Canada

by John George Bourinot

In the western valley of that part of French Acadia, now known as Nova Scotia, not only do we tread on historic ground, but we see in these days a landscape of more varied beauty than that which so delighted the gentlemen-adventurers of old France nearly three centuries ago. In this country, which the poem conceived by Longfellow amid the elms of Cambridge has made so famous, we see the rich lands reclaimed from the sea, which glistens a few miles to the north, and every day comes rushing up its estuaries. There to the north is dark, lofty Blomidon—whose name is probably a memorial of a Portuguese voyager—with its overhanging cliff under which the tumultuous tides struggle and foam. Here, in a meadow close by, is a long row of Lombardy poplars, pointing to another race and another country. There, on a slight acclivity, among the trees, is a pile of white college buildings, there a tall white spire rises into the pure blue sky. We see cottages covered with honeysuckle and grapevine; with their gardens of roses and lilies, and many old-fashioned flowers. In the spring, the country is one mass of pink and white blossoms, which load the passing breeze with delicate fragrance; in autumn the trees bend beneath rosy and yellow apples.

We drive through a fertile valley, where runs a placid river amid many meadows, gardens, and orchards, until at last it empties into a picturesque basin, where the landscape shows a harmonious blending of mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ancient forest trees. Here we see a quiet old town, whose roofs are green with the moss of many years, where willows and grassy mounds tell of a historic past, where the bells of ox-teams tinkle in the streets, and commerce itself wears a look of reminiscence. For we have come to the banks of that basin where the French, in the first years of the seventeenth century, laid the foundations of a settlement which, despite all its early misfortunes, has lasted until the present time, though it is the English tongue that is now spoken and the Englishman who is now the occupant.

Early in the leafy month of June, 1604, the French under De Monts sailed into this spacious basin, and saw for the first time its grassy meadows, its numerous streams, its cascades tumbling from the hills, its forest-clad mountains. "This," said Champlain, who called it Port Royal, "was the most commodious and pleasant place that we had yet seen in this country."

It appears that the adventurers left France in the early part of April. When the King had been once won over to the project, he consented to give De Monts and his associates an entire monopoly of the fur-trade throughout the wide domain of which he was to be the viceroy. The expedition was chiefly supported by the merchants of the Protestant town of La Rochelle, and was regarded with much jealousy by other commercial cities. Protestants were to enjoy in the new colony all the advantages they were then allowed in France. The Catholics were appeased by the condition that the conversion of the natives should be reserved especially for the priests of their own church.

The man of most note, after De Monts and Champlain, was Jean de Biencourt, a rich nobleman of Picardy, better known in Acadian history as the Baron de Poutrincourt, who had distinguished himself as a soldier in the civil wars. A man of energy and enterprise, he was well fitted to assist in the establishment of a colony.

De Monts and his associates reached without accident the low fir-covered shores of Nova Scotia, visited several of its harbours, and finally sailed into the Bay of Fundy, which was named Baie Française. The French explored the coast of the bay after leaving Port Royal, and discovered the river which the Indians called Ouigoudi, or highway, and De Monts renamed St. John, as he saw it first on the festival of that saint. Proceeding along the northern shores of the bay the expedition came to a river which falls into Passamaquoddy Bay, and now forms the boundary between the United States and the eastern provinces of Canada. This river ever since has been called the river of the Holy Cross (Sainte-Croix) though the name was first given by De Monts to an islet, well within the mouth of the stream, which he chose as the site of the first French settlement on the northeast coast of America. Buildings were soon erected for the accommodation of some eighty persons, as well as a small fort for their protection on the rocky islet. [1]

While the French settlement was preparing for the winter, Champlain explored the eastern coast from the St. Croix to the Penobscot, where he came to the conclusion that the story of a large city on its banks was evidently a mere invention of the imaginative mind. He also was the first of Europeans, so far as we know, to look on the mountains and cliffs of the island—so famous as a summer resort in these later times—which he very aptly named Monts-Déserts. During the three years Champlain remained in Acadia he made explorations and surveys of the southern coasts of Nova Scotia from Canseau to Port Royal, of the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and of the coast of New England from the St. Croix to Vineyard Sound.

Poutrincourt, who had received from De Monts a grant of the country around Port Royal, left his companions in their dreary home in the latter part of August and sailed for France, with the object of making arrangements for settling his new domain in Acadia. He found that very little interest was taken in the new colony of which very unsatisfactory reports were brought back to France by his companions though he himself gave a glowing account of its beautiful scenery and resources.

While Poutrincourt was still in France, he was surprised to learn of the arrival of De Monts with very unsatisfactory accounts of the state of affairs in the infant colony. The adventurers had very soon found St. Croix entirely unfitted for a permanent settlement, and after a most wretched winter had removed to the sunny banks of the Annapolis, which was then known as the Equille,[2] and subsequently as the Dauphin. Poutrincourt and De Monts went energetically to work, and succeeded in obtaining the services of all the mechanics and labourers they required. The new expedition was necessarily composed of very unruly characters, who sadly offended the staid folk of that orderly bulwark of Calvinism, the town of La Rochelle. At last on the 13th of May, 1606, the Jonas, with its unruly crew all on board, left for the new world under the command of Poutrincourt. Among the passengers was L'Escarbot, a Paris advocate, a poet, and an historian, to whom we are indebted for a very sprightly account of early French settlement in America. De Monts, however, was unable to leave with his friends.