1This is a convenient name for the race formerly called "American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000 white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about 111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United States, the remainder in Central and South America.
2It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.
3The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between August and October. They belong to the same genus—Vitis—as that of the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (Vitis vulpina), the Frost Grape (V. cordifolia), theV. aestivalis, theV. labruska, &c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them delicious to eat.
4Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national nameKaralit.
5Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.
6Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the "island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and English legends—legends based on the Norse discoveries of the eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a strait no broader than a river.
7Dr. S.E. DAWSON (The St. Lawrence Basin) says of this voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another ocean...."
8Almost certainly this wasConurus carolinensis, a green and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.
9The nameAmericaprobably appears for the first time in English print in the old play or masque theFour Elements, which was published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a Florentine bank clerk—Amerigo Vespucci—at Seville who gave up the counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris, written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World. Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.
10Bacalhaoin Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish, old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or stickfish.
11Labrador(Lavradorin Portuguese) means a labourer, a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians from this coast to be sold as slaves.
12Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland, Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre Neuve".
13The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was called by the French "Acadie".
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water—like Magellan's Straits in the far south—which should lead them through the great North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to the north and south of Newfoundland—the Straits of Belle Isle and of Cabot—which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St. Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay, more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without much walking.
Estevão Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet, after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days. As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky islands, especially on Funk Island.[1]These birds were guillemots, puffins, great auks,[2]gannets (called by Cartiermargaulx), and probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors—always hungry and partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years ago—this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives", members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland, Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with grass).[3]He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St. Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that, being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula.
Yet, whilst staying in Gaspé Bay, he had a very important meeting with Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily, greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspé Bay (a cross bearing a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when they were dressed in French clothes!
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier
When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed for France with his wonderful news.
On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about 112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began to recognize the scenery.[4]They now explained to Cartier that he had entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond "Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks (some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and settlers.
At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St. Lawrence flowed through three great states:Saguenay, which was the mountainous Gaspé Peninsula and the opposite coast;Canada, Quebec and its neighbourhood; andHochelaga, the region between Montreal and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales—the Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity of the modern Quebec,[5]and his Amerindian interpreters found themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspé Bay) there was great rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter, and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death for anyone to go there.
However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga. The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline, surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide. They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer, of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in Brazil.
He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the soup blueberries,[6]dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread, baking it in the ashes.
Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran, and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water, stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to themiganeor porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water, then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact (with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world. Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud, leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell money.[7]
From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time, though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April, 1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the first time the smoking of tobacco,[8]and collected information about the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the lowlands of the eastern United States.
As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or smoked provisions—forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival had been greeted, the Amerindians—notably the two interpreters who had been to France and returned—showed at intervals signs of disquiet and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112 who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men, including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death. This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass.
Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter, Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called ameda.[9]Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin. The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were well and strong.
Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement, and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and other precious stones.
Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their great king, who would return him to his country with great presents. As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St. Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in 1541.
When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three, landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or "saults"—interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence—which he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration, returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal. Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships, abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately. The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences, putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that disease.[10]
However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to France.
Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and seemed likely to colonize the country.
1Funk Island—called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"—is only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3 miles distant from the coast.
2The Great Auk (Alca impennis), extinct since about 1844 in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French seamen called itpingouin("penguin") from its fatness, and this name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.
3On the shores of these islands they noticed "several great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to those of the elephant". These were walruses.
4Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.
5Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronouncedKebek) means the narrow part of a river.
6The Canada Blueberry (Vaccinium canadense), called by the Frenchbluësorbluëts. These bluës were collected and dried by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the winter.
7Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn, which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers, peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured beads.
8"There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.
9This tree was the balsam fir,Abies balsamea.
10A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions. But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time, frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.
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Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque, Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English, as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic America.
But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into favour. MARTIN FROBISHER[1]offered himself as a discoverer, and the Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10 tons.[2]Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June, 1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt reached them at Tilbury.
But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards. Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta Incognita[3]. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed, minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain gold. There was at once—as we should say in modern slang—a boom for these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher, sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs, "so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it, though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice, and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted, however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's reign—scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of chivalry—stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts, led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese, and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were drowned.
Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of 10 tons named theSquirrel. He was accompanied by a larger vessel, theGolden Hinde, but refused to leave the men on theSquirrelto their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of Spain, when theSquirrelwas overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from London—theHopewelland theChancewell) sailing up the St. Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,[4]Bartholomew Gosnold sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the 26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy for almost all diseases.
Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England. Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south, led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America—a vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in 1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of Newfoundland.
Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland, recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked the British) and made the position of the British colonists so precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay, and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the French.
In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.