Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1000 to 1600, part 2

He had not found passage to China, but he had found a kingdom; and the two Indians told marvelous tales of the Great River to the West, where they lived, of mines, of vast unclaimed lands.

Cartier had been home only a month when the Admiral of France ordered him to prepare for another voyage.

He himself was to command the _Grand Hermine_, Captain Jalobert the _Little Hermine_, and Captain Le Breton the _Emerillon_.

Young gentlemen adventurers were to accompany the explorers.

The ships were provisioned for two years; and on May 16, 1535, all hands gathered to the cathedral, where sins were confessed, the archbishop's blessing received, and Cartier given a Godspeed to the music of full choirs chanting invocation.

Three days later anchors were hoisted.

Cannon boomed.

Sails swung out; and the vessels sheered away from the roadstead while cheers rent the air.

Head winds held the ship back.

Furious tempests scattered the fleet.

It was July 17 before Cartier sighted the gull islands of Newfoundland and swung up north with the tide through the brown fogs of Belle Isle Straits to the shining gravel of Blanc Sablon.

Here he waited for the other vessels, which came on the 26th.

The two Indians taken from Gaspé now began to recognize the headlands of their native country, telling Cartier the first kingdom along the Great River was Saguenay, the second Canada, the third Hochelaga.

Near Mingan, Cartier anchored to claim the land for France; and he named the great waters St. Lawrence because it was on that saint's day he had gone ashore.

The north side of Anticosti was passed, and the first of September saw the three little ships drawn up within the shadow of that somber gorge cut through sheer rock where the Saguenay rolls sullenly out to the St. Lawrence.

The mountains presented naked rock wall.

Beyond, rolling back .

.

.

rolling back to an impenetrable wilderness .

.

.

were the primeval {13} forests.

Through the canyon flowed the river, dark and ominous and hushed.

The men rowed out in small boats to fish but were afraid to land.

As the ships advanced up the St. Lawrence the seamen could scarcely believe they were on a river.

The current rolled seaward in a silver flood.

In canoes paddling shyly out from the north shore Cartier's two Indians suddenly recognized old friends, and whoops of delight set the echoes ringing.

Keeping close to the north coast, russet in the September sun, Cartier slipped up that long reach of shallows abreast a low-shored wooded island so laden with grapevines he called it Isle Bacchus.

It was the Island of Orleans.

Then the ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of Montmorency leaping from precipice to river bed with roar of thunder.

Cartier had anchored near the west end of Orleans Island when there came paddling out with twelve canoes, Donnacona, great chief of Stadacona, whose friendship was won on the instant by the tales Cartier's Indians told of France and all the marvels of the white man's world.

Cartier embarked with several young officers to go back with the chief;

and the three vessels were cautiously piloted up little St. Charles River, which joins the St. Lawrence below the modern city of Quebec.

Women dashed to their knees in water to welcome ashore these gayly dressed newcomers with the gold-braided coats and clanking swords.

Crossing the low swamp, now Lower Town, Quebec, the adventurers followed a path through the forest up a steep declivity of sliding stones to the clear high table-land above, and on up the rolling slopes to the airy heights of Cape Diamond overlooking the St. Lawrence like the turret of some castle above the sea.

Did a French soldier, removing his helmet to wipe away the sweat of his arduous climb, cry out "Que bec" (What a peak!

) as he viewed the magnificent panorama of river and valley and mountain rolling from his feet; or did their Indian guide point to the water of the river narrowing like {14} a strait below the peak, and mutter in native tongue, "Quebec" (The strait)?

Legend gives both explanations of the name.

To the east Cartier could see far down the silver flood of the St. Lawrence halfway to Saguenay; to the south, far as the dim mountains of modern New Hampshire.

What would the King of France have thought if he could have realized that his adventurers had found a province three times the size of England, one third larger than France, one third larger than Germany?

And they had as yet reached only one small edge of Canada, namely Quebec.

Heat haze of Indian summer trembled over the purple hills.

Below, the river quivered like quicksilver.

In the air was the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water;

and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract.

To Cartier the scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of dreams of earth's high heroes are empires made.

But the Indians had told of that other kingdom, Hochelaga.

Hither Cartier had determined to go, when three Indians dressed as devils--faces black as coals, heads in masks, brows adorned with elk horns--came gyrating and howling out of the woods on the mountain side, making wild signals to the white men encamped on the St. Charles.

Cartier's interpreters told him this was warning from the Indian god not to ascend the river.

The god said Hochelaga was a realm of snow, where all white men would perish.

It was a trick to keep the white men's trade for themselves.

Cartier laughed.

"Tell them their god is an old fool," he said.

"Christ is to be our guide."

The Indians wanted to know if Cartier had spoken to his God about it.

"No," answered Cartier.

Then, not to be floored, he added, "but my priest has."

{15} With three cheers, fifty young gentlemen sheered out on September 19 from the St. Charles on the _Emerillon_ to accompany Cartier to Hochelaga.

[Illustration: ANCIENT HOCHELAGA.

(From Ramusio)] Beyond Quebec the St. Lawrence widened like a lake.

September frosts had painted the maples in flame.

Song birds, the glory of the St. Lawrence valley, were no longer to be heard, but the waters literally swarmed with duck and the forests were alive with partridge.

Where to-day nestle church spires and whitewashed hamlets were the birch wigwams and night camp fires of Indian hunters.

Wherever Cartier went ashore, Indians rushed knee-deep to carry him from the river; and one old chief at Richelieu signified his pleasure by presenting the whites with two Indian children.

Zigzagging leisurely, now along the north shore, now along the south, pausing to hunt, pausing to explore, pausing to powwow with the Indians, the adventurers came, on September 28, to the reedy shallows and breeding grounds of wild fowl at Lake St. Peter.

Here they were so close ashore the _Emerillon_ caught her keel in the weeds, and the explorers left her aground under guard and went forward in rowboats.

{16} "Was this the way to Hochelaga?"

the rowers asked Indians paddling past.

"Yes, three more sleeps," the Indians answered by the sign of putting the face with closed eyes three times against their hand; "three more nights would bring Cartier to Hochelaga"; and on the night of the 2d of October the rowboats, stopped by the rapids, pulled ashore at Hochelaga amid a concourse of a thousand amazed savages.

It was too late to follow the trail through the darkening forest to the Indian village.

Cartier placed the soldiers in their burnished armor on guard and spent the night watching the council fires gleam from the mountain.

And did some soldier standing sentry, watching the dark shadow of the hill creep longer as the sun went down, cry out, "Mont Royal," so that the place came to be known as Montreal?

At peep of dawn, while the mist is still smoking up from the river, Cartier marshals twenty seamen with officers in military line, and, to the call of trumpet, marches along the forest trail behind Indian guides for the tribal fort.

Following the river, knee-deep in grass, the French ascend the hill now known as Notre Dame Street, disappear in the hollow where flows a stream,--modern Craig Street,--then climb steeply through the forests to the plain now known as the great thoroughfare of Sherbrooke Street.

Halfway up they come on open fields of maize or Indian corn.

Here messengers welcome them forward, women singing, tom-tom beating, urchins stealing fearful glances through the woods.

The trail ends at a fort with triple palisades of high trees, walls separated by ditches and roofed for defense, with one carefully guarded narrow gate.

Inside are fifty large wigwams, the oblong bark houses of the Huron-Iroquois, each fifty feet long, with the public square in the center, or what we would call the courtyard.

It needs no trick of fancy to call up the scene--the winding of the trumpet through the forest silence, the amazement of the Indian drummers, the arrested frenzy of the dancers, the sunrise turning burnished armor to fire, the clanking of swords, {17} the wheeling of the soldiers as they fall in place, helmets doffed, round the council fire!

Women swarm from the long houses.

Children come running with mats for seats.

Bedridden, blind, maimed are carried on litters, if only they may touch the garments of these wonderful beings.

One old chief with skin like crinkled leather and body gnarled with woes of a hundred years throws his most precious possession, a headdress, at Cartier's feet.

Poor Cartier is perplexed.

He can but read aloud from the Gospel of St. John and pray Christ heal these supplicants.

Then he showers presents on the Indians, gleeful as children--knives and hatchets and beads and tin mirrors and little images and a crucifix, which he teaches them to kiss.

Again the silver trumpet peals through the aisled woods.

Again the swords clank, and the adventurers take their way up the mountain--a Mont Royal, says Cartier.

The mountain is higher than the one at Quebec.

Vaster the view--vaster the purple mountains, the painted forests, the valleys bounded by a sky line that recedes before the explorer as the rainbow runs from the grasp of a child.

This is not Cathay; it is a New France.

Before going back to Quebec the adventurers follow a trail up the St. Lawrence far enough to see that Lachine Rapids bar progress by boat; far enough, too, to see that the Gaspé Indians had spoken truth when they told of another grand river--the Ottawa--coming in from the north.

By the 11th of October Cartier is at Quebec.

His men have built a palisaded fort on the banks of the St. Charles.

The boats are beached.

Indians scatter to their far hunting grounds.

Winter sets in.

Canadian cold is new to these Frenchmen.

They huddle indoors instead of keeping vigorous with exercise.

Ice hangs from the dismantled masts.

Drifts heap almost to top of palisades.

Fear of the future falls on the crew.

Will they ever see France again?

Then scurvy breaks out.

The fort is prostrate.

Cartier is afraid to ask aid of the wandering Indians lest they learn his weakness.

To keep up show of strength he has his men fire off muskets, batter the fort walls, march and drill and {18} tramp and stamp, though twenty-five lie dead and only four are able to keep on their feet.

The corpses are hidden in snowdrifts or crammed through ice holes in the river with shot weighted to their feet.

In desperation Cartier calls on all the saints in the Christian calendar.

He erects a huge crucifix and orders all, well and ill, out in procession.

Weak and hopeless, they move across the snows chanting psalms.

That night one of the young noblemen died.

Toward spring an Indian was seen apparently recovering from the same disease.

Cartier asked him what had worked the cure and learned of the simple remedy of brewed spruce juice.

By the time the Indians came from the winter hunt Cartier's men were in full health.

Up at Hochelaga a chief had seized Cartier's gold-handled dagger and pointed up the Ottawa whence came ore like the gold handle.

Failing to carry any minerals home, Cartier felt he must have witnesses to his report.

The boats are rigged to sail, Chief Donnacona and eleven others are lured on board, surrounded, forcibly seized, and treacherously carried off to France.

May 6, 1536, the boats leave Quebec, stopping only for water at St. Pierre, where the Breton fishermen have huts.

July 16 they anchor at St. Malo.

Did France realize that Cartier had found a new kingdom?

Not in the least; but the home land gave heed to that story of minerals, and had the kidnapped Indians baptized.

Donnacona and all his fellow-captives but the little girl of Richelieu die, and Sieur de Roberval is appointed lord paramount of Canada to equip Cartier with five vessels and scour the jails of France for colonists.

Though the colonists are convicts, the convicts are not criminals.

Some have been convicted for their religion, some for their politics.

What with politics and war, it is May, 1541, before the ships sail, and then Roberval has to wait another year for his artillery, while Cartier goes ahead to build the forts.

From the first, things go wrong.

Head winds prolong the passage for three months.

The stock on board is reduced to a diet of cider, and half the cattle die.

Then the Indians of Quebec {19} ask awkward questions about Donnacona.

Cartier flounders midway between truth and lie.

Donnacona had died, he said; as for the others, they have become as white men.

Agona succeeds Donnacona as chief.

Agona is so pleased at the news that he gives Cartier a suit of buckskin garnished with wampum, but the rest of the Indians draw off in such resentment that Cartier deems it wise to build his fort at a distance, and sails nine miles up to Cape Rouge, where he constructs Bourg Royal.

Noel, his nephew, and Jalobert, his brother-in-law, take two ships back to France.

While Cartier roams exploring, Beaupré commands Bourg Royal.

In his roamings, ever with his eyes to earth for minerals, he finds stones specked with mica, and false diamonds, whence the height above Quebec is called Cape Diamond.

It is enough.

The crews spend the year loading the ships with cargo of worthless stones, and set sail in May, high of hope for wealth great as Spaniard carried from Peru.

June 8 the ships slip in to St. John's, Newfoundland, for water.

Seventeen fishing vessels rock to the tide inside the landlocked lagoon, and who comes gliding up the Narrows of the harbor neck but Viceroy Roberval, mad with envy when he hears of the diamond cargoes!

He breaks the head of a Portuguese or two among the fishing fleet and forthwith orders Cartier back to Quebec.

Cartier shifts anchor from too close range of Roberval's guns and says nothing.

At dead of night he slips anchor altogether and steals away on the tide, with only one little noiseless sail up on each ship through the dark Narrows.

Once outside, he spreads his wings to the wind and is off for France.

The diamonds prove worthless, but Cartier receives a title and retires to a seigneurial mansion at St. Malo.

The episode did not improve Roberval's temper.

The new Viceroy was a soldier and a martinet, and his authority had been defied.

With his two hundred colonists, taken from the prisons of France, commanded by young French officers,--a Lament and a La Salle among others,--he proceeded up the coast of Newfoundland to enter the St. Lawrence by Belle Isle.

{20} Among his people were women, and Roberval himself was accompanied by a niece, Marguerite, who had the reputation of being a bold horsewoman and prime favorite with the grandees who frequented her uncle's castle.

Perhaps Roberval had brought her to New France to break up her attachment for a soldier.

Or the Viceroy may have been entirely ignorant of the romance, but, anchored off Belle Isle,--Isle of Demons,--the angry governor made an astounding discovery.

The girl had a lover on board, a common soldier, and the two openly defied his interdict.

Coming after Cartier's defection, the incident was oil to fire with Roberval.

Sailors were ordered to lower the rowboat.

One would fain believe that the tyrannical Viceroy offered the high-spirited girl at least the choice of giving up her lover.

She was thrust into the rowboat with a faithful old Norman nurse.

Four guns and a small supply of provisions were tossed to the boat.

The sailors were then commanded to row ashore and abandon her on Isle of Demons.

The soldier lover leaped over decks and swam through the surf to share her fate.

Isle of Demons, with its wailing tides and surf-beaten reefs, is a desolate enough spot in modern days when superstitions do not add to its terrors.

The wind pipes down from The Labrador in fairest weather with weird voices as of wailing ghosts, and in winter the shores of Belle Isle never cease to echo to the hollow booming of the pounding surf.

Out of driftwood the castaways constructed a hut.

Fish were in plenty, wild fowl offered easy mark, and in springtime the ice floes brought down the seal herds.

There was no lack of food, but rescue seemed forever impossible; for no fishing craft would approach the demon-haunted isle.

A year passed, two years,--a child was born.

The soldier lover died of heartbreak and despondency.

The child wasted away.

The old nurse, too, was buried.

Marguerite was left alone to fend for herself and hope against hope that some of the passing sails would heed her signals.

No wonder at the end of the third year she began to hear shrieking laughter in the lonely cries of tide and wind, and to imagine that she saw fiendish arms snatching through the spume of storm drift.

{21} Towards the fall of 1545, one calm day when spray for the once did not hide the island, some fishermen in the straits noticed the smoke of a huge bonfire ascending from Isle Demons.

Was it a trick of the fiends to lure men to wreck, or some sailors like themselves signaling distress?

The boat drew fearfully near and nearer.

A creature in the strange attire of skins from wild beasts ran down the rocks, signaling frantically.

It was a woman.

Terrified and trembling, the sailors plucked up courage to land.

Then for the first time Marguerite Roberval's spirit gave way.

She could not speak; she seemed almost bereft of reason.

It was only after the fishermen had nourished her back to semblance of womanhood that they drew from her the story.

On returning to France, Marguerite Roberval entered a convent.

It was there an old court friend of her château days sought her out and heard the tale from her own lips.

[Illustration: THE "DAUPHIN MAP" OF CANADA, _CIRCA_ 1543, SHOWING CARTIER'S DISCOVERIES]

{22} A colony begun under such ill omen was not likely to prosper.

Roberval had proceeded to Cape Rouge, where he landed in July, and before winter had a respectable fort constructed.

Fifty of his colonists died of scurvy.

As many as six were hanged in a single day for insubordination, and the whipping post became the emblem of an authority that trembled in the balance.

Roberval, in troth, was not thinking of the colony.

He was thinking of those minerals which the Indians said were at the head waters of the Saguenay.

Leaving thirty women at the fort, he ascended the Saguenay with seventy men in spring and explored as far as Lake St. John, where the village of Roberval commemorates his feat; but he found no minerals and lost eight men running rapids.

When Cartier came out in 1543, Roberval took the remaining colonists home, a profoundly embittered man.

Legend has it that he either perished on a second voyage in 1549, or was assassinated in Paris.

So falls the curtain on the first attempt to colonize Canada.

{23} CHAPTER II FROM 1600 TO 1607