Canada: the Empire of the North

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

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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 Gaspe 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, Beaupre 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 chateau 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

English voyages to North America--Sir Humphrey Gilbert--Henry
Hudson--Champlain's first voyage--Founding of Ste. Croix--The colonists
in Acadia

The second attempt to plant a French colony in the New World was more
disastrous than the first.

Though my Lord Roberval fails, the French fishing vessels continue to
bound over the billows of the Atlantic to the New World. By 1578 there
are a hundred and fifty French fishing vessels off Newfoundland alone.
The fishing folk engage in barter. Cartier's heirs ask for a monopoly of
the fur trade in Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the
merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la
Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly,
with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that
he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is
1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred
people taken from jails, all but sixty have obtained their freedom by
paying a ransom. With these sixty La Roche follows the fishing fleet out
to the Grand Banks, then rounds southwestward for milder clime, where he
may winter his people.

Straight across the ship's course lies the famous sand bank, the
graveyard of the Atlantic,--what the old navigators called "the dreadful
isle,"--Sable Island. The sea lies placid as glass between the crescent
horns of the long, low reefs,--thirty miles from horn to horn, with never
a tree to break the swale of the grass waist-high.

The marquis lands his sixty colonists to fish for supplies, while he goes
on with the crew to find place for settlement.

Barely has the topsail dipped over the watery sky before breakers begin
to thunder on the sand reefs. Air and earth lash to fury. Sails are
torn from the ship of the marquis. His {24} masts go overboard, and the
vessel is driven, helpless as a chip in a maelstrom, clear back to the
ports of France. Here double misfortune awaits La Roche. His old
patrons of the court are no longer powerful. He is thrown in prison by a
rival baron.

In vain the colonists strain tired eyes for a sail at sea. Days become
weeks, weeks months, summer autumn; and no boat came back. As winter
gales assailed the sea, sending the sand drifting like spray, the
convicts built themselves huts out of driftwood, and scooped beds for
themselves in the earth like rabbit burrows. Of food there was plenty.
The people had their fishing lines; and the stock, left by the Baron de
Lery long ago, had multiplied and now overran the island. Wild fowl,
too, teemed on the inland lake; and foxes, which must have drifted ashore
on the ice float of spring, ran wild through the sedge.

Like Robinson Crusoe cast on a desert isle, the desperate people fought
their fate. Traps were set for the foxes, snares for the birds, and
scouts kept tramping from end to end of the island for sight of a sail.
Racked with despair and anxiety, these outcasts of civilization soon fell
to bitter quarreling. Traps were found rifled. Dead men lay beside the
looted traps; and, doubtless, not a few men lost their lives in spring
when the ice floes drifted down with the seal herds, and the men gave mad
chase from ice pan to ice pan for seal pelts to make clothing. Spring
wore to summer. The graves on the sand banks increased. For a second
winter the dreary snowfall wrapped the island in a mantle white as death
sheet. Then came the same weary monotony,--the frenzied seal hunt over
the blood-stained floes; the long summer days with the drone of the tide
on the sand banks; the men mad with hope at sight of a sail peak over the
far wave tops, only to be plunged in despair as the fisher boat passed
too far for signal; the fading of the grasses to russet in the sad autumn
light; then snowfall again--and despair.

Five years passed before La Roche could aid his people; and the pilot who
went to their rescue won himself immortal contempt by robbing the
castaways of their furs. Word of the {25} rescue came to the ears of the
court. Royalty commanded the refugees brought before the throne. Only
twelve had survived, and these marched before the royal presence clothed
in the skins of seals, hair unkempt, beards to mid-waist, "like river
gods of yore," says the old record. The King was so touched that he
commanded fifty crowns given to each man and the stolen furs restored.
La Roche died of chagrin.

While France is trying to colonize Canada, England has not forgotten that
John Cabot first coasted these northern shores and erected the English
flag.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH]

About the time that Marguerite Roberval was left alone on Isle Demons,
two boys--half-brothers--were playing on the sands of the English
Channel, sailing toy boats and listening to sailor yarns of loot on the
Spanish Main. One was Humphrey Gilbert; the other, Walter Raleigh.
These two were destined to lead England's first colonies to America.

Martin Frobisher had already poked the prows of English ships into the
icy straits of Greenland waters, seeking way to {26} China. He had come
out with a fleet of fifteen sails and one hundred mariners in 1578 to
found colonies, but was led away by the lure of "fool's gold." Loading
his vessels with worthless rocks which he believed contained gold enough
"to suffice all the gold gluttons of the world," he sailed back to
England without leaving the trace of a colony. Francis Drake, the very
same year, had for the first time plowed an English furrow around the
seas of the world, chasing Spanish treasure boats up the west coast of
South America and loading his own vessel with loot to the water line.
Afraid to go back the way he had come, round South America, where all the
Spanish frigates lay in wait to catch him, Drake pushed on up the west
coast as far as California, and landing, took possession of what he
called "New Albion" for Queen Elizabeth. But still no colony had been
planted for England.

[Illustration: THE BOYHOOD OF GILBERT AND RALEIGH. (From the painting by
Sir John Millais)]

Gilbert and Raleigh, the two half-brothers, were both zealous for glory.
Both stood high in court favor. Both had fought for Queen Elizabeth in
the wars. Gilbert had fame as seaman and geographer. He asks for the
privilege of founding England's first colony. The Queen will incur no
expense. Gilbert and Raleigh and their friends will fit out the vessels.
Elizabeth deeds to Gilbert all that old domain discovered by John Cabot,
reserving only one fifth of the minerals he may find; and she sends him a
present of a golden anchor as a Godspeed. June 11, 1583, Sir Humphrey
sets sail with a fleet of three splendid merchantmen, fitted out as
men-of-war, and two heavily armed little frigates. The crews number
three hundred and sixty men, but they are for the most part impressed
seamen and riotous. The fleet is only well away when the biggest of the
merchantmen signals that plague has broken out, and flees back to
England. Later, as fog hides the boats from one another, the pirate crew
on board the little frigate _Swallow_ run down an English fisherman on
the Grand Banks, board her, and at bayonet point loot the schooner from
stem to stern. When the ships lower sail to come in on the tide through
the long Narrows, to the rock-girt harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland,
{27} the hundreds of fishing vessels lying at anchor there object to the
pirate _Swallow_; but Sir Humphrey reads his commission from the Queen,
and the fishing fleet roars a welcome that sets the rocks ringing.
Sunday, August 4, the next day after entering, Biscayans and French and
Portuguese and English send their new Governor tribute in
provisions,--fish from the English, marmalade and wines and spices from
the foreigners. The admiral gives a feast to the master mariners each
week he is in port, and entertains--as the old record says--"right
bountifully." Wandering round the rocky harbor, up the high cliff to the
left where remnants of an old fortress may be seen to-day, along the
circular hills to the right where the fishing stages cover the water
front, Gilbert's men find "fool's gold," rock with specks of iron and
mica. Daniel, the refiner of metals, declares it is a rich specimen of
silver. The find goes to Sir Humphrey's head. He sees himself a second
Francis Drake, ships crammed with gold. When the captains of the other
vessels in his fleet would see the treasure, he answers: "Content
yourselves! It is enough! I have seen it but I would have no speech
made of it in harbor; for the Portuguese and {28} Biscayans and French
might learn of it. We shall soon return hither again."

[Illustration: SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT]

Many of the men are in ill health. Gilbert decides to send the invalids
home in the _Swallow_; but he transfers the bold pirate crew of that
frigate to the big ship _Delight_, which carries provisions for the
colony. While planning to make St. John's the headquarters of his new
kingdom, Sir Humphrey wishes to explore those regions where Cartier had
gone and whence the fishing schooners bring such wealth in furs.

August 20 the remainder of his fleet rounds out of St. John's south west
for the Gulf of St. Lawrence,--the _Delight_ with the provisions, the
_Golden Hinde_ with the majority of the people, the little frigate
_Squirrel_ weighted down by artillery stores but under command of Gilbert
himself, because the smaller ship can run close ashore to explore. To
keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off
Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship _Delight_, where the
trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor
jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger."
Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable
Island. Breakers were sighted. The _Delight_ signaled that her captain
wanted to shift southwest to deeper water, but Gilbert wanted to enter
the St. Lawrence and signaled back to go on northwest. That night a
storm raged. The provision ship ran full tilt into the sand banks of
Sable Island, and was battered into chips before the other ships could
come to rescue. All supplies were lost and all the pirate crew perished
but sixteen, who jumped into the pinnace dragging astern, and, with only
one oar, half punted, half drifted for seven days till the wave wash
carried them to the shores of Newfoundland. There they were picked up by
a fishing vessel.

With provisions gone, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colony was doomed. He must
turn back. Saturday, August 31, they reversed the course. When halfway
across the Atlantic the admiral rowed from the little _Squirrel_ across
to the _Golden Hinde_ to have a lame foot treated by the surgeon. "Cheer
{29} up," he urged the men. "Next year her Majesty will loan me 1000
pounds, and we shall come again."

[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH]

As storm was gathering, the men begged him to remain on the larger ship,
but Gilbert refused to leave the sailors of the _Squirrel_. The frigate
was as safe for him as for them, he said. Some one called his attention
to the fact that the frigate was overweighted with cannon. Gilbert
laughed all danger to scorn. Soon afterwards the waves began to break
short and high--a dangerous sea for a small, overweighted ship. It had
been arranged that both ships should swing lanterns fore and aft to keep
each other in sight at night. On the night of September 9 a
phosphorescent light was seen to gleam above the mainmast of the
_Squirrel_,--certain sign to the superstitious sailors of dire disaster;
but when the _Hinde_ slackened speed, and the great waves threw the
vessels almost together, there was Sir Humphrey sitting aloft, book in
hand, shouting out, "We are as near Heaven by sea as by land." The
_Hinde_ fell to the rear. The _Squirrel_ led away, her stern lanterns
lighting a trail across the shiny dark of the tempestuous billows.
Suddenly, at midnight, the guiding {30} light was lost. The _Squirrel's_
stern lanterns were seen to descend the pitching trough of a mountain
wave, and when the wall of water fell, no light came up. Down into the
abyss the little craft had plunged, never to rise again, carrying
explorer, treasure hunters, colonists, to a watery grave.

It may be added that the disaster took place halfway across the ocean,
and not off Newfoundland, as the ballad relates.

But for all this misfortune, England did not desist. The very next year
Raleigh, who had played on the sands with Humphrey Gilbert, sends out his
colonists to the Roanoke, and lays the foundations for the beginning of
empire in the Southern States. English sailors explore Cape Cod. Ten
years after Frobisher had brought home his cargo of worthless stones from
Labrador, Davis, the master mariner, is out exploring the waters west of
Greenland; and Henry Hudson, the English pilot who had discovered Hudson
River, New York, for the Dutch, is retained by the English in 1610 to
explore those waters west of Greenland where both Frobisher and Davis
reported open passage.

It is midsummer of 1610 when Hudson enters Hudson Straits. The ice jam
of Ungava Bay, Labrador, has almost torn his ships' timbers apart and has
set fear shivering like an aspen leaf among the crew. Old Juett, the
mate, rages openly at Hudson for venturing such a frail ship on such a
sea; but when the ship anchors at the west end of Hudson Straits, five
hundred miles from the Atlantic, there opens to view another sea,--a sea
large as the Mediterranean, that, like the Mediterranean, may lead to
another world. It is as dangerous to go back as forward; and forward
Hudson sails, southwestward for that sea Drake had cruised off
California, the old mate's mutiny rumbling beneath decks like a volcano.
South, southwestward, seven hundred miles sails Hudson, past the high
rocks and airy cataracts of Richmond Gulf, past silence like the realms
of death, on down where Hudson Bay rounds into James Bay and the shallows
plainly show this is no way to a western sea, but a blind inlet,
bowlder-strewn and muddy as swamps.

{31}

[Illustration: AT EASTERN ENTRANCE TO HUDSON STRAITS]

When the ship runs aground and all hands must out to waist in ice water
to pull her ashore as the tide comes in, Juett's rage bursts all bounds.
As they toil, snow begins to fall. They are winter bound and storm bound
in an unknown land. Half the crew are in open mutiny; the other half
build winter quarters and range the woods of James Bay for game. Of game
there is plenty, but the rebels refuse to hunt. A worthless lad named
Green, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London, turns traitor
and talebearer, fomenting open quarrels till the commander threatens he
will hang to the yardarm the first man guilty of disobedience. So passes
the sullen winter. Provisions are short when the ship weighs anchor for
England in June of 1611. With tears in his eyes, Hudson hands out the
last rations. Ice blocks the way. Delay means starvation. If the crew
were only half as large, Henry Green whispers to the mutineers, there
would be food enough for passage home. The ice floes clear, the sails
swing rattling to the breeze, but as Hudson steps on deck, the mutineers
leap upon him like wolves. He is bound and thrown into the rowboat.
With him are thrust his son and {32} eight others of the crew. The rope
is cut, the rowboat jerks back adrift, and Hudson's vessel, manned by
mutineers, drives before the wind. A few miles out, the mutineers lower
sails to rummage for food. The little boat with the castaways is seen
coming in pursuit. Guilt-haunted, the crew out with all sails and flee
as from avenging ghosts. So passes Henry Hudson from the ken of all men,
though Indian legend on the shores of Hudson Bay to this day maintains
that the castaways landed north of Rupert and lived among the savages.

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