Читать книгу Canada and its Provinces - Various - Страница 17

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Exploration was costly, and its financial basis was the fur trade. Rival traders were quite willing that Champlain and his associates should take all the risk and bear all the expense of discoveries. When, through his diplomacy and enterprise, the savages descended to the trading-post, they found, in addition to Champlain’s boats, a fleet of vessels awaiting them, sent by adventurers unconnected with the explorer. Champlain saw that success in opening the upper country depended upon monopoly of trade. Returning to France to secure a new charter, he succeeded in interesting members of the royal family. The Comte de Soissons was appointed lieutenant-general in New France, and on his death was succeeded by Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. Champlain was commissioned as the prince’s lieutenant and representative, with full powers for peace or war, to settle with all his people ‘in the place called Quebec, on the Saint Lawrence River, otherwise called the Great River of Canada, in the country of New France,’ and in such other places as he should choose. He was to promote the establishment of religion, to make treaties and encourage trade relations with the natives, to discover and explore regions and rivers tributary to the St Lawrence; and to endeavour to find a feasible route through Canada to China and the East Indies ‘or elsewhere, as far as possible.’ Mines were to be searched out and explored—gold, silver and copper being specifically mentioned. Trading by unauthorized persons was prohibited, under penalty of arrest and transportation to France for trial.

To overcome the traders’ strenuous opposition, permission was extended to all to join the new company. Impatient at delays already experienced, and without waiting to complete the organization, Champlain sailed from Honfleur on March 6, 1613, on his fourth voyage. Arriving at the Grand Sault on May 21, he was disappointed to find only three canoes of Algonquins. He had failed to meet the allies in the previous year according to promise, and they now despaired of his return and had gone off to renew the war with the Iroquois. Meanwhile the traders were waiting at the Sault with large supplies of goods for barter. Champlain resolved to ascend the Ottawa to urge the tribes to come to trade, and to reassure them of his desire to aid them in their wars.

With two canoes, a native guide and four Frenchmen, Champlain set out to explore the great tributary of the St Lawrence. One of the Frenchmen was the youth, Nicolas Vignau, who had gone in 1611 to winter with the Algonquins, and had returned to Paris with a circumstantial story of a visit to the Sea of the North. He reported that in seventeen days it was possible to journey to this sea and return to the Sault. Midway was a lake with an outflow in both directions, on the south into the River of the Algonquins, as the Ottawa was then called, and on the north into the Sea of the North. He had himself seen the wreck of an English ship. Eighty of its crew had been killed by the savages for attempting to take corn and provisions by force; their scalps he had seen. The natives wished to show them to Champlain, and at the same time to present him with an English lad, whom they had preserved alive. ‘This news,’ says Champlain, ‘delighted me very much, for I thought I had almost found what I had long been seeking.’ Hudson’s discovery of the bay called by his name was reported by the mutineers that same year, and fitted in admirably with Vignau’s story. Champlain resolved to visit the Sea of the North for himself.

Setting out from the Grand Sault on May 27, the explorers ascended the Ottawa for twelve days, Champlain making copious notes of rapids, tributaries, islands, portages, flora and human inhabitants. The Falls of the Rideau and the Chaudière Falls in the vicinity of what is now the capital of the Dominion are described at length. At Muskrat Lake, in the present county of Renfrew, reached by a difficult portage after leaving the Ottawa, was a settlement where corn was cultivated. Amazed at Champlain’s success in forcing his way over almost impassable trails, Nibachis, an Indian chief, declared that the Frenchmen must have fallen from the clouds. Tessoüat, the Algonquin chief, dwelt on the south shore of the Ottawa below the present town of Pembroke, and levied toll upon other tribes descending with furs for barter. His village was on Allumette Island. With two canoes furnished by Nibachis, Champlain ascended Muskrat Lake, and by making another portage reached Tessoüat’s abode. His request for canoes and guides to go to the Nipissings to invite them to join in a war against the Iroquois was coldly received. Tessoüat used every argument to dissuade him. The Nipissings were sorcerers, a spiritless people, useless in war; the trails were bad; Champlain would die and Tessoüat’s men as well. Champlain replied by citing Vignau’s experience to the contrary. The now amazed and infuriated savages denounced Vignau as a liar and impostor who had never left the village. The lad’s confession completed the explorer’s disillusionment.

Champlain now had but one desire—to get back to the Sault. First, however, he took formal possession of the country for the king, by setting up on the shore in a conspicuous place a cross of white cedar bearing the arms of France. Other similar cedar crosses were set up at points lower down the river. Scores of Algonquin canoes loaded with furs attended him to the Grand Sault, where traders were waiting with merchandise for barter. Vignau was left at the Grand Sault at his own request. None of the natives would have anything to do with him; and so, says the explorer, ‘We left him in God’s keeping.’ At Champlain’s instance the Algonquins, however, took back with them two young Frenchmen. In this way he was training a band of interpreters, whose services were to be utilized both for purposes of exploration and trading with the various tribes of the upper country. On August 26 Champlain was back in St Malo.

Champlain’s large map of 1612 was the first attempt to delineate the lake region. It sums up Brûlé’s report of his travels on the upper Ottawa, and gives information gathered from the natives. The Ottawa is shown almost to its source, with Lakes Timiskaming and Kipawa, and the rivers Mattawa, Antoine and Jocko. The three upper lakes are combined into one of three hundred leagues in length, only the eastern portion being shown. Various canoe and portage routes appear as rivers. The Trent River is given, rising apparently in Lake Simcoe. The Bay of Quinte and Prince Edward Peninsula are approximately correct. Lake Nipissing has no western outlet, and discharges into the Mattawa, with which also the Trent is connected. Lake Ontario is represented with a length of twenty-five days of canoe travel. Niagara Falls with the Queenston escarpment are shown at the end of a short river connecting the great lake with Lake Ontario. Seven Indian villages are roughly depicted: four on the north shore of Lake Ontario, one probably in Bruce Peninsula, and two between the Trent and Mattawa. To three other regions native names are attached. Manitoulin Island is absent. North of the great lake is a tributary rising in a lake towards the west. The Ottawa and St Lawrence run parallel, at no great distance from each other. South of Lake Ontario, in the country of the Iroquois, are shown the ‘lake of the Irocois’ and several streams. Brûlé had probably been among the Hurons of Georgian Bay, seen Lake Simcoe, and followed the Trent to Lake Ontario, and perhaps gone westward to Niagara Falls. But we can only conjecture as to details.

Champlain’s smaller map of 1613 adds Hudson Bay, gives the name St Louis to Lake Ontario, assigns to the Ochateguins (Hurons) the country between this lake and the Ottawa, and locates the cross planted by Champlain opposite Pembroke to mark his ‘farthest north.’

A small expansion of the Great River in the map of 1612, containing two islands, may have been intended to represent either Erie or St Clair. This shows the vagueness of Champlain’s information respecting the region west of Lake Ontario.

Passing over the portage road from the Ottawa to Mud Lake on his way to Muskrat Lake on June 7, 1613, Champlain lost his astrolabe, an instrument used for taking observations. There it lay undiscovered until August 1867, when it was found in an excellent state of preservation. It bears date 1603, and had probably been carried by the explorer on all his expeditions up the St Lawrence.