French Pathfinders in North America

by William Henry Johnson

The earliest attraction was the cod-fishery. Then, as the fishing-folk grew familiar with Newfoundland and the continental shores, their attention was drawn to the skins worn by the natives. What prices they would bring in France! Here was a field that would make richer returns than rough and perilous fishing. In this way the fur-trade, which became the life of Canada, had its beginning.

The first chapters of the story were gloomy and disheartening beyond description. The dreadful scurvy and the cruel cold scourged the newcomers. Party after party perished miserably. The story of one of these is singularly romantic. When Sable Island[1] was reached, its leader, the Marquis de la Roche, landed forty ragamuffins, while he sailed on with the best men of his crew to examine the coast and choose a site for the capital of his promising domain.

Alas! he never returned. A gale swept his little craft out to sea and drove him back to France.

When he landed, the sun of his prosperity had set. Creditors swooped down upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of four survivors, eight years afterward.[3]

Five years went by, and twelve uncouth creatures stood before Henry the Fourth, clad in shaggy skins, and with long, unkempt beards. They were the remnant of La Roche's jailbirds. He had at last gained a hearing from the King, and a vessel had been sent to Sable Island to bring home the survivors of his party. What a story they told! When months passed, and La Roche came not, they thought they were left to their fate. They built huts of the timbers of a wreck which lay on the beach—for there was not a tree on the island—and so faced the dreary winter. With trapping foxes, spearing seals, and hunting wild cattle, descendants of some which a certain Baron de Léry had left eight years before, they managed to eke out existence, not without quarrels and murders among themselves. At last the remnant was taken off by the vessel which Henry sent for them.

Shaggy and uncouth as they looked, they had a small fortune in the furs which they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice of the thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. But the King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge his plunder, but aided its owners with a pension in setting up in the fur-trade.

Such dismal experiences filled more than fifty years of futile effort to colonize New France. Cold and scurvy as effectually closed the North to Frenchmen as Spanish savagery the South.

Then, in this disheartening state of affairs, appeared the man who well deserves the title of the "Father of New France," since his courage and indomitable will steered the tiny "ship of state" through a sea of discouragements.

Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 at the small French seaport of Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay. In his pious devotion and his unquestioning loyalty to the Church, he was of the "Age of Faith," and he recalls Columbus. In his eager thirst for knowledge and his daring spirit of exploration, he was a modern man, while his practical ability in handling men and affairs reminds us of the doughty Captain John Smith, of Virginia. He came to manhood in time to take part in the great religious wars in France. After the conflict was ended, when his master, Henry the Great, was seated on the throne, Champlain's adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. Since these were closed to Frenchmen by the jealousy of the Spaniards, there was a degree of peril in the undertaking which for him was its chief charm. After two years he returned, bringing a journal in which he had set down the most notable things seen in Spanish America. It was illustrated with a number of the quaintest pictures, drawn and colored by himself. He also visited Mexico and Central America. His natural sagacity is shown in his suggesting, even at that early day, that a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama would effect a vast saving.