246. 44 deg. and some minutes. The Basin of Mines, the place where the copper was said to be, is about 45 deg. 30'.
247. Island of St. John. Prince Edward Island. It was named the island of St. John by Cartier, having been discovered by him on St. John's Day, the 24th of June, 1534.—Vide Voyage de Jacques Cartier, 1534, Michelant, ed. Paris, 1865, p. 33. It continued to be so called for the period of two hundred and sixty-five years, when it was changed to Prince Edward Island by an act of its legislature, in November, 1798, which was confirmed by the king in council, Feb. 1, 1799.
248. That is, from the Strait of Canseau round the coast of Nova Scotia to the Bay of Mines.
CHAPTER XIII.
A TERRIBLE MONSTER, WHICH THE SAVAGES CALL GOUGOU—OUR SHORT AND FAVORABLE VOYAGE BACK TO FRANCE
There is, moreover, a strange matter, worthy of being related, which several savages have assured me was true; namely, near the Bay of Chaleurs, towards the south, there is an island where a terrible monster resides, which the savages call Gougou, and which they told me had the form of a woman, though very frightful, and of such a size that they told me the tops of the masts of our vessel would not reach to his middle, so great do they picture him; and they say that he has often devoured and still continues to devour many savages; these he puts, when he can catch them, into a great pocket, and afterwards eats them; and those who had escaped the jaws of this wretched creature said that its pocket was so great that it could have put our vessel into it. This monster makes horrible noises in this island, which the savages call the Gougou; and when they speak of him, it is with the greatest possible fear, and several have assured me that they have seen him. Even the above-mentioned Prevert from St. Malo told me that, while going in search of mines, as mentioned in the previous chapter, he passed so near the dwelling-place of this frightful creature, that he and all those on board his vessel heard strange hissings from the noise it made, and that the savages with him told him it was the same creature, and that they were so afraid that they hid themselves wherever they could, for fear that it would come and carry them off. What makes me believe what they say is the fact that all the savages in general fear it, and tell such strange things about it that, if I were to record all they say, it would be regarded as a myth; but I hold that this is the dwelling-place of some devil that torments them in the above-mentioned manner. [249] This is what I have learned about this Gougou.
Before leaving Tadoussac on our return to France, one of the sagamores of the Montagnais, named Bechourat, gave his son to Sieur Du Pont Gravé to take to France, to whom he was highly commended by the grand sagamore, Anadabijou, who begged him to treat him well and have him see what the other two savages, whom we had taken home with us, had seen. We asked them for an Iroquois woman they were going to eat, whom they gave us, and whom, also, we took with this savage. Sieur de Prevert also took four savages: a man from the coast of La Cadie, a woman and two boys from the Canadians.
On the 24th of August, we set out from Gaspé, the vessel of Sieur Prevert and our own. On the 2d of September we calculated that we were as far as Cape Race, on the 5th, we came upon the bank where the fishery is carried on; on the 16th, we were on soundings, some fifty leagues from Ouessant; on the 20th we arrived, by God's grace, to the joy of all, and with a continued favorable wind, at the port of Havre de Grâce.
ENDNOTES:
249. The description of this enchanted island is too indefinite to invite a conjecture of its identity or location. The resounding noise of the breaking waves, mingled with the whistling of the wind, might well lay a foundation for the fears of the Indians, and their excited imaginations would easily fill out and complete the picture. In Champlain's time, the belief in the active agency of good and evil spirits, particularly the latter, in the affairs of men, was universal. It culminated in this country in the tragedies of the Salem witchcraft in 1692. It has since been gradually subsiding, but nevertheless still exists under the mitigated form of spiritual communications. Champlain, sharing the credulity of his times, very naturally refers these strange phenomena reported by the savages, whose statements were fully accredited and corroborated by the testimony of his countryman, M. Prevert, to the agency of some evil demon, who had taken up his abode in that region in order to vex and terrify these unhappy Indians. As a faithful historian, he could not omit this story, but it probably made no more impression upon his mind than did the thousand others of a similar character with which he must have been familiar. He makes no allusion to it in the edition of 1613, when speaking of the copper mines in that neighborhood, nor yet in that of 1632, and it had probably passed from his memory.