It was about thirty years after this that the Marquis de la Roche, a gentleman of Brittany, received from Henri IV. a commission as lieutenant-general of the king “in the countries of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, River of the Great Bay [St. Lawrence], Norimbegue, and adjacent lands,” and fitted out a vessel to explore his territory. Landing on Sable Island, ninety miles from the mainland of Nova Scotia (1598), he left there a colony of forty convicts whom he had drawn from the French prisons, coasted awhile along the shores of Acadia (Nova Scotia), without accomplishing anything of value, and then went back to France. Contrary winds prevented his taking off the wretched colony of Sable Island, and it was not until seven years later that the king, hearing of the adventure, sent a ship to their relief. Only twelve remained alive, and these were brought to court in the same guise in which they were found, “covered with sealskin, with hair and beard of a length and disorder that made them resemble the pretended river-gods, and so disfigured as to inspire horror. The king gave them fifty crowns apiece, and sent them home released from all process of law.” The expedition of De Monts and Pontgravé (1604) was more fortunate. It resulted in the settlement of Port Royal (Annapolis) by M. de Poutrincourt, under a grant from M. de Monts, afterwards confirmed by the crown; it brought forward Samuel de Champlain, who was soon to play so distinguished a part in the exploration and settlement of Canada; and it offered a career to the Jesuit missionaries, whose heroism reflected so much glory upon the colony. The king had intimated to M. de Poutrincourt, when he confirmed the grant of Port Royal, that it was proper to invite the Jesuits to the new colony; and, by his majesty’s desire, two priests were selected from the many who volunteered to go. These were F. Peter Biard and F. Enemond Masse. Strange to say, the first difficulties they encountered were from their own countrymen. “M. de Poutrincourt was a very worthy man,” says Charlevoix, “sincerely attached to the Catholic religion; but the calumnies of the so-called Reformers had produced an impression on his mind, and he was fully determined not to take them to Port Royal. He did not, however, show anything of this to the king, who, having given his orders, had no doubt but that they were executed with all speed. The Jesuits thought so; and F. Biard, at the commencement of the year [1608], proceeded to Bordeaux, where he was assured the embarkation would take place. He was much surprised to see no preparation there; and he waited in vain for a whole year. The king, informed of this, reproached M. de Poutrincourt sharply; and the latter pledged his word to the king that he would no longer defer obeying his orders. He actually prepared to go; but, as he said nothing of embarking the missionaries, F. Cotton paid him a visit, to bring him to do so in a friendly way. Poutrincourt begged him to be good enough to postpone it till the following year, as Port Royal was by no means in a condition to receive the fathers. So frivolous a reason was regarded by F. Cotton as a refusal, but he did not deem it expedient to press the matter or inform the king. M. de Poutrincourt accordingly sailed for Acadia; and, with a view of showing the court that the ministry of the Jesuits was not necessary in the conversion of the heathen, he had scarcely arrived before he sent the king a list of twenty-five Indians baptized in haste.” Meanwhile, the king died, and Poutrincourt considered himself thereupon released from his obligation. It was in this difficulty that the Marchioness de Guercheville, whose name is so honorably associated with American adventure, declared herself the protectress of the missions. But the story of the troubles which this powerful advocate had to overcome gives us a curious idea of the manner in which American affairs were regulated at the French court. Biencourt, the son of M. de Poutrincourt, was about sailing for Acadia, and consented to take the missionaries. When the fathers reached Dieppe, Biencourt had changed his mind, or been overruled by his two Huguenot partners, and passage was refused. Mme. de Guercheville had recourse to the queen mother, who gave a peremptory order that the Jesuits should be taken on board. The order was laughed at, and nobody attempted to enforce it. Then Mme. de Guercheville raised a subscription, bought off the two Calvinists, and proceeded to treat with Biencourt. Not finding his title clear, she purchased of M. de Monts all his lapsed privileges, with the purpose of reviving them, and formed a partnership with Biencourt, under which the subsistence of the missionaries was to be drawn from the fishery and fur trade. Thus at last a woman accomplished what the king had failed in, and F. Biard and F. Masse reached the scene of their labors in 1611.
Mme. de Guercheville soon fell out with Poutrincourt, and resolved to found a colony of her own. She despatched a ship under the Sieur de la Saussaye in 1613. The settlers landed on Mount Desert, and there began a settlement, bringing FF. Biard and Masse from Port Royal, and having with them also two other Jesuits, a priest named Quentin, and a lay brother, Du Thet. The narrative of the destruction of this settlement as well as Port Royal by the English free-booting adventurer Argall, from Virginia, is familiar to all American readers. The colony had not yet assumed a regulated form when the Englishman swept down upon it, carried some of the settlers to Virginia, and sent the rest to sea in a small bark. The latter, among whom was F. Masse, were picked up by a French ship, and carried to St. Malo. The others, after much harsh treatment at Jamestown from Sir Thomas Dale, were taken back to Acadia with an expedition sent to complete the demolition of the French posts. Argall performed his task thoroughly, and set sail again for Virginia. Of his three vessels, scattered in a storm, one was lost; another, under his own command, reached Jamestown in safety; the third, bearing Fathers Biard and Quentin (Brother du Thet had been killed in Argall’s first attack), and having one Turnell for captain, was driven to the Azores, and forced to seek shelter at Fayal. Here the Jesuits had only to complain of the outrages to which they had been subjected, and they would have been at once avenged. Turnell was alarmed, and begged them to keep concealed when the officers of the port visited his vessel. “They consented with good grace. The visit over, the English captain had liberty to buy all that he needed, after which he again weighed anchor, and the rest of his voyage was fortunate. But he found himself in a new embarrassment on arriving in England: he had no commission, and, although he represented that he had accidentally been separated from his commander, he was looked upon as a deserter from Virginia, and put in prison, from which he was released only on the testimony of the Jesuits. After this time, he was unwearied in publishing the virtue of the missionaries, twice his liberators, and especially the service they had done him at Fayal, where they returned good for evil as they so generously did, foregoing all the advantages which they might have obtained by making themselves known. Nothing, indeed, was omitted to compensate for them in England, where they were very kindly treated as long as they remained.”
The settlements in Canada proper, however, were now firmly established, and Quebec was rapidly becoming prosperous. The early history of this town, the adventures and discoveries of Champlain, the expeditions of the settlers against the Iroquois, and the surrender of Quebec to the English under Kirk (or Kertk), who was a Frenchman by birth, though an officer in the English service, are told by F. Charlevoix at considerable length. It was in 1629 that Quebec fell, and three years afterwards the whole colony was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain. Champlain returned with the title of Governor of New France in 1633, and began at once that zealous and enlightened career of missionary labor by which he has won so glorious a fame. For we may well style him a missionary. Entrusted with the temporal government of the young colony, it was not his part to explore the wilderness with crucifix and missal, to venture into the cabins of the savages as a teacher of the Gospel, to brave martyrdom, to suffer unheard-of tortures, even to the stake; but he nevertheless fulfilled an important, an almost indispensable, function in the establishment of the Canada missions. He was the best friend and patron of the Jesuits and other heroes who gave their lives so freely among the Indians. He took care that a number of these devoted priests should be invited to the colony, and that the settlers themselves should give an example of Christian demeanor that might do credit to their teachers. “In a short time,” says Charlevoix, “almost all who composed the new colony were seen to follow the example of their governor, and make an open and sincere profession of piety. The same attention was continued in subsequent years, and there soon arose in this part of America a generation of true Christians, among whom reigned the simplicity of the primitive ages of the church, and whose posterity have not lost sight of the great example left them by their ancestors. The consolation which such a change afforded the laborers appointed to cultivate this transplanted vineyard so sweetened the crosses of the most painful mission ever perhaps established in the New World, that what they wrote to their brethren in France created among them a real eagerness to go and share their labors. The annual Relations which we have of these happy times, and the constant tradition preserved in the country, both attest that there was an indescribable unction attached to this Indian mission which made it preferred to many others infinitely more brilliant and even more fruitful.” Champlain’s career, however, as governor was unhappily too short. He died on Christmas day, in 1635. “He may well be called,” says the historian, “the father of New France. He had good sense, much penetration, very upright views, and no man was ever more skilled in adopting a course in the most complicated affairs. What all admired most in him was his constancy in following up his enterprises; his firmness in the greatest dangers; a courage proof against the most unforeseen reverses and disappointments; ardent and disinterested patriotism; a heart tender and compassionate for the unhappy, and more attentive to the interests of his friends than his own; a high sense of honor, and great probity. His memoirs show that he was not ignorant of anything that one of his profession should know; and we find in him a faithful and sincere historian, an attentively observant traveller, a judicious writer, a good mathematician, and an able mariner. But what crowns all these good qualities is the fact that in his life, as well as in his writings, he shows himself always a truly Christian man, zealous for the service of God, full of candor and religion. He was accustomed to say, what we read in his memoirs, ‘that the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire, and that kings should seek to extend their domain in heathen countries only to subject them to Christ.’”
We have insensibly gone deeper into these attractive volumes than we intended, and we must pass over the remaining books, which record the growth of the Canadian settlements, the wars with the Indians after Champlain’s death, the hostilities with the English, and the progress of the missions. Neither can we linger over the fascinating story of Marquette’s voyage down the Mississippi, or the expeditions, of La Salle, or the various attempts at colonizing the shores of the Mexican Gulf. What little space remains for us we must give to an examination of a portion of Mr. Shea’s labor which has not yet been duly estimated. He has given much more than a translation of F. Charlevoix’s Histoire. The text is rendered with great care, and we presume with great faithfulness, into simple, graceful, and idiomatic English. The peculiarities of the original, in the orthography of proper names and in other particulars, are all preserved. It is indeed Charlevoix’s work, as exactly as any work can be reproduced in a language different from its author’s. But Mr. Shea has bestowed upon it an editorial supervision which nearly doubles its value. With extraordinary zeal, learning, and intelligence, he has traced almost every statement to its source, collated rare authorities, and in modest and compact foot-notes, whose number must amount to several thousands, has corrected errors, identified localities, and thrown a perfect flood of light upon doubtful passages and controverted statements. The patient industry, the rare judgment, and the unassuming scholarship which Mr. Shea has brought to the execution of this noble task can only be appreciated by one who has studied his work with some care, and to whom familiarity with the subject has taught something of its difficulties. He has not only been at the pains of consulting the authors to whom F. Charlevoix expressly refers, weighing the soundness of F. Charlevoix’s conclusions from their testimony, and correcting his citations, but he has made it a point to discover the authorities whom the good father followed without quoting, and he has often pursued devious statements backward through a score of forgotten books, until he has reached at last the sober truth from which they started. Doing this without parade, without verbosity, and with an icy impartiality, Mr. Shea has approved himself a model editor.
The outward appearance of the six volumes will delight the heart of the fastidious collector. Such beautiful and symmetrical arrangement of the generous pages, such royal elegance of type, such rich and refined tints, such noble margins, and such magnificent paper—every leaf stout enough to stand alone—these things make up the gorgeous apparel in which the work has been dressed, we may say, by Mr. Shea’s own hands. Excellent engravings add not merely to its appearance but its value. There are steel-plate portraits of governors, adventurers, and missionaries; there are fac-similes of autographs; there are copies of curious old maps and plans. Finally, the book is furnished with a copious and systematic index—and so Mr. Shea shows himself conscientious alike as an editor and publisher.
[MADAME AGNES.]
FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.