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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Cartier was enraptured with the land which he had
discovered,--'as goodly a country,' he wrote, 'as possibly
can with eye be seen, and all replenished with very goodly
trees.' Here and there the wigwams of the savages dotted
the openings of the forest. Often the inhabitants put
off from shore in canoes, bringing fish and food, and
accepting, with every sign of friendship, the little
presents which Cartier distributed among them. At one
place an Indian chief--'one of the chief lords of the
country,' says Cartier--brought two of his children as
a gift to the miraculous strangers. One of the children,
a little girl of eight, was kept upon the ship and went
on with Cartier to Hochelaga and back to Stadacona, where
her parents came to see her later on. The other child
Cartier refused to keep because 'it was too young, for
it was but two or three years old.'
At the head of Lake St Peter, Cartier, ignorant of the
channels, found his progress in the pinnace barred by
the sand bars and shallows among the group of islands
which here break the flow of the great river. The Indians
whom he met told him by signs that Hochelaga lay still
farther up-stream, at a distance of three days' journey.
Cartier decided to leave the Emerillon and to continue
on his way in the two boats which he had brought with
him. Claude de Pont Briand and some of the gentlemen,
together with twenty mariners, accompanied the leader,
while the others remained in charge of the pinnace.
Three days of easy and prosperous navigation was sufficient
for the journey, and on October 2, Cartier's boats, having
rowed along the shores of Montreal island, landed in full
sight of Mount Royal, at some point about three or four
miles from the heart of the present city. The precise
location of the landing has been lost to history. It has
been thought by some that the boats advanced until the
foaming waters of the Lachine rapids forbade all further
progress. Others have it that the boats were halted at
the foot of St Mary's current, and others again that Nun
Island was the probable place of landing. What is certain
is that the French brought their boats to shore among a
great crowd of assembled savages,--a thousand persons,
Cartier says,--and that they were received with tumultuous
joy. The Indians leaped and sang, their familiar mode of
celebrating welcome. They offered to the explorers great
quantities of fish and of the bread which they baked from
the ripened corn. They brought little children in their
arms, making signs for Cartier and his companions to
touch them.
As the twilight gathered, the French withdrew to their
boats, while the savages, who were loath to leave the
spot, lighted huge bonfires on the shore. A striking and
weird picture it conjures up before our eyes,--the French
sailors with their bronzed and bearded faces, their
strange dress and accoutrements, the glare of the great
bonfires on the edge of the dark waters, the wild dances
of the exultant savages. The romance and inspiration of
the history of Canada are suggested by this riotous
welcome of the Old World by the New. It meant that mighty
changes were pending; the eye of imagination may see in
the background the shadowed outline of the spires and
steeples of the great city of to-day.
On the next day, October 3, the French were astir with
the first light of the morning. A few of their number
were left to guard the boats; the others, accompanied by
some of the Indians, set out on foot for Hochelaga. Their
way lay over a beaten path through the woods. It brought
them presently to the tall palisades that surrounded the
group of long wooden houses forming the Indian settlement.
It stood just below the slope of the mountain, and covered
a space of almost two acres. On the map of the modern
city this village of Hochelaga would be bounded by the
four streets, Metcalfe, Mansfield, Burnside, and Sherbrooke,
just below the site of McGill University. But the visit
of Cartier is an event of such historic interest that it
can best be narrated in the words of his own narrative.
We may follow here as elsewhere the translation of Hakluyt,
which is itself three hundred years old, and seems in
its quaint and picturesque form more fitting than the
commoner garb of modern prose.
Our captain [so runs the narrative], the next day very
early in the morning, having very gorgeously attired
himself, caused all his company to be set in order to
go to see the town and habitation of these people, and
a certain mountain that is somewhere near the city; with
whom went also five gentlemen and twenty mariners,
leaving the rest to keep and look to our boats. We took
with us three men of Hochelaga to bring us to the place.
All along as we went we found the way as well beaten
and frequented as can be, the fairest and best country
that can possibly be seen, full of as goodly great oaks
as are in any wood in France, under which the ground
was all covered over with fair acorns.
After we had gone about four or five miles, we met by
the way one of the chiefest lords of the city, accompanied
with many more, who, as soon as he saw us, beckoned and
made signs upon us, that we must rest in that place
where they had made a great fire and so we did. After
that we rested ourselves there awhile, the said lord
began to make a long discourse, even as we have said
above they are accustomed to do in sign of mirth and
friendship, showing our captain and all his company a
joyful countenance and good will, who gave him two
hatchets, a pair of knives and a cross which he made
him to kiss, and then put it about his neck, for which
he gave our captain hearty thanks. This done, we went
along, and about a mile and a half farther, we began to
find goodly and large fields full of such corn as the
country yieldeth. It is even as the millet of Brazil as
great and somewhat bigger than small peason [peas],
wherewith they live as we do with ours.
In the midst of those fields is the city of Hochelaga,
placed near and, as it were, joined to a very great
mountain, that is tilled round about, very fertile, on
the top of which you may see very far. We named it Mount
Royal. The city of Hochelaga is round compassed about
with timber, with three courses of rampires [stockades],
one within another, framed like a sharp spire, but laid
across above. The middlemost of them is made and built
as a direct line but perpendicular. The rampires are
framed and fashioned with pieces of timber laid along
on the ground, very well and cunningly joined together
after their fashion. This enclosure is in height about
two rods. It hath but one gate of entry thereat, which
is shut with piles, stakes, and bars. Over it and also
in many places of the wall there be places to run along
and ladders to get up, all full of stones, for the
defence of it.
There are in the town about fifty houses, about fifty
paces long, and twelve or fifteen broad, built all of
wood, covered over with the bark of the wood as broad
as any board, very finely and cunningly joined together.
Within the said houses there are many rooms, lodgings
and chambers. In the midst of every one there is a great
court in the middle whereof they make their fire.
Such is the picture of Hochelaga as Cartier has drawn it
for us. Arrived at the palisade, the savages conducted
Cartier and his followers within. In the central space
of the stockade was a large square, bordered by the lodges
of the Indians. In this the French were halted, and the
natives gathered about them, the women, many of whom bore
children in their, arms, pressing close up to the visitors,
stroking their faces and arms, and making entreaties by
signs that the French should touch their children.
Then presently [writes Cartier] came the women again,
every one bringing a four-square mat in the manner of
carpets, and spreading them abroad in that place, they
caused us to sit upon them. This done the lord and king
of the country was brought upon nine or ten men's
shoulders (whom in their tongue they call Agouhanna),
sitting upon a great stag's skin, and they laid him down
upon the foresaid mats near to the captain, every one
beckoning unto us that he was their lord and king. This
Agouhanna was a man about fifty pears old. He was no
whit better apparelled than any of the rest, only excepted
that he had a certain thing made of hedgehogs [porcupines],
like a red wreath, and that was instead of his crown.
He was full of the palsy, and his members shrunk together.
After he had with certain signs saluted our captain and
all his company, and by manifest tokens bid all welcome,
he showed his legs and arms to our captain, and with
signs desired him to touch them, and so we did, rubbing
them with his own hands; then did Agouhanna take the
wreath or crown he had about his head, and gave it unto
our captain That done, they brought before him divers
diseased men, some blind, some crippled, some lame, and
some so old that the hair of their eyelids came down
and covered their cheeks, and laid them all along before
our captain to the end that they might of him be touched.
For it seemed unto them that God was descended and come
down from heaven to heal them.
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 every one that
were [sic] 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 marvellously attentive, looking up to heaven
and imitating us in gestures. Then he caused the men
all orderly to be set on one side, the women on another,
and likewise the children on another, and to the chiefest
of them he gave hatchets, to the others knives, and to
the women beads and such other small trifles. Then where
the children were he cast rings, counters and brooches
made of tin, whereat they seemed to be very glad.
Before Cartier and his men returned to their boats, some
of the Indians took them up to the top of Mount Royal.
Here a magnificent prospect offered itself, then, as now,
to the eye. The broad level of the island swept towards
the west, luxuriant with yellow corn and autumn foliage.
In the distance the eye discerned the foaming waters of
Lachine, and the silver bosom of the Lake of the Two
Mountains: 'as fair and level a country,' said Cartier,
'as possibly can be seen, being level, smooth, and very
plain, fit to be husbanded and tilled.'
The Indians, pointing to the west, explained by signs
that beyond the rapids were three other great falls of
water, and that when these were passed a man might travel
for three months up the waters of the great river. Such
at least Cartier understood to be the meaning of the
Indians. They showed him a second stream, the Ottawa, as
great, they said, as the St Lawrence, whose north-westward
course Cartier supposed must run through the kingdom of
Saguenay. As the savages pointed to the Ottawa, they took
hold of a silver chain on which hung the whistle that
Cartier carried, and then touched the dagger of one of
the sailors, which had a handle of copper, yellow as
gold, as if to show that these metals, or rather silver
and gold, came from the country beyond that river. This,
at least, was the way that Cartier interpreted the simple
and evident signs that the Indians made. The commentators
on Cartier's voyages have ever since sought some other
explanation, supposing that no such metals existed in
the country. The discovery of the gold and silver deposits
of the basin of the Ottawa in the district of New Ontario
shows that Cartier had truly understood the signs of the
Indians. If they had ever seen silver before, it is
precisely from this country that it would have come.
Cartier was given to understand, also, that in this same
region there dwelt another race of savages, very fierce,
and continually at war.
The party descended from the mountain and pursued their
way towards the boats. Their Indian friends hung upon
their footsteps, showing evidences of admiration and
affection, and even carried in their arms any of the
French who showed indications of weariness. They stood
about with every sign of grief and regret as the sails
were hoisted and the boats bearing the wonderful beings
dropped swiftly down the river. On October 4, the boats
safely rejoined the Emerillon that lay anchored near the
mouth of the Richelieu. On the 11th of the same month,
the pinnace was back at her anchorage beside Stadacona,
and the whole company was safely reunited. The expedition
to Hochelaga had been accomplished in twenty-two days.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND VOYAGE--WINTER AT STADACONA
On returning to his anchorage before Quebec, Cartier
found that his companions whom he had left there had not
been idle. The ships, it will be remembered, lay moored
close to the shore at the mouth of the little river
Lairet, a branch of the St Charles. On the bank of the
river, during their leader's absence, the men had erected
a solid fortification or rampart. Heavy sticks of lumber
had been set up on end and joined firmly together, while
at intervals cannon, taken from the ships, had been placed
in such a way as to command the approach in all directions.
The sequel showed that it was well, indeed, for the French
that they placed so little reliance on the friendship of
the savages.
Donnacona was not long in putting in an appearance.
Whatever may have been his real feelings, the crafty old
chief feigned a great delight at the safe return of
Cartier. At his solicitation Cartier paid a ceremonial
visit to the settlement of Stadacona, on October 13, ten
days after his return. The gentlemen of the expedition,
together with fifty sailors, all well armed and appointed,
accompanied the leader. The meeting between the Indians
and their white visitors was similar to those already
described. Indian harangues and wild dancing and shouting
were the order of the day, while Cartier, as usual,
distributed knives and trinkets. The French were taken
into the Indian lodges and shown the stores of food laid
up against the coming winter. Other objects, too, of a
new and peculiar interest were displayed: there were the
'scalp locks' of five men--'the skin of five men's heads,'
says Cartier,--which were spread out on a board like
parchments. The Indians explained that these had been
taken from the heads of five of their deadly enemies,
the Toudamani, a fierce people living to the south, with
whom the natives of Stadacona were perpetually at war.
A gruesome story was also told of a great massacre of a
war party of Donnacona's people who had been on their
way down to the Gaspe country. The party, so the story
ran, had encamped upon an island near the Saguenay. They
numbered in all two hundred people, women and children
being also among the warriors, and were gathered within
the shelter of a rude stockade. In the dead of night
their enemies broke upon the sleeping Indians in wild
assault; they fired the stockade, and those who did not
perish in the flames fell beneath the tomahawk. Five only
escaped to bring the story to Stadacona. The truth of
the story was proved, long after the writing of Cartier's
narrative, by the finding of a great pile of human bones
in a cave on an island near Bic, not far from the mouth
of the Saguenay. The place is called L'Isle au Massacre
to-day.
The French now settled down into their winter quarters.
They seem for some time to have mingled freely with the
Indians of the Stadacona settlement, especially during
the month which yet remained before the rigour of winter
locked their ships in snow and ice. Cartier, being of an
observing and accurate turn of mind, has left in his
narrative some interesting notes upon the life and ideas
of the savages. They had, he said, no belief in a true
God. Their deity, Cudragny, was supposed to tell them
the weather, and, if angry, to throw dust into their
eyes. They thought that, when they died, they would go
to the stars, and after that, little by little, sink with
the stars to earth again, to where the happy hunting
grounds lie on the far horizon of the world. To correct
their ignorance, Cartier told them of the true God and
of the verities of the Christian faith. In the end the
savages begged that he would baptize them, and on at
least one occasion a great flock of them came to him,
hoping to be received into the faith. But Cartier, as he
says, having nobody with him 'who could teach them our
belief and religion,' and doubting, also, the sincerity
of their sudden conversion, put them off with the promise
that at his next coming he would bring priests and holy
oil and cause them to be baptized.
The Stadacona Indians seem to have lived on terms of
something like community of goods. Their stock of
food--including great quantities of pumpkins, peas, and
corn--was more or less in common. But, beyond this and
their lodges, their earthly possessions were few. They
dressed somewhat scantily in skins, and even in the depth
of winter were so little protected from the cold as to
excite the wonder of their observers. Women whose husbands
died never remarried, but went about with their faces
smeared thick with mingled grease and soot.
One peculiar custom of the natives especially attracted
the attention of their visitors, and for the oddity of
the thing may best be recorded in Cartier's manner. It
is an early account of the use of tobacco. 'There groweth
also,' he wrote, 'a certain kind of herb, whereof in
summer they make a great provision for all the year,
making great account of it, and only men use it, and
first they cause it to be dried in the sun, then wear it
about their necks, wrapped in a little beast's skin made
like a little bag, with a hollow piece of wood or stone
like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of
it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said cornet
or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it, at the other
end suck so long that they fill their bodies full of
smoke till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils,
even as out of the funnel of a chimney. They say that it
doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without
some of it about them. We ourselves have tried the same
smoke, and, having put it in our mouths, it seemed almost
as hot as pepper.'
In spite of the going and coming of the Indians, Cartier
from first to last was doubtful of their intentions.
Almost every day in the autumn and early winter some of
them appeared with eels and fish, glad to exchange them
for little trinkets. But the two interpreters endeavoured
to make the Indians believe that the things given them
by the French were of no value, and Donnacona did his
best to get the Indian children out of the hands of the
French. Indeed, the eldest of the children, an Indian
girl, escaped from the ships and rejoined her people,
and it was only with difficulty that Cartier succeeded
in getting her back again. Meanwhile a visiting chief,
from the country farther inland, gave the French captain
to understand that Donnacona and his braves were waiting
only an opportunity to overwhelm the ships' company.
Cartier kept on his guard. He strengthened the fort with
a great moat that ran all round the stockade. The only
entry was now by a lifting bridge; and pointed stakes
were driven in beside the upright palisade. Fifty men,
divided into watches, were kept on guard all night, and,
at every change of the watch, the Indians, across the
river in their lodges of the Stadacona settlement, could
hear the loud sounds of the trumpets break the clear
silence of the winter night.
We have no record of the life of Cartier and his followers
during the winter of their isolation among the snows and
the savages of Quebec. It must, indeed, have been a season
of dread. The northern cold was soon upon them in all
its rigour. The ships were frozen in at their moorings
from the middle of November till April 15. The ice lay
two fathoms thick in the river, and the driving snows
and great drifts blotted out under the frozen mantle of
winter all sight of land and water. The French could
scarcely stir from their quarters. Their fear of Indian
treachery and their ignorance of the trackless country
about them held them imprisoned in their ships. A worse
peril was soon added. The scourge of scurvy was laid upon
them--an awful disease, hideous in its form and deadly
in its effect. Originating in the Indian camp, it spread
to the ships. In December fifty of the Stadacona Indians
died, and by the middle of February, of the hundred and
ten men that made up Cartier's expedition, only three or
four remained in health. Eight were already dead, and
their bodies, for want of burial, lay frozen stark beneath
the snowdrifts of the river, hidden from the prying eyes
of the savages. Fifty more lay at the point of death,
and the others, crippled and staggering with the onslaught
of disease, moved to and fro at their tasks, their fingers
numbed with cold, their hearts frozen with despair.
The plague that had fallen upon them was such as none of
them had ever before seen. The legs of the sufferers
swelled to huge, unsightly, and livid masses of flesh.
Their sinews shrivelled to blackened strings, pimpled
with purple clots of blood. The awful disease worked its
way upwards. The arms hung hideous and useless at the
side, the mouth rotted till the teeth fell from the putrid
flesh. Chilled with the cold, huddled in the narrow holds
of the little ships fast frozen in the endless desolation
of the snow, the agonized sufferers breathed their last,
remote from aid, far from the love of women, and deprived
of the consolations of the Church. Let those who realize
the full horror of the picture think well upon what stout
deeds the commonwealth of Canada has been founded.
Without the courage and resource of their leader, whose
iron constitution kept him in full health, all would have
been lost. Cartier spared no efforts. The knowledge of
his situation was concealed from the Indians. None were
allowed aboard the ships, and, as far as might be, a
great clatter of hammering was kept up whenever the
Indians appeared in sight, so that they might suppose
that Cartier's men were forced by the urgency of their
tasks to remain on the ships. Nor was spiritual aid
neglected. An image of the Virgin Mary was placed against
a tree about a bow-shot from the fort, and to this all
who could walk betook themselves in procession on the
Sunday when the sickness was at its height. They moved
in solemn order, singing as they went the penitential
psalms and the Litany, and imploring the intercession of
the Virgin. Thus passed the days until twenty-five of
the French had been laid beneath the snow. For the others
there seemed only the prospect of death from disease or
of destruction at the hands of the savages.
It happened one day that Cartier was walking up and down
by himself upon the ice when he saw a band of Indians
coming over to him from Stadacona. Among them was the
interpreter Domagaya, whom Cartier had known to be stricken
by the illness only ten days before, but who now appeared
in abundant health. On being asked the manner of his
cure, the interpreter told Cartier that he had been healed
by a beverage made from the leaves and bark of a tree.
Cartier, as we have seen, had kept from the Indians the
knowledge of his troubles, for he dared not disclose the
real weakness of the French. Now, feigning that only a
servant was ill, he asked for details of the remedy, and,
when he did so, the Indians sent their women to fetch
branches of the tree in question. The bark and leaves
were to be boiled, and the drink thus made was to be
taken twice a day. The potion was duly administered, and
the cure that it effected was so rapid and so complete
that the pious Cartier declared it a real and evident
miracle. 'If all the doctors of Lorraine and Montpellier
had been there with all the drugs of Alexandria,' he
wrote, 'they could not have done as much in a year as
the said tree did in six days.' An entire tree--probably
a white spruce--was used up in less than eight days. The
scourge passed and the sailors, now restored to health,
eagerly awaited the coming of the spring.
Meanwhile the cold lessened; the ice about the ships
relaxed its hold, and by the middle of April they once
more floated free. But a new anxiety had been added.
About the time when the fortunes of Cartier's company
were at their lowest, Donnacona had left his camp with
certain of his followers, ostensibly to spend a fortnight
in hunting deer in the forest. For two months he did not
return. When he came back, he was accompanied not only
by Taignoagny and his own braves, but by a great number
of savages, fierce and strong, whom the French had never
before seen. Cartier was assured that treachery was
brewing, and he determined to forestall it. He took care
that his men should keep away from the settlement of
Stadacona, but he sent over his servant, Charles Guyot,
who had endeared himself to the Indians during the winter.
Guyot reported that the lodges were filled with strange
faces, that Donnacona had pretended to be sick and would
not show himself, and that he himself had been received
with suspicion, Taignoagny having forbidden him to enter
into some of the houses.
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