Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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[Illustration: VIKING SHIP RECENTLY DISCOVERED.]

Where was Vinland? Was it Canada? The answer is unknown. It was south
of Labrador. It is thought to have been Rhode Island; but certainly,
passing north and south, the Norse were the first white men to see Canada.

Did some legend, dim as a forgotten dream, come down to Columbus in 1492
of the Norsemen's western land? All sailors of Europe yearly fished in
Iceland. Had one of Columbus's crew heard sailor yarns of the new land?
If so, Columbus must have thought the new land part of Asia; for ever
since Marco Polo had come from China, Europe had dreamed of a way to Asia
by the sea. What with Portugal and Spain dividing the New World, all the
nations of Europe suddenly awakened to a passion for discovery.

[Illustration: DIVISION OF THE NEW WORLD BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.]

There were still lands to the north, which Portugal and Spain had not
found,--lands where pearls and gold might abound. At Bristol in England
dwelt with his sons John Cabot, the Genoese master mariner, well
acquainted with Eastern-trade. Henry VII commissions him on a voyage of
discovery--an empty honor, the King to have one fifth of all profit,
Cabot to bear all expense. The _Matthew_ ships from Bristol with a crew
of eighteen in May of 1497. North and west sails the tumbling craft two
thousand miles. Colder grows the air, stiffer the breeze in the bellying
sails, till the _Matthew's_ crew are shivering on decks amid fleets of
icebergs that drift from Greenland in May and June. This is no realm of
spices and gold. Land looms through the mist the last week in June, {4}
rocky, surf-beaten, lonely as earth's ends, with never a sound but the
scream of the gulls and the moan of the restless water-fret along endless
white reefs. Not a living soul did the English sailors see. Weak in
numbers, disappointed in the rocky land, they did not wait to hunt for
natives. An English flag was hastily unfurled and possession taken of
this Empire of the North for England. The woods of America for the first
time rang to the chopper. Wood and water were taken on, and the
_Matthew_ had anchored in Bristol by the first week of August. Neither
gold nor a way to China had Cabot found; but he had accomplished three
things: he had found that the New World was not a part of Asia, as Spain
thought; he had found the continent itself; and he had given England the
right to claim new dominion.

[Illustration: A TYPICAL "HOLE IN THE WALL" AT "KITTY VIDDY," NEAR ST.
JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND]

England went mad over Cabot. He was granted the title of admiral and
allowed to dress in silks as a nobleman. King Henry gave him 10 pounds,
equal to $500 of modern money, and a pension of 20 pounds, equal to $1000
to-day. It is sometimes said that modern writers attribute an air of
romance to these old pathfinders, {5} which they would have scorned; but
"Zuan Cabot," as the people called him, wore the halo of glory with glee.
To his barber he presented an island kingdom; to a poor monk he gave a
bishopric. His son, Sebastian, sailed out the next year with a fleet of
six ships and three hundred men, coasting north as far as Greenland,
south as far as Carolina, so rendering doubly secure England's title to
the North, and bringing back news of the great cod banks that were to
lure French and Spanish and English fishermen to Newfoundland for
hundreds of years.

[Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT]

Where was Cabot's landfall?

I chanced to be in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, shortly after the 400th
anniversary of Cabot's voyage. King's Cove, landlocked as a hole in a
wall, mountains meeting sky line, presented on one flat rock in letters
the size of a house claim that it was _here_ John Cabot sent his sailors
ashore to plant the flag on cairn of bowlders; but when I came back from
Newfoundland by way of Cape Breton, I found the same claim there. For
generations the tradition has been handed down from father to son among
Newfoundland fisher folk that as Cabot's vessel, pitching and rolling to
the tidal bore, came scudding into King's Cove, rock girt as an inland
lake, the sailors shouted "Bona Vista--Beautiful View"; but Cape Breton
has her legend, too. It was Cabot's report of the cod banks that brought
the Breton fishermen out, whose name Cape Breton bears.

{6} As Christopher Columbus spurred England to action, so Cabot now
spurred Portugal and Spain and France.

Gaspar Cortereal comes in 1500 from Portugal on Cabot's tracks to that
land of "slaty rocks" which the Norse saw long ago. The Gulf Stream
beats the iron coast with a boom of thunder, and the tide swirl meets the
ice drift; and it isn't a land to make a treasure hunter happy till there
wander down to the shore Montaignais Indians, strapping fellows, a head
taller than the tallest Portuguese. Cortereal lands, lures fifty savages
on board, carries them home as slaves for Portugal's galley ships, and
names the country--"land of laborers"--Labrador. He sailed again, the
next year; but never returned to Portugal. The seas swallowed his
vessel; or the tide beat it to pieces against Labrador's rocks; of those
Indians slaked their vengeance by cutting the throats of master and crew.

And Spain was not idle. In 1513 Balboa leads his Spanish treasure
seekers across the Isthmus of Panama, discovers the Pacific, and realizes
what Cabot has already proved--that the New World is not a part of Asia.
Thereupon, in swelling words, he takes possession of "earth, air, and
water from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic" for Spain. A few years
later Magellan finds his way to Asia round South America; but this path
by sea is too long.

From France, Normans and Bretons are following Cabot's tracks to
Newfoundland, to Labrador, to Cape Breton, "quhar men goeth a-fishing" in
little cockleshell boats no bigger than three-masted schooner, with
black-painted dories dragging in tow or roped on the rolling decks.
Absurd it is, but with no blare of trumpets or royal commissions, with no
guide but the wander spirit that lured the old Vikings over the rolling
seas, these grizzled peasants flock from France, cross the Atlantic, and
scatter over what were then chartless waters from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Grand Banks.

Just as they may be seen to-day bounding over the waves in their little
black dories, hauling in . . . hauling in the endless line, or jigging
for squid, or lying at ease at the noonday hour {7} singing some old land
ballad while the kettle of cod and pork boils above a chip fire kindled
on the stones used as ballast in their boats--so came the French fisher
folk three years after Cabot had discovered the Grand Banks. Denys of
Honfleur has led his fishing fleet all over the Gulf of St. Lawrence by
1506. So has Aubert of Dieppe. By 1517, fifty French vessels yearly
fish off the coast of New-Found-Land. By 1518 one Baron de Lery has
formed the project of colonizing this new domain; but the baron's ship
unluckily came from the Grand Banks to port on that circular bank of sand
known as Sable Island--from twenty to thirty miles as the tide shifts the
sand, with grass waist high and a swampy lake in the middle. The Baron
de Lery unloads his stock on Sable island and roves the sea for a better
port.

The King of France, meanwhile, resents the Pope dividing the New World
between Spain and Portugal. "I should like to see the clause in Father
Adam's will that gives the whole earth to you," he sent word to his
brother kings. Verrazano, sea rover of Florence, is commissioned to
explore the New World seas; but Verrazano goes no farther north in 1524
than Newfoundland, and when he comes on a second voyage he is lost--some
say hanged as a pirate by the Spaniards for intruding on their seas.

In spite of the loss of the King's sea rover, the fisher folk of France
continue coming in their crazy little schooners, continue fishing in the
fogs of the Grand Banks from their rocking black-planked dories, continue
scudding for shelter from storm . . . here, there, everywhere; into the
south shore of Newfoundland; into the long arms of the sea at Cape
Breton, dyed at sundawn and sunset by such floods of golden light, these
arms of the sea become known as Bras d'Or Lakes--Lakes of Gold; into the
rock-girt lagoons of Gaspe; into the holes in the wall of Labrador . . .;
till there presently springs up a secret trade in furs between the
fishing fleet and the Indians. The King of France is not to be balked by
one failure. "What," he asked, "are my royal brothers to have _all_
America?" Among the Bank fishermen were many sailors of St. Malo.
Jacques Cartier, master pilot, {8} now forty years of age, must have
learned strange yarns of the New World from harbor folk. Indeed, he may
have served as sailor on the Banks. Him the King chose, with one hundred
and twenty men and two vessels, in 1534, to go on a voyage of discovery
to the great sea where men fished. Cartier was to find if the sea led to
China and to take possession of the countries for France. Captain,
masters, men, march to the cathedral and swear fidelity to the King. The
vessels sail on April 20, with the fishing fleet.

[Illustration: Jacques Cartier]

Piping winds carry them forward at a clipper pace. The sails scatter and
disappear over the watery sky line. In twenty days Cartier is off that
bold headland with the hole in the wall called Bona Vista. Ice is
running as it always runs there in spring. What with wind and ice,
Cartier deems it prudent to look for shelter. Sheering south among the
scarps at Catalina, where the whales blow and the seals float in
thousands {9} on the ice pans, Cartier anchors to take on wood and water.
For ten days he watches the white whirl driving south. Then the water
clears and his sails swing to the wind, and he is off to the north, along
that steel-gray shore of rampart rock, between the white-slab islands and
the reefy coast. Birds are in such flocks off Funk Island that the men
go ashore to hunt, as the fisher folk anchor for bird shooting to-day.

Higher rises the rocky sky line; barer the shore wall, with never a break
to the eye till you turn some jagged peak and come on one of those snug
coves where the white fisher hamlets now nestle. Reefs white as lace
fret line the coast. Lonely as death, bare as a block of marble, Gull
Island is passed where another crew in later years perish as castaways.
Gray finback whales flounder in schools. The lazy humpbacks lounge round
and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously. A polar bear is seen on
an ice pan. Then the ships come to those lonely harbors north of
Newfoundland--Griguet and Quirpon and Ha-Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless,
always windy, desolate, with an eternal moaning of the tide over the
fretful reefs.

[Illustration: WHERE THE FISHER HAMLETS NOW NESTLE, NEWFOUNDLAND]

{10} To the north, off a little seaward, is Belle Isle. Here, storm or
calm, the ocean tide beats with fury unceasing and weird reechoing of
baffled waters like the scream of lost souls. It was sunset when I was
on a coastal ship once that anchored off Belle Isle, and I realized how
natural it must have been for Cartier's superstitious sailors to mistake
the moan of the sea for wild cries of distress, and the smoke of the
spray for fires of the inferno. To French sailors Belle Isle became Isle
of Demons. In the half light of fog or night, as the wave wash rises and
falls, you can almost see white arms clutching the rock.

As usual, bad weather caught the ships in Belle Isle Straits. Till the
9th of June brown fog held Cartier. When it lifted the tide had borne
his ships across the straits to Labrador at Castle Island, Chateau Bay.
Labrador was a ruder region than Newfoundland. Far as eye could scan
were only domed rocks like petrified billows, dank valleys moss-grown and
scrubby, hillsides bare as slate; "This land should not be called earth,"
remarked Cartier. "It is flint! Faith, I think this is the region God
gave Cain!" If this were Cain's realm, his descendants were "men of
might"; for when the Montaignais, tall and straight as mast poles, came
down to the straits, Cartier's little scrub sailors thought them giants.
Promptly Cartier planted the cross and took possession of Labrador for
France. As the boats coasted westward the shore rock turned to
sand,--huge banks and drifts and hillocks of white sand,--so that the
place where the ships struck across for the south shore became known as
Blanc Sablon (White Sand). Squalls drove Cartier up the Bay of Islands
on the west shore of Newfoundland, and he was amazed to find this arm of
the sea cut the big island almost in two. Wooded mountains flanked each
shore. A great river, amber with forest mold, came rolling down a deep
gorge. But it was not Newfoundland Cartier had come to explore; it was
the great inland sea to the west, and to the west he sailed.

July found him off another kind of coast--New Brunswick--forested and
rolling with fertile meadows. Down a broad shallow stream--the
Miramichi--paddled Indians waving furs {11} for trade; but wind
threatened a stranding in the shallows. Cartier turned to follow the
coast north. Denser grew the forests, broader the girths of the great
oaks, heavier the vines, hotter the midsummer weather. This was no land
of Cain. It was a new realm for France. While Cartier lay at anchor
north of the Miramichi, Indian canoes swarmed round the boats at such
close quarters the whites had to discharge a musket to keep the three
hundred savages from scrambling on decks. Two seamen then landed to
leave presents of knives and coats. The Indians shrieked delight, and,
following back to the ships, threw fur garments to the decks till
literally naked. On the 18th of July the heat was so intense that
Cartier named the waters Bay of Chaleur. Here were more Indians. At
first the women dashed to hiding in the woods, while the painted warriors
paddled out; but when Cartier threw more presents into the canoes, women
and children swarmed out singing a welcome. The Bay of Chaleur promised
no passage west, so Cartier again spread his sails to the wind and
coasted northward. The forests thinned. Towards Gaspe the shore became
rocky and fantastic. The inland sea led westward, but the season was far
advanced. It was decided to return and report to the King. Landing at
Gaspe on July 24, Cartier erected a cross thirty feet high with the words
emblazoned on a tablet, _Vive le Roi de France_. Standing about him were
the painted natives of the wilderness, one old chief dressed in black
bearskin gesticulating protest against the cross till Cartier explained
by signs that the whites would come again. Two savages were invited on
board. By accident or design, as they stepped on deck, their skiff was
upset and set adrift. The astonished natives found themselves in the
white men's power, but food and gay clothing allayed fear. They
willingly consented to accompany Cartier to France. Somewhere north of
Gaspe the smoke of the French fishing fleet was seen ascending from the
sea, as the fishermen rocked in their dories cooking the midday meal.

August 9 prayers are held for safe return at Blanc Sablon,--port of the
white, white sand,--and by September 5 Cartier is {12} home in St. Malo,
a rabble of grizzled sailor folk chattering a welcome from the wharf
front.

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 Gaspe 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.

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