Delphi complete works of.., p.741
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 741
There was great excitement in Cabot’s home town of Bristol from which he had sailed over this new route. We read how the sailors followed him around. Sailors and merchants foresaw a great trade in spices between Bristol and Cipango. But we know now, thanks to painstaking scholarship, where Cabot had been on his famous first voyage. Sailing from Bristol May 2, 1497, he had landed, fifty-two days out, on Cape Breton Island, claimed it and named it Cape Discovery, sailed north, saw and named Cape Ray on Newfoundland, the near-by islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon (rediscovered by the world in 1942), passed the bold headland of Cape Race (he called it England’s Cape), and thence home to drop anchor in Bristol on August 6, 1497, with Asia in his pocket.
Such was Cabot’s first voyage. Like so many American voyages of discovery, from Columbus’ first error onward, it was utterly futile in its intended purpose, immeasurable in its unplanned results. For Cipango take the Grand Banks; from their codfish trace Cartier, and from Cartier the St. Lawrence, Montreal, and the vision of the future. Meantime preparations went forward for the second Cipango voyage. The King was as good as his word, or as nearly good as kings then were. Cabot got two ships and three hundred men with letters patent (February 3, 1498) wide enough to reach Asia. A few small trading vessels joined fortunes with him. He set out in May 1498 on a voyage in defiance of geography, dreary with cold and hardship, broken with mutiny, and utterly fruitless. Cabot pushed up the east coast of Greenland till the sheer futility of it led him to the west coast, thence across the Straits to Baffin land (latitude 66° north), then south past Newfoundland, and then along the everlasting coast of forest and rock and empty sand, looking for what was not there. Somewhere off the coast of Maryland (latitude 38°), with stores low and hope dead, Cabot turned for England. He reached Bristol late that autumn to die — why not? — soon afterward. His son Sebastian had a later career, but as far as North America was concerned, the Cabots ended with 1498.
Not so the “new Isle.” Cabot’s sailors brought home to Bristol and from there to all western Europe the news of the marvelous codfisheries off the “new Isle.” Till then the English codfishing fleets went out, mostly from London and the east ports, but also from Bristol, to fish off the coast of Iceland. But the fishing was limited and restricted by the regulations of Danish sovereignty. These new fisheries, free and open, literally “beat all.” There is a famous letter in which an Italian diplomat wrote home: “Cabot’s sailors, practically all English and from Bristol . . . affirm that the sea is swarming with fish which can be taken with baskets let down with a stone.”
For once sailors’ tales of wonder held true. The North Atlantic Ocean, at the full depth of its sunken bed between America and Europe, is five miles deep. But all around the northeastern coast of North America from Cape Cod to Labrador there projects an outlying “continental shelf,” only “recently” submerged. Here are great “banks,” like Georges Bank east of Nantucket and the Grand Bank southeast of Newfoundland. The line that marks a depth of only six hundred feet runs all round this continental shelf. The area of the whole submarine plateau is computed at 500,000 square miles. There are great stretches on the Banks where the depth is only from 180 to 420 feet. Here, as a French writer has said, “the land is infinitely silent, but the sea harbors every form of life.” The temperature, the ocean bed with an infinity of small fish, and salt cold water combine to make an ideal environment (for a codfish). Here close to the surface, upheld by the salt of the icy water, float the infinite quantities of “plankton,” the microscopic life of ponds and seas. On this feed the larvae of the codfish. Later the fry descend to live on shell stuff, then come again up to live, voraciously, on everything afloat. A codfish is mature at three years, lives easily beyond five, weighs from three to four pounds inshore and about twenty-five to thirty-five on the Banks. They vary greatly. The record reaches over two hundred pounds, a six-foot length. Small varieties are mature at three years, large ones at five. A sizable cod when it spawns leaves 3,000,000 eggs a year floating among the plankton. Each egg only asks a chance to leave 3,000,000 more. Malthusian despondency is staggered at the prospect. But at least it makes our history easier to understand, our future easier to secure.
That is what Cabot’s sailors saw when they lifted in the cod in basketfuls. That was the news that sent all Brittany and Normandy to the Banks. Bretons, Normans, and Basques, even the Portuguese, came before the English themselves; the latter still clung with insular conservatism to their Iceland fishing. Later, after Cartier’s time, they came in a flock.
All through the fifteen hundreds the fishermen came in increasing numbers to the Newfoundland Banks. But they came and went like a flock of sea birds in unrecorded voyages in the summer season of the spawning of the codfish. They drove home with the strong west winds of the equinox in a voyage of about a month. Later sailing ships have run across in two weeks. History took but little count of the fishing fleet, though we read that Henry VIII once sent out ships of the new Royal Navy to shepherd them safely into the Channel. History was too busy with the new splendors of the monarchies of the Renaissance and with the Italian wars. Only today patient scholarship traces out the record from seaport entries.
The cartographers of the day gathered up the rough charts of the fishing pilots and made out of them the maps and globes that have been preserved. These show the coast and islands recognizable from the Bay of Fundy to Labrador. But the Gulf of St. Lawrence is marked as a huge inlet closed in on the west, beyond the Strait of Belle Isle, and marked the Great Bay. The fishing boats did not push far into the gulf since the fishing is less good as the water gets less salty.
There must have been much information handed round in the seaports about the strong currents that came down and much suspicion that the Great Bay led somewhere. After all, the ground was as familiar to them as Saint-Malo itself. Lescarbot, the later companion of Champlain, tells of knowing one old man who had made forty-two round trips (eighty-four voyages). We still retain some of the place names given by the fishermen before history began — the Cape of the Bretons, the Harbour of St. John.
This was the situation that led Francis I of France into North American exploration. Francis was one of the glittering kings of the new monarchy, as who should say, the “opposite number” of our Henry VIII and the Spanish Charles V. He threw himself eagerly into the glory of war and the invasion of Italy till his defeat at Pavia left him a prisoner with “all lost but honor.” Set free with his honor — by trading off Burgundy — he threw himself into the current of the Renaissance, a patron of the glory of Paris in art and letters. Then for a brief moment — a break in the clouds — into North American adventure, and then finally into the crowning glory of the persecution of the peasant heretics of Vaudois (the Waldenses). The brief American episodes of his reign were found in the voyage of Giovanni Verrazano, commissioned by King Francis before his Italian disaster, and by Jacques Cartier’s discovery of Canada.
Verrazano’s voyage and his later fate have left only a twilight record. He sailed across the Atlantic until he struck land, skirted northward, looking always for something better, landed here and there but nowhere north of the present New Hampshire, then up along the fishing coast to the frozen seas, then out and home. The voyage was fruitless, leaving nothing but the name New France, lost and found again, and needless as a French claim when Cartier’s voyages superseded it.
These voyages were another matter. Cartier was a pilot of Saint-Malo, a man in middle life, courageous and devout and of a vision that looked beyond sea fishery to the apostles’ higher calling. He had already made a voyage to South America, perhaps had been to the Banks. We do not know whether the King’s admiral, Chabot, heard of Cartier and summoned him or whether Cartier made proposals to the admiral. At all events he was given a royal commission for a voyage of discovery.
Cartier seemed to know well enough where he was going — straight through the Belle Isle Strait and on. The fact that after he passed the Strait he met, without surprise, “a tall ship out of Rochelle” shows how familiar already was the outer coast. He passed along the stern and forbidding north shore of the Gulf. He decided that this must be the land that God gave Cain. This was not a joke. It was, after the fashion of the day, a pious confirmation of the truth of Scripture. But Cartier’s attempt to get past Anticosti Island by the north channel, against wind and current, proved hopeless.
The art of “tacking,” sailing in zigzags against the wind, was unknown, or perhaps previously known and lost, in the Middle Ages. One recalls the contrary winds which held Richard II in Ireland and lost a throne. Tacking, even when introduced, for centuries made little progress. The clumsy, tubby ships, all superstructure and square-backed to the wind, were ill fitted for it. Even Lord Nelson’s ships of war could do little by way of beating up. The beautiful clipper ship, streamlined as we should say, the fore-and-aft rig of the deep-draught yacht, making almost four points into the wind, these triumphs of sail came only as the swan’s song of a vanishing epoch. Sail only came into its own when its own was over.
But Cartier at least knew, from the very obstacles encountered, that he had found a great river, a waterway to the interior. He sailed all round the Gulf, which he named with its river in honor of St. Lawrence. He noted the appealing misery of the harmless savages he saw, left them a great cross set up on Gaspé to hold them till he should come again. He noted in passing the fertility, the sanded shores, and the beautiful forests of our Prince Edward Island. Cartier mistook it for the mainland, but he knew at least that this was not part of the land given to Cain and would do for the King of France. The voyage was only a reconnaissance, but it promised much. As living witness Cartier carried back two Indians with him to France.
Cartier’s second voyage (1535-36) was the famous voyage from which dates the true discovery of the St. Lawrence, of the indefinite region called Canada, and the discovery of the Indian settlement of Hochelaga. From the commanding elevation of Mount Royal, Cartier was able to divine the course of the inland waters and to speculate on the wealth and wonder of the “Kingdom of Saguenay” which was supposed to lie beyond. All that Vasco da Gama found at Calicut Cartier thought he had found in this vast emptiness.
This great voyage of 1535-36, the discovery of Hochelaga, and the tragic winter at Stadacona that followed it have been so often narrated in full detail that it is needless here to attempt more than a summary.
King Francis gave to Cartier three ships — the Grand Ermine of one hundred and twenty tons, the Petite Ermine of sixty, and the Emérillon, called also in the English books the Merlin, or the Sparrow Hawk. The ship’s company were men of heart and courage as the sequel proved. It has been stated, and denied, that there were criminals among them. The practice of the time would have sanctioned this. For Cartier’s later and fruitless voyage his commission gave him the right to take sixty criminals from jail, and the commission to his associate and superior, Sieur de Roberval, allowed him to open the jails and help himself. But if the men who stood by Cartier in the tragic winter that was to come at Stadacona were criminals, then we need more of them in Canada. It is disputed also — scholars will be scholars — whether Cartier carried priests with him. Probably not; that roll of honor begins later.
Till its close in the tragic winter just mentioned this same voyage of Cartier that discovered Hochelaga was like the voyage of a dream — easy and successful beyond belief. It is true that the passage out (May 19, 1535, Saint-Malo — Belle Isle, July 26) was prolonged and tempestuous and that much time was wasted in fruitless detours around Anticosti. But the ships sailed up the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Saguenay on September 1, and from then on all was wonder. Here was the Saguenay itself, a river of profound depth issuing from between tall mountains of almost bare rock. There were great fish about its mouth, “which no man,” said Cartier, “had ever seen before or heard of.” Indian canoes danced in the foam. The Indians came aboard; they spoke in their own tongue to Cartier’s Indians brought back with him from France. The Indians explained to Cartier where he was — namely, that this river of Saguenay led to the “Kingdom of Saguenay,” a fabulous land of wealth and wonder of which Cartier was to hear more and more. Straight up the main river was the “land and province of Canada,” and beyond that, some distance inland, was Hochelaga.
Here enters into the world’s record the word Canada, ever since unexplained. In the Huron-Iroquois language Canada means a settlement of lodges. Later on Cartier, or one of his associates, made out a vocabulary which said, “They call a town (une ville) Canada.” But somehow the word seemed to mean either a town or the whole region; just like the double usage in England by which a man living in a town takes an occasional run up to town (London). Such fanciful derivations as Aca-nada, “nothing there,” are merely history’s earliest jokes on our unappreciated country, like Cartier’s “land of Cain” and Voltaire’s “acres of snow.”
With a fair wind Cartier’s ships moved up the river west, in an enchanted autumn scene of forests hung with grapevines, of islands all cluttered with hazelnuts (Isle aux Coudres), and one so heavy with its grapes that they named it after Bacchus. Later royal geographers made it the Island of Orleans.
Cartier anchored in the north channel off this pleasant island. And here there came to them the Indian Chief Donnacona, the “Lord of Canada,” with twelve canoes of his people, with every demonstration of welcome and of friendship. The welcome doubled when it turned out that this was the very home of Cartier’s two Indian guides and when they told of the wonder of France and the kindness there received. Astonishment and delight knew no bounds.
Cartier moved his ships up from the island to what was later called the Basin of Quebec, where the St. Lawrence narrows to the smallest width of its course. Here was the high promontory of Cape Diamond, the incoming stream of the St. Charles, in the background the blue Laurentian hills, and all around the colors of the Canadian autumn. Here Cartier laid up his two larger ships to winter in what he called the Ste. Croix River, now the St. Charles. There followed Indian receptions, dances, and, above all, the long harangues that followed the feasts, tedious, says a Canadian historian, “in the Huron-Iroquois language,” and adds as an afterthought, “or in any other.” We realize with something like awe that we see here the origins of the lunch-club talks of the United States and Canada, now spreading around the world, the Indian’s vengeance on his conquerors.
The Indians tried to dissuade Cartier from going farther up the river. There were spirits, angry gods, they said, at Hochelaga. But on these Cartier took his chance. Taking his Emérillon and two ships’ boats, he embarked on another wonderland journey of thirteen days from Stadacona to Hochelaga in the full glory of autumn. Here, in his mid-journey, the St. Lawrence expands into Lake St. Peter, a stretch of twenty miles. Above it the water was low. Cartier left his Emérillon and went forward with his boats only. At last in the dusk of an October evening the boats were halted by the swift St. Marys current where an island (St. Helens) partly closes the river. Here he came to land. He had arrived. He was now, though he didn’t know it, inside the present limits of the city of Montreal. But he knew that he was somewhere, for a great concourse of Indians, more than a thousand, he said, came flocking joyously to the shore.
The scenes that followed, Cartier’s reception by the Indians, the night of bonfires and singing, the presents given and received, the visit next day to the great stockaded fort of Hochelaga, the bringing of the sick and the infirm for Cartier’s touch, the reading of the Gospel of St. John to the Indians, reverent as in God’s presence, the ascent of the mountain and the vision from its summit as of a kingdom to come — these are embalmed pages of Canadian history. They are almost sacred in the atmosphere they breathe of piety and mutual faith. No picture in all North American history is more inspiring. At least Montreal began well.
The pages of Cartier’s narrative have here been so often quoted that they are part of our history. But no account of the discovery of Hochelaga is complete without at least a citation of certain passages in regard to the great stockade itself and the scene enacted within its precincts.
There are some fifty houses in this village, each about fifty or more paces in length and twelve or fifteen in width, built completely of wood and covered in and boarded up with large pieces of the bark and rind of trees, as broad as a table, which are well and cunningly lashed after their manner. And inside these houses are many rooms and chambers, and in the middle is a large space without a floor, where they light their fire and live together in common. Afterward the men retire to the above-mentioned quarters with their wives and children. And furthermore there are lofts in the upper part of their houses, where they store the corn of which they make their bread.
Our captain, seeing the misery and devotion of this poor people, recited the Gospel of St. John, that is to say, In the beginning was the word, touching everyone that was diseased, praying to God that it would please Him to open the hearts of the poor people and to make them know His Holy Word and that they might receive baptism and Christendom. That done, he took a service book in his hand and with a loud voice read all the passion of Christ, word by word, that all the standers-by might hear him. All which while this poor people kept silence and were marvelously attentive, looking up to heaven and imitating us in gestures.
