so devoted.
On the return voyage Cartier sailed to the southward of the Gulf, saw
the picturesque headlands of northern Cape Breton, remained a few days
in some harbours of Newfoundland, and finally reached St. Malo on the
sixteenth of July, with the joyful news that he had discovered a great
country and a noble river for France.
[1] The obstructions which created these rapids have been removed.
{44}
IV.
FROM CARTIER TO DE MONTS.
(1540-1603.)
The third voyage made by Cartier to the new world, in 1541, was
relatively of little importance. Donnacona and the other Indians of
Stadacona, whom the French carried away with them, never returned to
their forest homes, but died in France. During the year Cartier
remained in Canada he built a fortified post at Cap Rouge, about seven
miles west of the heights of Quebec, and named it Charlesbourg in
honour of one of the sons of Francis the First. He visited Hochelaga,
and attempted to pass up the river beyond the village, but was stopped
by the dangerous rapids now known as the St. Louis or Lachine. He
returned to France in the spring of 1542, with a few specimens of
worthless metal resembling gold which he found among the rocks of Cap
Rouge, and some pieces of quartz crystal which he believed were
diamonds, and which have given the name to the bold promontory on which
stand the ancient fortifications of Quebec.
[Illustration: The "Dauphin Map" of Canada, _circa_ 1543, showing
Cartier's Discoveries.]
{45}
Cartier is said to have returned on a fourth voyage to Canada in
1543--though no record exists--for the purpose of bringing back
Monsieur Roberval, otherwise known to the history of those times as
Jean François de la Roque, who had been appointed by Francis his
lieutenant in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle,
Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay (St. Lawrence), and Baccalaos, as well
as lord of the mysterious region of Norumbega--an example of the lavish
use of titles and the assumption of royal dominion in an unknown
wilderness. Roberval and Cartier were to have sailed in company to
Canada in 1541, but the former could not complete his arrangements and
the latter sailed alone, as we have just read. On his return in 1542
Cartier is said to have met Roberval at a port of the Gulf, and to have
secretly stolen away in the night and left his chief to go on to the
St. Lawrence alone. But these are among historic questions in dispute,
and it is useless to dwell on them here. What we do know to a
certainty is that Roberval spent some months on the banks of the St.
Lawrence,--probably from the spring of 1542 to late in the autumn of
1543,--and built a commodious fort at Charlesbourg, which he renamed
France-Roy. He passed a miserable winter, as many of the colonists he
had brought with him had been picked up amongst the lowest classes of
France, and he had to govern his ill-assorted company with a rigid and
even cruel hand. Roberval is said to have visited the Saguenay and
explored its waters and surrounding country for a considerable
distance, evidently hoping {46} to verify the fables of Donnacona and
other Indians that gold and precious stones were to be found somewhere
in that region. His name has been given to a little village at Lake
St. John, on the assumption that he actually went so far on his
Saguenay expedition, while romantic tradition points to an isle in the
Gulf, the Isle de la Demoiselle, where he is said to have abandoned his
niece Marguérite,--who had loved not wisely but too well--her lover,
and an old nurse. This rocky spot appears to have become in the story
an isle of Demons who tormented the poor wretches, exposed to all the
rigours of Canadian winters, and to starvation except when they could
catch fish or snare wild fowl. The nurse and lover as well as the
infant died, but Marguérite is said to have remained much longer on
that lonely island until at last Fate brought to her rescue a passing
vessel and carried her to France, where she is said to have told the
story of her adventures.
After this voyage Roberval disappeared from the history of Canada.
Cartier is supposed to have died about 1577 in his old manor house of
Limoilou, now in ruins, in the neighbourhood of St. Malo. He was
allowed by the King to bear always the name of "Captain"--an
appropriate title for a hardy sailor who represented so well the
heroism and enterprise of the men of St. Malo and the Breton coast.
The results of the voyages of Cartier, Roberval, and the sailors and
fishermen who frequented the waters of the Great Bay, as the French
long called it, can be seen in the old maps that have come down to us,
and show the increasing geographical knowledge. {47} To this
knowledge, a famous pilot, Captain Jehan Alfonce, a native of the
little village of Saintonge in the grape district of Charente, made
valuable contributions. He accompanied Roberval to Canada, and
afterwards made voyages to the Saguenay, and appears to have explored
the Gulf and the coasts of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and even Maine as
far as the Penobscot, where he believed was the city of Norumbega.
After the death of Francis there came dark days for France, whose
people were torn asunder by civil war and religious strife. With the
return of peace in France the Marquis de la Roche received a commission
from Henry the Fourth, as lieutenant-general of the King, to colonise
Canada, but his ill-fated expedition of 1597 never got beyond the
dangerous sandbanks of Sable Island. French fur-traders had now found
their way to Anticosti and even Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay,
where the Indians were wont to assemble in large numbers from the great
fur-region to which that melancholy river and its tributary lakes and
rivers give access, but these traders like the fishermen made no
attempt to settle the country.
From a very early date in the sixteenth century bold sailors from the
west country of Devon were fishing in the Gulf and eventually made the
safe and commodious port of St. John's, in Newfoundland, their
headquarters. Some adventurous Englishmen even made a search for the
land of Norumbega, and probably reached the bay of Penobscot. Near the
close of the century, Frobisher attempted to open up {48} the secrets
of the Arctic seas and find that passage to the north which remained
closed to venturesome explorers until Sir Robert McClure, in 1850,
successfully passed the icebergs and ice-floes that barred his way from
Bering Sea to Davis Strait. In the reign of the great Elizabeth, when
Englishmen were at last showing that ability for maritime enterprise
which was eventually to develop such remarkable results, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, the half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, the founder of
Virginia, the Old Dominion, took possession of Newfoundland with much
ceremony in the harbour of St. John's, and erected a pillar on which
were inscribed the Queen's arms. Gilbert had none of the qualities of
a coloniser, and on his voyage back to England he was lost at sea, and
it was left to the men of Devon and the West coast in later times to
make a permanent settlement on the great island of the Gulf.
The first years of the seventeenth century were propitious for
important schemes of colonisation and trade in the western lands. The
sovereign of France was Henry the Fourth, the intrepid Prince of Béarn,
as brave a soldier as he was a sagacious statesman. Henry listened
favourably--though his able minister, Sully, held different views--to
the schemes for opening up Canada to commerce and settlement that were
laid before him by an old veteran of the wars, and a staunch friend,
Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe. Pontgravé, a rich Breton
merchant of St. Malo, had the charge of the two vessels which left
France in the spring of 1603, but it is a fact that a great man, Samuel
Champlain, accompanied the {49} expedition that gives the chief
interest to the voyage. Champlain, who was destined to be the founder
of New France, was a native of Brouage in the Bay of Biscay, and
belonged to a family of fishermen. During the war of the League he
served in the army of Henry the Third, but when Henry of Navarre was
proclaimed King of France on the assassination of his predecessor, and
abjured the Protestant faith of which he had previously been the
champion, Champlain, like other Frenchmen, who had followed the Duke of
Guise, became an ardent supporter of the new régime and eventually a
favourite of the Bernese prince. He visited the West Indies in a
Spanish ship and made himself well acquainted with Mexico and other
countries bordering on the Gulf. He has described all his voyages to
the Indies and Canada in quaint quarto volumes, now very rare, and
valuable on account of their minute and truthful narrative--despite his
lively and credulous imagination--and the drawings and maps which he
made rudely of the places he saw. His accounts of the Indians of
Canada are among the most valuable that have come to us from the early
days of American history. He had a fair knowledge of natural history
for those times, though he believed in Mexican griffins, and was versed
in geography and cartography.
In 1603 Pontgravé and Champlain ascended the River St. Lawrence as far
as the island of Montreal, where they found only a few wandering
Algonquins of the Ottawa and its tributaries, in place of the people
who had inhabited the town of Hochelaga in the days of Cartier's
visits. Champlain attempted to {50} pass the Lachine rapids but was
soon forced to give up the perilous and impossible venture. During
this voyage he explored the Saguenay for a considerable distance, and
was able to add largely to the information that Cartier had given of
Canada and the country around the Gulf. When the expedition reached
France, Aymar de Chastes was dead, but two months had hardly elapsed
after Champlain's return when a new company was formed on the usual
basis of trade and colonisation. At its head was Sieur de Monts,
Pierre du Guast, the governor of Pons, a Calvinist and a friend of the
King. After much deliberation it was decided to venture south of
Canada and explore that ill-defined region, called "La Cadie" in the
royal commission given to De Monts as the King's lieutenant in Canada
and adjacent countries, the first record we have of that Acadia where
French and English were to contend during a century for the supremacy.
For a few moments we must leave the valley of the St. Lawrence, where
France was soon to enthrone herself on the heights of Quebec, and visit
a beautiful bay on the western coast of Nova Scotia, where a sleepy old
town, full of historic associations, still stands to recall the efforts
of gentlemen-adventurers to establish a permanent settlement on the
shores of the Atlantic.
{51}
V.
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION OF ACADIA AND THE
FOUNDATION OF PORT ROYAL.
(1604-1614.)
In the western valley of that part of French Acadia, now known as Nova
Scotia, not only do we tread on historic ground, but we see in these
days a landscape of more varied beauty than that which so delighted the
gentlemen-adventurers of old France nearly three centuries ago. In
this country, which the poem conceived by Longfellow amid the elms of
Cambridge has made so famous, we see the rich lands reclaimed from the
sea, which glistens a few miles to the north, and every day comes
rushing up its estuaries. There to the north is dark, lofty
Blomidon--whose name is probably a memorial of a Portuguese
voyager--with its overhanging cliff under which the tumultuous tides
struggle and foam. Here, in a meadow close by, is a long row of
Lombardy poplars, pointing to another race and another country. There,
on a slight acclivity, among the trees, is a pile of white college
buildings, there a tall white spire {52} rises into the pure blue sky.
We see cottages covered with honeysuckle and grapevine; with their
gardens of roses and lilies, and many old-fashioned flowers. In the
spring, the country is one mass of pink and white blossoms, which load
the passing breeze with delicate fragrance; in autumn the trees bend
beneath rosy and yellow apples.
We drive through a fertile valley, where runs a placid river amid many
meadows, gardens, and orchards, until at last it empties into a
picturesque basin, where the landscape shows a harmonious blending of
mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ancient forest trees.
Here we see a quiet old town, whose roofs are green with the moss of
many years, where willows and grassy mounds tell of a historic past,
where the bells of ox-teams tinkle in the streets, and commerce itself
wears a look of reminiscence. For we have come to the banks of that
basin where the French, in the first years of the seventeenth century,
laid the foundations of a settlement which, despite all its early
misfortunes, has lasted until the present time, though it is the
English tongue that is now spoken and the Englishman who is now the
occupant.
Early in the leafy month of June, 1604, the French under De Monts
sailed into this spacious basin, and saw for the first time its grassy
meadows, its numerous streams, its cascades tumbling from the hills,
its forest-clad mountains. "This," said Champlain, who called it Port
Royal, "was the most commodious and pleasant place that we had yet seen
in this country."
{53}
It appears that the adventurers left France in the early part of April.
When the King had been once won over to the project, he consented to
give De Monts and his associates an entire monopoly of the fur-trade
throughout the wide domain of which he was to be the viceroy. The
expedition was chiefly supported by the merchants of the Protestant
town of La Rochelle, and was regarded with much jealousy by other
commercial cities. Protestants were to enjoy in the new colony all the
advantages they were then allowed in France. The Catholics were
appeased by the condition that the conversion of the natives should be
reserved especially for the priests of their own church.
The man of most note, after De Monts and Champlain, was Jean de
Biencourt, a rich nobleman of Picardy, better known in Acadian history
as the Baron de Poutrincourt, who had distinguished himself as a
soldier in the civil wars. A man of energy and enterprise, he was well
fitted to assist in the establishment of a colony.
De Monts and his associates reached without accident the low
fir-covered shores of Nova Scotia, visited several of its harbours, and
finally sailed into the Bay of Fundy, which was named Baie Française.
The French explored the coast of the bay after leaving Port Royal, and
discovered the river which the Indians called Ouigoudi, or highway, and
De Monts renamed St. John, as he saw it first on the festival of that
saint. Proceeding along the northern shores of the bay the expedition
came to a river which falls into Passamaquoddy Bay, and now forms the
{54} boundary between the United States and the eastern provinces of
Canada. This river ever since has been called the river of the Holy
Cross (Sainte-Croix) though the name was first given by De Monts to an
islet, well within the mouth of the stream, which he chose as the site
of the first French settlement on the northeast coast of America.
Buildings were soon erected for the accommodation of some eighty
persons, as well as a small fort for their protection on the rocky
islet. [1]
While the French settlement was preparing for the winter, Champlain
explored the eastern coast from the St. Croix to the Penobscot, where
he came to the conclusion that the story of a large city on its banks
was evidently a mere invention of the imaginative mind. He also was
the first of Europeans, so far as we know, to look on the mountains and
cliffs of the island--so famous as a summer resort in these later
times--which he very aptly named Monts-Déserts. During the three years
Champlain remained in Acadia he made explorations and surveys of the
southern coasts of Nova Scotia from Canseau to Port Royal, of the
shores of the Bay of Fundy, and of the coast of New England from the
St. Croix to Vineyard Sound.
Poutrincourt, who had received from De Monts a grant of the country
around Port Royal, left his companions in their dreary home in the
latter part of August and sailed for France, with the object of making
arrangements for settling his new domain in {55} Acadia. He found that
very little interest was taken in the new colony of which very
unsatisfactory reports were brought back to France by his companions
though he himself gave a glowing account of its beautiful scenery and
resources.
While Poutrincourt was still in France, he was surprised to learn of
the arrival of De Monts with very unsatisfactory accounts of the state
of affairs in the infant colony. The adventurers had very soon found
St. Croix entirely unfitted for a permanent settlement, and after a
most wretched winter had removed to the sunny banks of the Annapolis,
which was then known as the Equille,[2] and subsequently as the
Dauphin. Poutrincourt and De Monts went energetically to work, and
succeeded in obtaining the services of all the mechanics and labourers
they required. The new expedition was necessarily composed of very
unruly characters, who sadly offended the staid folk of that orderly
bulwark of Calvinism, the town of La Rochelle. At last on the 13th of
May, 1606, the _Jonas_, with its unruly crew all on board, left for the
new world under the command of Poutrincourt. Among the passengers was
L'Escarbot, a Paris advocate, a poet, and an historian, to whom we are
indebted for a very sprightly account of early French settlement in
America. De Monts, however, was unable to leave with his friends.
On the 27th July, the _Jonas_ entered the basin of Port Royal with the
flood-tide. A peal from the rude bastion of the little fort bore
testimony to the {56} joy of the two solitary Frenchmen, who, with a
faithful old Indian chief, were the only inmates of the post at that
time. These men, La Taille and Miquellet, explained that Pontgravé and
Champlain, with the rest of the colony, had set sail for France a few
days previously, in two small vessels which they had built themselves.
But there was no time to spend in vain regrets. Poutrincourt opened a
hogshead of wine, and the fort was soon the scene of mirth and
festivity. Poutrincourt set energetically to improve the condition of
things, by making additions to the buildings, and clearing the
surrounding land, which is exceedingly rich. The fort stood on the
north bank of the river--on what is now the Granville side--opposite
Goat Island, or about six miles from the present town of Annapolis.
L'Escarbot appears to have been the very life of the little colony. If
anything occurred to dampen their courage, his fertile mind soon
devised some plan of chasing away forebodings of ill. When
Poutrincourt and his party returned during the summer of 1606 in ill
spirits from Malebarre, now Cape Cod, where several men had been
surprised and killed by the savages, they were met on their landing by
a procession of Tritons, with Neptune at their head, who saluted the
adventurers with merry songs. As they entered the arched gateway, they
saw above their heads another happy device of L'Escarbot, the arms of
France and the King's motto, "_Duo protegit unus_," encircled with
laurels. Under this were the arms of De Monts and Poutrincourt, with
their respective mottoes--"_Dabit deus {57} his quoque finem_," and
"_In vid virtuti nulla est via_,"--also surrounded with evergreens.
[Illustration: Champlain's plan of Port Royal in Acadia in 1605. Key
to illustration: A, Workmen's dwelling; B, Platform for cannon; C,
Storehouse; D, Residence for Champlain and Pontgravé; E, Blacksmith's
forge; F, Palisade; G, Bakehouse; H, Kitchen; I, Gardens; K, Burying
ground; L, St. Lawrence River; M, Moat; N, Dwelling of De Monts; and O,
Ships' storehouse.]