"The first time I beheld thee, beauteous stream,
How pure, how smooth, how broad thy bosom heav'd!
What feelings rushed upon my heart!--a gleam
As of another life my kindling soul received."
Thus sang Maria Brooks to the noble river St. Lawrence, which the
earlier geographers always called "the Great River of Canada." The
first adventurous white man who crossed the seas and found it was the
intrepid French navigator, Jacques Cartier, who sailed into its broad
bay on the festival day of the martyred Saint Lawrence, in 1534. When
this bold explorer started from France on his voyage of discovery he
was fired with religious zeal. St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany, was
then the chief French seaport, and before departing, the entire
company of officers and sailors piously attended a solemn High Mass
in the old Cathedral, and in the presence of thousands received the
venerable Archbishop's blessing upon their enterprise. Cartier, like
all the rest of the early discoverers, was sent under the auspices of
the French Government to hunt for the "Northwest Passage," the short
route from Europe to the Indies, or, as described in his instructions,
to seek "the new road to Cathay." The Church naturally bestowed its
most earnest benisons upon an enterprise promising unlimited religious
expansion in the realms France might secure across the Atlantic.
Carrier's chief ship was only of one hundred and twenty tons, but the
little fleet crossed the ocean in safety, and on July 9th entered a
large bay south of the St. Lawrence, encountering such intense heats
that it was named the Bay de Chaleurs, being still thus called. After
an extensive examination of the neighboring coasts and bays, Cartier
returned home, reporting that the Canadian summers were as warm as
those of France, but giving no information of the extreme cold of the
winters. This the sun-loving Gauls did not discover until later.
Cartier came back the next year, and sailed up what he had already
named the "Great River," describing it as the most enormous in the
world. The Indians told his wondering sailors "it goes so far that no
man hath ever been to the end that they had heard." The explorers
carefully examined the vast stream, its shores and branches, and were
sure, as they reported, that its sombre tributary, the Saguenay,
"comes from the Sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a strong
current, and there runs here a terrible tide." They saw numerous
whales and other sea-monsters, but found the water too deep for
soundings, and in fact the river St. Lawrence cannot be sounded for
one hundred and fifty miles up from its mouth.