By Canadian Streams

by Lawrence J. Burpee

II

THE MYSTIC SAGUENAY

Pile on pile

The granite masses rise to left and right;

Bald, stately bluffs that never wear a smile....

And we must pass a thousand bluffs like these,

Within whose breasts are locked a myriad mysteries.

SANGSTER.

The Saguenay is first heard of in the narrative of Cartier's second voyage. On his way to Canada, the realm of the Iroquois sachem, Donnacona, he came, early in September 1535, to the mouth of a great river flowing into the St. Lawrence from the west. His native guides told him that this river, whose gloomy majesty was to be the theme of many later travellers, was the main road to the "kingdom of Saguenay." One may well believe that the adventurous captain of St. Malo would gladly have turned his ships between the towering portals of the Saguenay, for the pure joy of discovery, had not a greater project lured him toward the south-west.

While his vessels were anchored off the mouth of the river, his attention was drawn to a curious fish "which no man had ever before seen or heard of." The Indians called them adhothuys, and told him that they were found only in such places as this, where the waters of sea and river mingled. Cartier says they were as large as porpoises, had the head and body of a greyhound, and were as white as snow and without a spot. These white porpoises, as they are now called, are still found at the mouth of the Saguenay. At one time their capture formed an important part of the fisheries of Tadoussac.

There is a romantic tradition that de Roberval sailed up the Saguenay with a company of adventurers, about the year 1549, in search of a kingdom of fabulous riches, and that he and his men perished on the way. It is probable, however, that the expedition had as little foundation as the kingdom it was designed to exploit.

Half a century later the first settlement was made at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay. For many years this had been a meeting-place for the Basque traders and the Indians from the interior, but it was not until the year 1600 that anything in the nature of a permanent post had been established. In that year Pierre de Chauvin, Pont-Gravé, and de Monts, sailed for the St. Lawrence, built a house at Tadoussac, and left sixteen men there for the winter to carry on the fur-trade. The venture was not a success, and the place was abandoned the following year, but Tadoussac remained for many years an important point in the fur-trade. It is said that in 1648 the traffic amounted to 250,000 livres. A church built here by the missionaries a hundred years later is still standing. Tadoussac is chiefly known to-day as one of the favourite watering-places on the Lower St. Lawrence.

It was not until three years after de Chauvin built his trading-post at Tadoussac that the Saguenay was actually explored. Champlain and Pont-Gravé had sailed from Honfleur, in March 1603, on the Bonne-Renommée, to explore the country and find some more suitable place than Tadoussac for a permanent settlement. After meeting a number of friendly Indians at Tadoussac, Champlain determined to explore the Saguenay, and actually sailed up to the head of navigation, a little above the present town of Chicoutimi. By shrewd questions he learned from the Indians that above the rapids the river was navigable for some distance, that it was again broken by rapids at its outlet from a big lake (Lake St. John), that three rivers fell into this lake, and that beyond these rivers were strange tribes who lived on the borders of the sea. This sea was the great bay, as yet undiscovered, where Henry Hudson was seven years later to win an imperishable name, and die a victim to the treachery of his crew.

In 1608 Champlain again visited Tadoussac, on his way up the St. Lawrence to lay the foundations of Quebec. His companion, Pont-Gravé, had arrived in another vessel a few days before, armed with the King's commission granting him a monopoly of the fur-trade for one year. When he reached Tadoussac he found the enterprising Basques already on the ground, and carrying on a brisk trade with the Indians. They treated the royal letters with contempt, ridiculed Pont-Gravé's monopoly, and, finally boarding his ship, carried off his guns and ammunition. The opportune arrival of Champlain, however, brought them to terms, and they finally agreed to return to their legitimate occupation of catching whales, leaving the fur-trade, for a time at least, to Pont-Gravé and Champlain.

The Indians who chiefly frequented Tadoussac at this time were of the tribe called Montagnais. Their hunting-ground was the country drained by the Saguenay, and they acted as middlemen for the tribes of the far north, bringing their furs down to the French at Tadoussac, and carrying back the prized trinkets of the white man, which they no doubt bartered to their northerly neighbours at an exorbitant profit.