JACQUES CARTIER AND HIS SUCCESSORS.
BY THE REV. BENJAMIN F. DE COSTA, D.D.
JACQUES CARTIER, the Breton sailor, sometimes styled “the Corsair,” was born at St. Malo, probably in 1491. He began to follow the sea at an early age, and soon attained to prominence. In 1534 the discovery of a western route to the Indies being a subject that attracted great attention, Cartier undertook an expedition, for which preparations had been begun during the previous year.
The Treaty of Cambrai having given peace to France, the privateersmen, or “corsairs,” found that the best excuse for their occupation was gone; and they were ready to engage in the work of exploration opened by Francis I. in 1524, by sending out Verrazano. Accordingly the King appears to have accepted the plan of Cartier submitted by Chabot, Admiral of France, and the arrangements were perfected. Cartier’s commission for the voyage has not yet been produced, though in March, 1533, he was recognized by the Court of St. Malo as a person already authorized to undertake a voyage to the New Land.
Cartier sailed from the ancient port of St. Malo, April 20, 1534. With two ships of about sixty tons each, and a company, it would appear, of sixty-two chosen men, he laid his course in the track of the old navigators, with whom he must have been familiar. On May 10 he reached Cape Bonavista, one of the nearest headlands of Newfoundland. Forced by storms to seek refuge in the harbor of St. Catherine, about fifteen miles south-southeast of Bonavista, he spent ten days in making some needed repairs. With the return of favorable winds he resumed his voyage, and coasted northward to the Island of Birds, which he found surrounded by banks of broken ice and covered by an incredible number of fowl. With these the French loaded their boats in half an hour. There, also, they saw a large bear, “as white as any swan,” swimming thither “to eat of the said birds.” On May 27 the ships reached the entrance of the Straits of Belle Isle, but were obliged by the ice to enter the neighboring harbor of Carpunt, 51° N. From Carpunt, Cartier sailed to the Labrador coast, and, June 10, reached a harbor which he called Port Brest. The next day being the festival of St. Barnabas, divine service was said by the priest serving as chaplain, after which several boats went along the coast to explore, when they reached and named the harbors of St. Anthony, St. Servans, and Jacques Cartier. At St. Servans the explorers set up a cross, and near by, at a place called St. John’s River, they found a ship from Rochelle, which had touched at Port Brest the previous night.
[The familiar portrait of Cartier, of which a sketch of the head is given in the accompanying vignette, is preserved at St. Malo, and engravings of it will be found in Shea’s editions of Le Clercq’s Etablissement de la Foy and of Charlevoix’s Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vol. i. p. 110, and in Faillon’s Histoire de la Colonie Française, vol. i.—Ed.]
The boats returned to the ships on the 13th, the leader reporting the appearance of Labrador as forbidding, saying that this must be the land that was allotted to Cain. In this region they found some savages who were “wild and unruly,” and who had come “from the mainland out of warmer regions” in bark canoes. They appear to have been the Red Indians, or Boeotics, of Newfoundland, who were renowned as hunters, and who excelled in the manufacture of instruments carved in ivory and bone. Professor Dawson says that the Breton sailor here stood in the presence of the precise equivalent of the Flint Folk of his own country.
From Port Brest the expedition crossed the Strait and “sailed toward the south, to view the lands that we had there seen, that appeared to us like two great islands; but when we were in the middle of the Gulf we knew it that it was terra firma, where there was a great double cape, one above the other, and on this account we called it Cape Double.” This was Point Rich, Newfoundland. Coasting the land, amid mists and storms, June 24 he reached a cape, which in honor of the day he called Cape St. John,—now known as Anguille. From Anguille Cartier sailed southwest into the Gulf, reaching the Isles aux Margoulx, the present Bird Rocks, two of which were “steep and upright as any wall,” where he was again impressed by the fowl, “innumerable as the flowers on a meadow.” Twenty-five miles westward was another island, about six miles long and as many wide, being fertile, and full of beautiful trees, meadows, and flowers. There were sea-monsters on the shores, which had tusks like elephants. This he called Brion Island, and the name still remains.
At this point both Ramusio’s narrative of the voyage and the Discovrs dv voyage (1598) make Cartier say: “I think that there may be some passage between Newfoundland and Brion Island;” but the text of the Relation originale[167] reads, “between the New Land and the land of the Bretons.” This has been accepted as teaching that Cartier at that time did not know of the strait between Newfoundland and Cape Breton; and it is argued that, as it afforded a shorter route from France to Canada, he would have followed it, if he had known of its existence; yet in 1541, when he certainly knew that strait, he took the route by Belle Isle, as twice before. Again, on his second voyage, while passing through the southern strait on his way to France, the narrative does not speak of any discovery. The inference may be drawn that the passage quoted misrepresents Cartier. Indeed, the portion of the narrative covering the movements around Brion and Alezay Island is so confused that one with difficulty takes in the situation. Dr. Kohl, in his Discovery of Maine (p. 326), represents Brion’s Island as the present Prince Edward; though no map seems to bear out the statement.