The Mariner of St Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of
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Stephen Leacock >> The Mariner of St Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of
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CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
Volume 2
THE MARINER OF ST MALO
A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
By STEPHEN LEACOCK
TORONTO, 1915
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
In the town hall of the seaport of St Malo there hangs
a portrait of Jacques Cartier, the great sea-captain of
that place, whose name is associated for all time with
the proud title of 'Discoverer of Canada.' The picture
is that of a bearded man in the prime of life, standing
on the deck of a ship, his bent elbow resting upon the
gunwale, his chin supported by his hand, while his eyes
gaze outward upon the western ocean as if seeking to
penetrate its mysteries. The face is firm and strong,
with tight-set jaw, prominent brow, and the full, inquiring
eye of the man accustomed both to think and to act. The
costume marks the sea-captain of four centuries ago. A
thick cloak, gathered by a belt at the waist, enwraps
the stalwart figure. On his head is the tufted Breton
cap familiar in the pictures of the days of the great
navigators. At the waist, on the left side, hangs a sword,
and, on the right, close to the belt, the dirk or poniard
of the period.
How like or unlike the features of Cartier this picture
in the town hall may be, we have no means of telling.
Painted probably in 1839, it has hung there for more than
seventy years, and the record of the earlier prints or
drawings from which its artist drew his inspiration no
longer survives. We know, indeed, that an ancient map of
the eastern coast of America, made some ten years after
the first of Cartier's voyages, has pictured upon it a
group of figures that represent the landing of the
navigator and his followers among the Indians of Gaspe.
It was the fashion of the time to attempt by such
decorations to make maps vivid. Demons, deities,
mythological figures and naked savages disported themselves
along the borders of the maps and helped to decorate
unexplored spaces of earth and ocean. Of this sort is
the illustration on the map in question. But it is
generally agreed that we have no right to identify Cartier
with any of the figures in the scene, although the group
as a whole undoubtedly typifies his landing upon the
seacoast of Canada.
There is rumour, also, that the National Library at Paris
contains an old print of Cartier, who appears therein as
a bearded man passing from the prime of life to its
decline. The head is slightly bowed with the weight of
years, and the face is wanting in that suggestion of
unconquerable will which is the dominating feature of
the portrait of St Malo. This is the picture that appears
in the form of a medallion, or ring-shaped illustration,
in more than one of the modern works upon the great
adventurer. But here again we have no proofs of identity,
for we know nothing of the origin of the portrait.
Curiously enough an accidental discovery of recent years
seems to confirm in some degree the genuineness of the
St Malo portrait. There stood until the autumn of 1908,
in the French-Canadian fishing village of Cap-des-Rosiers,
near the mouth of the St Lawrence, a house of very ancient
date. Precisely how old it was no one could say, but it
was said to be the oldest existing habitation of the
settlement. Ravaged by perhaps two centuries of wind and
weather, the old house afforded but little shelter against
the boisterous gales and the bitter cold of the rude
climate of the Gulf. Its owner decided to tear it down,
and in doing so he stumbled upon a startling discovery.
He found a dummy window that, generations before, had
evidently been built over and concealed. From the cavity
thus disclosed he drew forth a large wooden medallion,
about twenty inches across, with the portrait of a man
carved in relief. Here again are the tufted hat, the
bearded face, and the features of the picture of St Malo.
On the back of the wood, the deeply graven initials J.
C. seemed to prove that the image which had lain hidden
for generations behind the woodwork of the old Canadian
house is indeed that of the great discoverer. Beside the
initials is carved the date 1704.. This wooden medallion
would appear to have once figured as the stern shield of
some French vessel, wrecked probably upon the Gaspe coast.
As it must have been made long before the St Malo portrait
was painted, the resemblance of the two faces perhaps
indicates the existence of some definite and genuine
portrait of Jacques Cartier, of which the record has been
lost.
It appears, therefore, that we have the right to be
content with the picture which hangs in the town hall of
the seaport of St Malo. If it does not show us Cartier
as he was,--and we have no absolute proof in the one or
the other direction,--at least it shows us Cartier as he
might well have been, with precisely the face and bearing
which the hero-worshipper would read into the character
of such a discoverer.
The port of St Malo, the birthplace and the home of
Cartier, is situated in the old province of Brittany, in
the present department of Ille-et-Vilaine. It is thus
near the lower end of the English Channel. To the north,
about forty miles away, lies Jersey, the nearest of the
Channel Islands, while on the west surges the restless
tide of the broad Atlantic. The situation of the port
has made it a nursery of hardy seamen. The town stands
upon a little promontory that juts out as a peninsula
into the ocean. The tide pours in and out of the harbour
thus formed, and rises within the harbour to a height of
thirty or forty feet. The rude gales of the western ocean
spend themselves upon the rocky shores of this Breton
coast. Here for centuries has dwelt a race of adventurous
fishermen and navigators, whose daring is unsurpassed by
any other seafaring people in the world.
The history, or at least the legend, of the town goes
back ten centuries before the time of Cartier. It was
founded, tradition tells us, by a certain Aaron, a pilgrim
who landed there with his disciples in the year 507 A.D.,
and sought shelter upon the sea-girt promontory which
has since borne the name of Aaron's Rock. Aaron founded
a settlement. To the same place came, about twenty years
later, a bishop of Castle Gwent, with a small band of
followers. The leader of this flock was known as St Malo,
and he gave his name to the seaport.
But the religious character of the first settlement soon
passed away. St Malo became famous as the headquarters
of the corsairs of the northern coast. These had succeeded
the Vikings of an earlier day, and they showed a hardihood
and a reckless daring equal to that of their predecessors.
Later on, in more settled times, the place fell into the
hands of the fishermen and traders of northern France.
When hardy sailors pushed out into the Atlantic ocean to
reach the distant shores of America, St Malo became a
natural port and place of outfit for the passage of the
western sea.
Jacques Cartier first saw the light in the year 1491.
The family has been traced back to a grandfather who
lived in the middle of the fifteenth century. This Jean
Cartier, or Quartier, who was born in St Malo in 1428,
took to wife in 1457 Guillemette Baudoin. Of the four
sons that she bore him, Jamet, the eldest, married Geseline
Jansart, and of their five children the second one,
Jacques, rose to greatness as the discoverer of Canada.
There is little to chronicle that is worth while of the
later descendants of the original stock. Jacques Cartier
himself was married in 1519 to Marie Katherine des
Granches. Her father was the Chevalier Honore des Granches,
high constable of St Malo. In all probability he stood
a few degrees higher in the social scale of the period
than such plain seafaring folk as the Cartier family.
From this, biographers have sought to prove that, early
in life, young Jacques Cartier must have made himself a
notable person among his townsmen. But the plain truth
is that we know nothing of the circumstances that preceded
the marriage, and have only the record of 15199 on the
civil register of St Malo: 'The nuptial benediction was
received by Jacques Cartier, master-pilot of the port of
Saincte-Malo, son of Jamet Cartier and of Geseline Jansart,
and Marie Katherine des Granches, daughter of Messire
Honore des Granches, chevalier of our lord the king, and
constable of the town and city of Saint-Malo.'
Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no
direct descendants. But the branches of the family
descended from the original Jean Cartier appear on the
registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other places in
some profusion during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The family seems to have died out, although
not many years ago direct descendants of Pierre Cartier,
the uncle of Jacques, were still surviving in France.
It is perhaps no great loss to the world that we have so
little knowledge of the ancestors and relatives of the
famous mariner. It is, however, deeply to be deplored
that, beyond the record of his voyages, we know so little
of Jacques Cartier himself. We may take it for granted
that he early became a sailor. Brought up at such a time
and place, he could hardly have failed to do so. Within
a few years after the great discovery of Columbus, the
Channel ports of St Malo and Dieppe were sending forth
adventurous fishermen to ply their trade among the fogs
of the Great Banks of the New Land. The Breton boy, whom
we may imagine wandering about the crowded wharves of
the little harbour, must have heard strange tales from
the sailors of the new discoveries. Doubtless he grew
up, as did all the seafarers of his generation, with the
expectation that at any time some fortunate adventurer
might find behind the coasts and islands now revealed to
Europe in the western sea the half-fabled empires of
Cipango and Cathay. That, when a boy, he came into actual
contact with sailors who had made the Atlantic voyage is
not to be questioned. We know that in 1507 the Pensee of
Dieppe had crossed to the coast of Newfoundland and that
this adventure was soon followed by the sailing of other
Norman ships for the same goal.
We have, however, no record of Cartier and his actual
doings until we find his name in an entry on the baptismal
register of St Malo. He stood as godfather to his nephew,
Etienne Nouel, the son of his sister Jehanne. Strangely
enough, this proved to be only the first of a great many
sacred ceremonies of this sort in which he took part.
There is a record of more than fifty baptisms at St Malo
in the next forty-five years in which the illustrious
mariner had some share; in twenty-seven of them he appeared
as a godfather.
What voyages Cartier actually made before he suddenly
appears in history as a pilot of the king of France and
the protege of the high admiral of France we do not know.
This position in itself, and the fact that at the time
of his marriage in 1519 he had already the rank of
master-pilot, would show that he had made the Atlantic
voyage. There is some faint evidence that he had even
been to Brazil, for in the account of his first recorded
voyage he makes a comparison between the maize of Canada
and that of South America; and in those days this would
scarcely have occurred to a writer who had not seen both
plants of which he spoke. 'There groweth likewise,' so
runs the quaint translation that appears in Hakluyt's
'Voyages,' 'a kind of Millet as big as peason [i.e. peas]
like unto that which groweth in Bresil.' And later on,
in the account of his second voyage, he repeats the
reference to Brazil; then 'goodly and large fields' which
he saw on the present site of Montreal recall to him the
millet fields of Brazil. It is possible, indeed, that
not only had he been in Brazil, but that he had carried
a native of that country to France. In a baptismal register
of St Malo is recorded the christening, in 1528, of a
certain 'Catherine of Brezil,' to whom Cartier's wife
stood godmother. We may, in fancy at least, suppose that
this forlorn little savage with the regal title was a
little girl whom the navigator, after the fashion of his
day, had brought home as living evidence of the existence
of the strange lands that he had seen.
Out of this background, then, of uncertainty and conjecture
emerges, in 1534, Jacques Cartier, a master-pilot in the
prime of life, now sworn to the service of His Most
Christian Majesty Francis I of France, and about to
undertake on behalf of his illustrious master a voyage
to the New Land.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST VOYAGE--NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
It was on April 20, 1534, that Jacques Cartier sailed
out of the port of St Malo on his first voyage in the
service of Francis I. Before leaving their anchorage the
commander, the sailing-masters, and the men took an oath,
administered by Charles de Mouy, vice-admiral of France,
that they would behave themselves truly and faithfully
in the service of the Most Christian King. The company
were borne in two ships, each of about sixty tons burden,
and numbered in all sixty-one souls.
The passage across the ocean was pleasant. Fair winds,
blowing fresh and strong from the east, carried the clumsy
caravels westward on the foaming crests of the Atlantic
surges. Within twenty days of their departure the icebound
shores of Newfoundland rose before their eyes. Straight
in front of them was Cape Bonavista, the 'Cape of Happy
Vision,' already known and named by the fishermen-explorers,
who had welcomed the sight of its projecting headlands
after the weary leagues of unbroken sea. But approach to
the shore was impossible. The whole coastline was blocked
with the 'great store of ice' that lay against it. The
ships ran southward and took shelter in a little haven
about five leagues south of the cape, to which Cartier
gave the name St Catherine's Haven, either in fond
remembrance of his wife, or, as is more probable, in
recognition of the help and guidance of St Catherine,
whose natal day, April 30, had fallen midway in his
voyage. The harbourage is known to-day as Catalina, and
lies distant, as the crow flies, about eighty miles
north-westward of the present city of St John's in
Newfoundland. Here the mariners remained ten days, 'looking
for fair weather,' and engaged in mending and 'dressing'
their boats.
At this time, it must be remembered, the coast of
Newfoundland was, in some degree, already known. Ships
had frequently passed through the narrow passage of Belle
Isle that separates Newfoundland from the coast of
Labrador. Of the waters, however, that seemed to open up
beyond, or of the exact relation of the Newfoundland
coastline to the rest of the great continent nothing
accurate was known. It might well be that the inner waters
behind the inhospitable headlands of Belle Isle would
prove the gateway to the great empires of the East.
Cartier's business at any rate was to explore, to see
all that could be seen, and to bring news of it to his
royal master. This he set himself to do, with the
persevering thoroughness that was the secret of his final
success. He coasted along the shore from cape to cape
and from island to island, sounding and charting as he
went, noting the shelter for ships that might be found,
and laying down the bearing of the compass from point to
point. It was his intent, good pilot as he was, that
those who sailed after him should find it easy to sail
on these coasts.
From St Catherine's Harbour the ships sailed on May 21
with a fine off-shore wind that made it easy to run on
a course almost due north. As they advanced on this course
the mainland sank again from sight, but presently they
came to an island. It lay far out in the sea, and was
surrounded by a great upheaval of jagged and broken ice.
On it and around it they saw so dense a mass of birds
that no one, declares Cartier, could have believed it
who had not seen it for himself. The birds were as large
as jays, they were coloured black and white, and they
could scarcely fly because of their small wings and their
exceeding fatness. The modern enquirer will recognize,
perhaps, the great auk which once abounded on the coast,
but which is now extinct. The sailors killed large numbers
of the birds, and filled two boats with them. Then the
ships sailed on rejoicing from the Island of Birds with
six barrels full of salted provisions added to their
stores. Cartier's Island of Birds is the Funk Island of
our present maps.
The ships now headed west and north to come into touch
with land again. To the great surprise of the company
they presently met a huge polar bear swimming in the open
sea, and evidently heading for the tempting shores of
the Island of Birds. The bear was 'as great as any cow
and as white as a swan.' The sailors lowered boats in
pursuit, and captured 'by main force' the bear, which
supplied a noble supper for the captors. 'Its flesh,'
wrote Cartier, 'was as good to eat as any heifer of two
years.'
The explorers sailed on westward, changing their course
gradually to the north to follow the broad curve of the
Atlantic coast of Newfoundland. Jutting headlands and
outlying capes must have alternately appeared and
disappeared on the western horizon. May 24, found the
navigators off the entrance of Belle Isle. After four
hundred years of maritime progress, the passage of the
narrow strait that separates Newfoundland from Labrador
remains still rough and dangerous, even for the great
steel ships of to-day. We can imagine how forbidding it
must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the
decks of their small storm-tossed caravels. Heavy gales
from the west came roaring through the strait. Great
quantities of floating ice ground to and fro under the
wind and current. So stormy was the outlook that for the
time being the passage seemed impossible. But Cartier
was not to be baulked in his design. He cast anchor at
the eastern mouth of the strait, in what is now the little
harbour of Kirpon (Carpunt), and there day after day,
stormbound by the inclement weather, he waited until June
9. Then at last he was able to depart, hoping, as he
wrote, 'with the help of God to sail farther.'
Having passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, Cartier
crossed over to the northern coast. Two days of prosperous
sailing with fair winds carried him far along the shore
to a distance of more than a hundred miles west of the
entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle. Whether he actually
touched on his way at the island now known as Belle Isle
is a matter of doubt. He passed an island which he named
St Catherine, and which he warned all mariners to avoid
because of dangerous shoals that lay about it. We find
his track again with certainty when he reaches the shelter
of the Port of Castles. The name was given to the anchorage
by reason of the striking cliffs of basaltic rock, which
here give to the shore something of the appearance of a
fortress. The place still bears the name of Castle Bay.
Sailing on to the west, Cartier noted the glittering
expanse of Blanc Sablon (White Sands), still known by
the name received from these first explorers. On June 10
the ships dropped anchor in the harbour of Brest, which
lies on the northern coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence
among many little islands lining the shore. This anchorage
seems to have been known already in Cartier's time, and
it became afterwards a famous place of gathering for the
French fishermen. Later on in the sixteenth century a
fort was erected there, and the winter settlement about
it is said to have contained at one time as many as a
thousand people. But its prosperity vanished later, and
the fort had been abandoned before the great conflict
had. begun between France and Great Britain for the
possession of North America. Cartier secured wood and
water at Brest. Leaving his ships there for the time
being, he continued his westward exploration in his boats.
The careful pilot marked every striking feature of the
coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration
of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and
inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these
islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks'
eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached
so fine an anchorage that he was induced to land and
plant a cross there in honour of St Servan. Beyond this
again was an island 'round like an oven.' Still farther
on he found a great river, as he thought it, which came
sweeping down from the highlands of the interior.
As the boats lay in the mouth of the river, there came
bearing down upon them a great fishing ship which had
sailed from the French port of La Rochelle, and was now
seeking vainly for the anchorage of Brest. Cartier's
careful observations now bore fruit. He and his men went
in their small boats to the fishing ship and gave the
information needed for the navigation of the coast. The
explorers still pressed on towards the west, till they
reached a place which Cartier declared to be one of the
finest harbours of the world, and which he called Jacques
Cartier Harbour. This is probably the water now known as
Cumberland Harbour. The forbidding aspect of the northern
shore and the adverse winds induced Cartier to direct
his course again towards the south, to the mainland, as
he thought, but really to the island of Newfoundland;
and so he now turned back with his boats to rejoin the
ships. The company gathered safely again at Brest on
Sunday, June 14, and Cartier caused a mass to be sung.
During the week spent in exploring the north shore,
Cartier had not been very favourably impressed by the
country. It seemed barren and inhospitable. It should
not, he thought, be Called the New Land, but rather stones
and wild crags and a place fit for wild beasts. The soil
seemed worthless. 'In all the north land,' said he, 'I
did not see a cartload of good earth. To be short, I
believe that this was the land that God allotted to Cain.'
From time to time the explorers had caught sight of
painted savages, with heads adorned with bright feathers
and with bodies clad in the skins of wild beasts. They
were roving upon the shore or passing in light boats made
of bark among the island channels of the coast. 'They
are men,' wrote Cartier, 'of an indifferent good stature
and bigness, but wild and unruly. They wear their hair
tied on the top like a wreath of hay and put a wooden
pin within it, or any other such thing instead of a nail,
and with them they bind certain birds' feathers. They
are clothed with beasts' skins as well the men as women,
but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in
their garments than the men do, with their waists girded.
They paint themselves with certain roan colours. Their
boats are made with the bark of birch trees, with the
which they fish and take great store of seals, and, as
far as we could understand since our coming thither, that
is not their habitation, but they come from the mainland
out of hotter countries to catch the said seals and other
necessaries for their living.'
There has been much discussion as to these savages. It
has been thought by some that they were a southern branch
of the Eskimos, by others that they were Algonquin Indians
who had wandered eastward from the St Lawrence region.
But the evidence goes to show that they belonged to the
lost tribe of the 'Red Indians' of Newfoundland, the race
which met its melancholy fate by deliberate and ruthless
destruction at the hands of the whites. Cabot had already
seen these people on his voyage to the coast, and described
them as painted with 'red ochre.' Three of them he had
captured and taken to England as an exhibit. For two
hundred years after the English settlement of Newfoundland,
these 'Red Indians' were hunted down till they were
destroyed. 'It was considered meritorious,' says a
historian of the island, 'to shoot a Red Indian. To "go
to look for Indians" came to be as much a phrase as to
"look for partridges." They were harassed from post to
post, from island to island: their hunting and fishing
stations were unscrupulously seized by the invading
English. They were shot down without the least provocation,
or captured to be exposed as curiosities to the rabble
at fairs in the western towns of Christian England at
twopence apiece.' So much for the ill-fated savages among
whom Cartier planted his first cross.
On June 15, Cartier, disappointed, as we have seen, with
the rugged country that he found on the northern shore,
turned south again to pick up the mainland, as he called
it, of Newfoundland. Sailing south from Brest to a distance
of about sixty miles, he found himself on the same day
off Point Rich on the west coast of Newfoundland, to
which, from its appearance, he gave the name of the Double
Cape. For three days the course lay to the south-west
along the shore. The panorama that was unfolded to the
eye of the explorer was cheerless. The wind blew cold
and hard from the north-east. The weather was dark and
gloomy, while through the rifts of the mist and fog that
lay heavy on the face of the waters there appeared only
a forbidding and scarcely habitable coast. Low lands with
islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains,
hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting
prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther
south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro,
no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the
tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his
first vision of the Indies. A storm-bound coast, a
relentless climate and a reluctant soil-these were the
treasures of the New World as first known to the discoverer
of Canada.
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