33 Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 257.
He had discovered a hot, fair land, widely different from the bleak and rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the good report which he brought of his discoveries was more than enough to find him backing for a second venture. Accordingly, in the following year, on May 19, 1535, he sailed again from St. Malo, and, reaching the straits of Belle Isle after storm and tempest, took his way, the first of European explorers, up the great river of Canada. He moored his three ships below the rock of Quebec—then the site of Stadaconé, a native Indian village, and the dwelling-place of a chief Donnaconna, who is styled in the narrative the Lord of Canada. There he left his two larger vessels, and pushed on in his pinnace and boats to the town of Hochelaga. That town, the Indians had told him, was the capital of the land; and he found it, palisaded and fortified in native fashion, where Montreal now stands.34 The Frenchmen were received as gods by the Indians; they were asked, like the Apostles of old, to touch and heal the sick; and, ever mindful of the duty of spreading the Christian religion, they read the gospel to their savage admirers in the strange French tongue, to cure their souls if they could not mend their bodies.
34 As Mr. Parkman points out (Pioneers of France, p. 212), Quebec and Montreal were in old days, as now, the centres of population in Lower Canada. 'Stadaconé and Hochelaga, Quebec and Montreal, in the sixteenth century, as in the nineteenth, were the centres of Canadian population.'
Returning down stream to their ships, they passed the winter underneath Quebec, amid ice and snow, stricken with scurvy, and distrustful of their Indian neighbours; and at length, on the return of summer, they set sail for France, carrying away the Indian chief Donnaconna and some of his companions, to die in a far-off land. They reached St. Malo in the middle of July, 1536, and so ended Cartier's second voyage to 'the New found lands by him named New France.'35
35 End of the narrative of Cartier's second voyage in Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 285.
| Failure of Roberval's attempt at colonization. |
Between four and five years passed, and then the Breton sailor set out again. This time a definite scheme of settlement was projected, the instructions were more elaborate than before, the preparations were on a larger scale. The money was found by the crown, and the King was to receive one-third of the profits. A French nobleman, De Roberval, was to go out as the King's lieutenant in the New World, and was given the title of Lord of Norumbega,36 while Cartier was appointed Captain-General. The objects of the expedition were to explore, to colonize, and to convert the heathen; and its leaders were, like Columbus, empowered to recruit colonists from the prisons at home. Cartier set out in advance of Roberval, in May, 1541. Again he sailed up the St. Lawrence, reached in his boats a point above Montreal, and, as before, wintered on the river; but this time at the mouth of the Cap Rouge, some way higher up than Quebec. His leader, Roberval, did not start till April, 1542; and, when in June he reached St. John's harbour in Newfoundland, he was met by Cartier, who had broken up his colony in disgust, and was on his way home to France. In spite of Roberval's remonstrances, Cartier left by night on his return voyage, and the Lord of Norumbega went on alone to the St. Lawrence. He planted his settlement at Cap Rouge, where Cartier had last sojourned, but it proved a miserable failure. The supplies were insufficient, the Governor turned out a savage despot, and after about a year the colony came to an end.
| Norumbega. |
36 As to Norumbega, see Parkman's Pioneers of France, pp. 216 and 253, notes, and Justin Winsor, vol. iii, chap. vi, on 'Norumbega and its English explorers.' The writer of this latter chapter (p. 185) says the territory of Norumbega never included Baccalaos, 'though Baccalaos, an old name of Newfoundland, sometimes included New England.' Norumbega, an Indian name, covered the district now included in the state of Maine, and was sometimes extended to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the north, and part of New England on the south. Michael Loki's map (1582) makes Norumbega the whole district between the river and gulf of St. Lawrence and the Hudson. The river of Norumbega was the Penobscot, and on it a city of Norumbega was given a fabulous existence. Lescarbot (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1609, bk. i, chap. i) speaks of 'pais qu'on a appellé d'un nom Alleman Norumbega, lequel est par les quarante cinq degrez.'
With this disappointing and disastrous failure, the curtain fell on the prologue of the great drama of New France, and did not rise again for more than fifty years. For the French, as for the English, the sixteenth century was a time of exploring, of training, of making experiments; and it was not till the seventeenth century dawned that permanent colonization began. Then in the Bourbons the French had rulers who, with all their faults, were abler and stronger than the princes of the house of Valois; and in Champlain they had a leader as daring as, and more statesmanlike than, Cartier. But it was by Cartier that the ground had been broken and the seed first sown. His voyages made Canada37 in some sort familiar to Europeans. He opened the St. Lawrence to be the highway into North America,38 and he gave to the hill above the native town of Hochelaga the name of the Royal Mount, which is still perpetuated in Montreal. He brought the French into Canada, and, though his settlement failed, the French connexion remained. Fishermen and fur-traders followed in his steps, and in fullness of time the New France, which his discoveries conceived, was brought to birth and grew to greatness.