We know that the first among them, fired by the discovery of mines in South America, especially in Peru, sought only gold. Gold there was in very truth, but not where they were looking for it. What a prodigious misunderstanding the mirage of gold caused between this land of plenty and the men who landed here; it cannot be exaggerated, and how little it would have been to the honor of the human race if, at the same time, there had not been another and entirely different mirage born of human determination and intelligence and worthy of the highest aspirations of Man. It is an historical fact that while the conquistadores were seeking gold and only gold, other explorers, the advance guard of science, the conquistadores of the ideal, were sacrificing themselves to a worthier aim: the finding of the northwest passage which around North America was to lead them to China and India. The ones were only discovering new lands that they might mine and impoverish them, the others that they might better know and develop them!
Both mirages, and illusions on both sides; but in the end practical results; so true is it that the dream of the impossible is at times the most active instrument of immediate and useful achievement.
The practical results we have before our eyes; and they came about through the efforts of a third set of explorers whom I will now attempt to recall because one of the most characteristic among them was our illustrious fellow-Frenchman whose memory we are gathered here to honor, Samuel Champlain.
Landing on this new continent, these men were immediately struck by one thing: to how great a degree it resembled the European countries which had given them birth. I want to lay stress upon this point for, to their observant eyes, it was at once a revelation and a surprise. They had to make an effort—can you believe it—to convince themselves that they were not falling upon an imaginary and legendary land, a land of fabulous dreams, a land of the Arabian Nights. Everything here was like their homes and, it is literally true, they could not believe their own eyes.
For you must not forget that the first accounts published about the new world had described it as prodigious, fantastic and out of proportion to anything ever before known. These legends were believed by the credulity of the Middle-Ages, from which we were only just emerging, they were strengthened by the tales so blithely told by travellers for, as the old saying has it, “falsehood is easy to one who comes from afar.” But above all, these legends had been sunk into the minds of men by the startling facts of the early discoveries. In the heavens
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a wonderful light, the torrid climes of Central America, Nature so powerful as to be actually deadly, the impenetrable forests, the strange vegetation, the prodigious width of the rivers rolling to the sea, everything combined, but above all Gold, Gold everywhere, Gold in the daily life of all, Gold in the temples, Gold on the ground, Gold in the bowels of the earth, Gold seen and Gold unseen, that is what exalted their overwrought imaginations to madness. It was impossible to admit that this land could be a land like other lands. So that it needed extraordinary common sense (if these two words may be used together), it needed an almost miraculous self-control in these pioneers, in this third set of explorers of which I am speaking, to forsake their preconceived notions and get down to earth again and see that this land was after all a land just like other lands, like the lands from which they had sprung, loamy and fertile and fruitful, where the trees were like European trees, with clusters of vines hanging from the branches; where wheat grew naturally; where the fish of the rivers and sea were the same fish that they had at home, a land where the cattle of the Mother-country waxed fat, and where at the accustomed seasons the welcome sward stretched its mantle of green bedecked with flowers to the very threshold of the abodes of man; where in the fall the countryside was crowned with Gold; where the rule of life was the normal and accustomed rule. Gold was lacking, at least the Gold so greedily sought, but on the other hand in the soil and on the soil Gold there was in very truth and in untold abundance, the Gold of natural wealth—a civilizing, not a destructive Gold. I mean the Gold of labor, the Gold of human brawn, the Gold of intellect, the Gold of inspiration, the Gold which is forever being created by the mind and will of Man; but which was only to open up its ideal mine of surpassing wealth after centuries of sacrifice, of labor, of tenacity, and in exchange for an immense toll of energy.
These new conquistadores, the conquistadores of labor, who set their sails not for the land of dreams, but for the land of the Things-As-They-Are, were the real founders of the mighty civilization which surrounds us, and once again, in the very forefront of their ranks, stands our great fellow-countryman Samuel Champlain.
It was not that these men were lacking in imagination, for imagination is the creative faculty in Man, and especially so in the statesman. To do things is to see ahead. He had indeed a wonderful imagination, a genius for foresight which was uncanny, this extraordinary man who foretold the future of America, who pointed out the location of the Panama Canal, who sketched the development of the great Republic of the United States, who fixed the sites of Boston, Montreal, Quebec and so many other great and prosperous cities. His imagination was active, yes, but his activities were always devoted to useful achievement and love of justice.
He was the first to see that any colony on the American continent would have to be self-supporting, those are his own words. He builded, he planted, he sowed crops, he raised stockades and laid out roads, as a man relying solely upon himself. Having shattered the flimsy phantasy of fabulous Gold he quite simply became a farmer, a soldier, an engineer; and, when upon this land he laid the corner-stone of the first building, he laid at the same time the foundation of a new civilization and created an empire. Once again the nobility of labor had saved the world from the idle vanity of dreams.