Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

WHILE the first germ of the now vast American organization was thus struggling into life in Virginia, the coasts of New England and of Maine were becoming dotted with settlements of different nationalities, and the resources of Canada and the districts bounding it on the north were gradually being revealed by the researches of French and Dutch explorers.

From the time of Jacques Cartier, the French had claimed possession of the Atlantic seaboard from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the south of the modern province of Maine; and as early as 1536, a certain André Thevet had discovered the mouth of the Penobscot river, and reported very favorably of the capabilities of the districts watered by it, and the friendly disposition of the Indians with whom he had come in contact. No real effort to turn these advantages to account was made, however, until the close of the sixteenth century, when Henri IV. of France sent out the Marquis de la Roche with orders to found a new French empire on the western coast of America. The noble leader of this expedition, charged with so grand a commission, found himself hampered in carrying it out by the fact that the followers who were to form the nucleus of the “empire” were all convicts from the overcrowded French prisons. He contented himself, therefore, with landing them on the desolate shores of Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, whence they returned home after twelve years of misery, having accomplished literally nothing.

In the following year (1599) a trip far richer in results was made to Canada by a merchant of St. Malo named Pontgravé, and a naval officer named De Chauvin, the latter of whom obtained a commission from Henri IV. similar to that given De la Roche. The sudden death of De Chauvin, after a preliminary trip, prevented him from himself reaping any benefit from the full powers conferred on him; but Pontgravé was so convinced by what he had seen on the St. Lawrence of the commercial capabilities of the country watered by it, that he returned in 1603, this time accompanied by Samuel Champlain, an eager and intelligent student of geography, with whose aid a very thorough survey of the great water highway was made.

Provided with trustworthy maps of Canada, Pontgravé and Champlain soon returned to France, and, as one result of their work, a new expedition was sent out in 1604, led by De Monts, a Huguenot nobleman, who was empowered by Henri IV. to take possession of and colonize in his name, all districts between 40° and 46° N. lat., collectively known as Acadia.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

De Monts left France on the 9th March, 1604, taking Champlain with him as a confidential adviser. A short visit to Nova Scotia was succeeded by a cruise in the Bay of Fundy, dividing that Peninsula from the mainland; and after much hesitation, a small island near the mouth of the St. Croix, a river of New Brunswick, was chosen as the site for the first settlement. It turned out an unlucky selection, and as soon as the first winter was over, De Monts and Champlain went down the coast to try and find a more favorable situation. The harbors of Maine were visited one after another, and in any one of them a delightful refuge for the little band of Frenchmen might have been found but for the hostility of the Indians, who, since the time of Thevet, had learned to suspect the sincerity of the white man.

Finally the colony was removed to a port of Nova Scotia now known as Annapolis, but then called Port Royal, where it feebly struggled for existence, first under De Monts, and then under his successor, Pourtrincourt, until 1610, when some new life was infused into it by the arrival of certain Jesuit missionaries, who, at the instance of the Marquise de Guercheville, to whom De Monts had resigned his claim to Acadia, proposed making the little colony the nucleus of a church in the wilderness, into which the natives were to be gradually enticed.

The success of the first missionaries was sufficient to induce others to follow their example; and, in 1613, an earnest Frenchman named La Saussaye arrived at Port Royal, with two more Jesuit priests and thirty-eight men, with whom, having obtained a guide, he started to sail up the Penobscot, intending to plant a second church at the Indian village of Kadesquit, now Bangor.