Читать книгу Canada - Beckles Willson - Страница 5

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When the Sieur de Monts abandoned Acadia, thinking, as indeed it seemed, an evil spell had been cast upon it, he turned his attention to Quebec and the river St. Lawrence. Here, far inland, was a fair region which promised wealth and glory, and over this region he appointed Champlain his lieutenant. Of the two ships which De Monts fitted out one was for the fur trade, of which King Henry, ere his heart was pierced by the dagger of Ravaillac, gave him a monopoly for one year; the other was to carry colonists to found a new French settlement. You have seen how one after another the French colonies had, from this cause or that, come to destruction; but with such a wise and strong head as Samuel de Champlain, one now was expected to bear better and more lasting fruit. Truly, whatever their faults, the founders of New France were very determined men, arising fresh after each disaster, resolved to people with their countrymen the great Western wilderness. When Champlain's ships, once safely through the Straits of Belle Isle, reached Tadoussac, Champlain left there his associate Pontgravé to barter for furs with the Indians. He himself continued his voyage up the river until he came to the spot where Jacques Cartier had passed the winter of 1535, and with his men consumed a whole spruce-tree in order to drive away the scurvy.

It was at Quebec (a word meaning in the Indian language a strait) that on the third day of July 1607 Champlain gave orders to disembark. In the shadow of the towering rock of Cape Diamond, the first thing to be done was to clear a site and erect cabins for shelter. As his men toiled on unceasingly the natives gathered round in wonder and admiration. They were unaccustomed to much manual work themselves, their squaws doing most of the labour. They saw in a few short weeks the bastions of a fort and cannon set up. Scarcely had the workmen completed their task and got all snug and tidy for the winter than a plot was formed amongst some of Champlain's followers to kill him. The leader of the plot was a Norman locksmith, Jean Duval, a brave and violent fellow who had served with Champlain in Acadia, and was impatient under any kind of authority. According to the plan the conspirators drew up, their leader was to be shot, the stores pillaged, and then they were all to fly to Spain with the booty. Lucky it was for the great and good pioneer that one of the plotters, filled with remorse, went to Champlain a few days before the mutiny was to be carried out and confessed all. Champlain with great promptitude seized Duval and hanged him to the nearest tree, but the rest he only sent back to France, where the good King, at his request, pardoned them. Meanwhile Pontgravé had collected and sailed away with his cargo of furs. Spring came; the snows melted and were replaced by green meadows and blossoming trees; everywhere the birds sang. Champlain, without waiting for Pontgravé's return, set off up the river and soon met again friendly Indian chiefs of the Algonquin and Huron tribes, who told him terrible tales of their sufferings at the hands of their enemies the Iroquois or the Five Nations. In their despair these chiefs sought out the Man-with-the-Iron-Breast, as they called Champlain, on account of the steel breast-plate he wore, and asked his help against the blood-thirsty Iroquois. These men of the Five Nations, Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, lived in the forests south of Lake Ontario, and were perhaps at once the most intelligent and the most cruel of all the Indians on the continent. It was the Iroquois who had destroyed the old Huron towns of Stadacona and Hochelaga which Cartier had seen and described, and as they bore the Hurons and Algonquins an implacable enmity, it was natural that they would extend this enmity to the pale-faces who had now come to dwell in the Huron country. They might, it is true, have been propitiated; but Champlain did not stop to consider any questions of policy: he favoured at once the idea of alliance with the surrounding red-men, an alliance which was to cost him and his new colony a bloody and fearful price. Champlain, then, made three warlike expeditions into the country of the Iroquois during the next six years. In the first he paddled in canoes up the Richelieu River and came to a beautiful lake, to which he gave his own name ("Lake Champlain"). Meeting a party of Iroquois of the Mohawk nation or tribe, he fell upon them suddenly. The Mohawks fancied at first that they had only to do with Algonquins, and felt confident of victory, until the Frenchmen's muskets rang out; then not fast enough could they flee in panic from the magic bullets, leaving many slain, including their bravest chiefs. Champlain had only 60 Frenchmen and Indians, while the Mohawks numbered 200; but his victory was complete; not one of his force was killed, and the town of the enemy was wiped from the face of the earth. Notwithstanding Champlain's protests, the Algonquins insisted on torturing one of their Iroquois captives to death by every device of savage cruelty. Mercy was not in their code; they neither gave it, nor, when captured, expected it.

During the next three years Champlain was kept very busy in explorations, in attacking the Iroquois, and in protecting his colony. During this time he returned to France, and was favourably received at Fontainebleau by King Henry, who listened with interest to Champlain's tale of his adventures in "New France." But in spite of royal favour, Champlain had so many rivals and enemies that, like Poutraincourt in Acadia, he found it impossible to get the charter renewed, and so his friend and patron, De Monts, was obliged to try and get along without it. Equipping two more ships, he sent Champlain back with them to Canada.

The great ambition of Champlain's soul was to find a passage through the continent to China. At last it seemed to him that the friendliness of the Hurons and Algonquins would furnish him with the means of attaining this desire. He had just made arrangements with the chiefs, when the news came to him of King Henry's assassination, and he felt it was necessary for him to return without delay again to France. De Monts, his patron, still enjoyed the title of Lieutenant-General of New France, but his resources and influence had been sadly crippled by the King's death, and the cost of keeping up Quebec, Tadoussac, and Acadia was very great. He had no longer the monopoly, that is to say, the sole right of buying and selling Canadian furs—it was a right thrown open to other traders; and when Champlain on his next voyage back from France once more sailed up the St. Lawrence, he found many strange fur-traders trafficking with the savages.

The leader had now more to do and think about than ever; he wished, moreover, to prepare a fitting home for a fair and youthful partner who was ever in his thoughts. During his absence in Paris he had espoused a charming Huguenot girl named Helen Bouillé, daughter of the murdered King's private secretary. Her name survives to-day in "Helen's Island" in the river opposite Montreal. So many traders did Champlain find in the vicinity of this island, that he built a fort there and resolved to turn the site of Hochelaga into a trading station. Two uneventful years passed by, and then, in the very year Argall was destroying hapless Port Royal (1613), Champlain's imagination was kindled by the astonishing tale of a certain Nicholas Vignau. This adventurer had passed a winter amongst the red-men of the upper Ottawa River. Vignau told his chief that, in company with some Algonquins, he had once arrived at a remote sea-shore, where his eyes had beheld the fragments of a wrecked English ship. Champlain's heart bounded with joy; he thought his hopes were now about to be realised. Taking Vignau, two white followers, and an Indian guide, the explorer passed the dangerous rapids of the Ottawa and made the acquaintance, one after another, of its lakes, cataracts, and islands. He pressed on, passed the Rideau (Curtain) Falls, so named because of the resemblance of this sheet of water to a great white curtain. He and his awe-struck companions stared at the raging, foaming cauldron of the Chaudière, close to where the city of Ottawa, capital of the Canadian Dominion, now stands, while the Indians cast into the waters gifts of tobacco and other things to propitiate the angry god of the waters. At last the party reached Allumette Island. Here dwelt a friendly Algonquin chief named Tessouat, who received the Frenchmen hospitably and invited them to a banquet. Tessouat knew Vignau; he knew also how he had passed his time amongst the men of his tribe. So when Champlain related at the feast what Vignau had told him of his journey to the sea-shore, Tessouat bluntly told his guest that Vignau, though a pale-face, was a liar, and that he had never been on such a journey. For a while the shock of this discovery overwhelmed Champlain with rage and sorrow. Tessouat was so indignant at the way the French leader had been deceived, that he wanted Vignau to be put to death, but Champlain was of too noble and forgiving a nature for that, and contented himself with rebuking the offender. At the same time, although Vignau confessed his falsehood, we are able to see to-day a certain foundation for his story which was obscured from Canada's founder. We happen to know now what Champlain centuries ago did not dream of: that only three hundred miles separate Allumette Island from the southern end of the great inland sea, Hudson's Bay. This body of water two or three brief seasons before had been discovered by an Englishman, who, like Champlain, had tried to find a short route to China and the East Indies.

In 1610 Henry Hudson, in the pay of the Dutch, sailed up the river which now bears his name, and paved the way for the Dutch colony, afterwards called the New Netherlands. A year later, in the service of England, he sailed northwards in the Half Moon, passed through the narrow Hudson's Straits, and so on into the ice-bound inland sea. There his terrified crew mutinied, turning their brave commander adrift in an open boat, together with his son and two of his faithful companions. Thus perished Henry Hudson, who was never heard of again. As for the craven mutineers, when they stole back guiltily to England, they were seized and made to pay the penalty of their crime. Three ships were sent out to search for Hudson, but, alas, it was then too late.

Of this inland sea Vignau may have heard stories from the Indians. It may be that those who told him had really seen the wreck of poor Henry Hudson's boat on the shores, but this we shall never really know until the great Day of Judgment comes, when the sea gives up its dead and all secrets of the deep are known.

In the discovery of Lake Ontario, two years later, Champlain found some compensation for his disappointment. He was the first European to visit the "freshwater sea," as he called it. He penned a description of all he had seen, and carried it to France, where it was eagerly read. One of Champlain's mottoes was that "the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an Empire." Up to now Quebec had been wholly without priests, but when Champlain returned to the colony he brought out four priests of the Order of the Recollets, pious men who had taken vows of poverty and self-denial. These set about converting the savages to Christianity. One of them, Joseph Le Caron, went forward to the distant Huron country, which had not yet been visited by any European. Champlain himself accompanied the priest from Quebec. On reaching the rapids just above Montreal, the Governor held a conference with the Hurons, who had come from their homes in the West to meet him and induce him to fulfil his pledge to attack the Iroquois. This expedition was one of the most fateful episodes in Champlain's life. He knew nothing about Iroquois history or character. If he had had any suspicion of what his present action was to cost his countrymen in Canada, he would rather have died than provoke the enmity of so terrible a foe. Champlain chose this time to take a most round-about route, measuring full 300 leagues, he and his men often carrying on their backs the canoes and baggage, living on coarse food, and suffering many hardships. Even the priest was obliged to take his share of the hardest work, paddling his oar until the sweat mantled his brow, staggering through the forest with a load such as a mule might carry, and with it all obliged, with the whole party, to hasten at full speed for fear of falling behind into the hands of Iroquois. In those days when there were no roads and hardly even any long paths, travellers made their way by following the rivers and lakes in canoes. When they came to the end of one waterway and wished to reach the beginning of another, they followed what were called the portages or carrying-places, paths in the woods, sometimes only a few yards long and sometimes as long as nine or ten miles.

For many weeks did Champlain sojourn in the Huron country, and then, in early autumn, he departed from their chief town, Carhagonha, on Lake Simcoe, with several hundred red warriors, to inflict chastisement on the painted warriors of the Five Nations.

Crossing Lake Simcoe, Champlain and his followers travelled slowly and with much hardship through the country north of Lake Ontario, until by this very roundabout route the whole party came in a month's time to the fort of the Onondagas, which they intended to attack. As they drew near, the French and Indians fell in with outlying bands of this tribe, capturing many prisoners. Champlain strove unceasingly to induce his Huron allies to show mercy to the captives, but the Indian warrior always deemed mercy a pitiful sign of weakness. He wanted not only to cut off the hands and feet of the male prisoners, gouge out their eyes and burn them alive, but to torture the women and children as well. Only was it when Champlain threatened to withdraw his French soldiers altogether that the Huron chiefs consented to confine their barbarities to the men alone. When the allies got closer to the Onondaga fort they found it was much more strongly defended than they had supposed. It consisted of four rows of strong stakes, and a thick wall made of heavy branches of trees. On the top of this wall were gutters of wood to conduct water to any part which the enemy should set on fire. The water was drawn from a small pond inside the fortification, where all the Onondagas were assembled in little houses, having a large store of bows and arrows, stones and hatchets. Provisions, too, were plentiful, for the Indian harvest was just over. Champlain saw at once that to take such a fort was not an easy task, and advised his Indian allies to be prudent. But the young Hurons were foolhardy and rushed at the four-fold palisade with ear-splitting war-whoops, flourishing their tomahawks. The consequence was as Champlain foresaw: they were shot down or killed by a shower of stones by the enemy. After a time, when they had lost heavily, the Hurons were ready to listen to reason. A plan was devised. In the night-time Champlain had a high wooden platform built; upon it he placed several of his musketeers so that they could fire into the fort, while 300 Hurons were stationed close by to set fire to the palisade. These measures might have succeeded, but the wind unluckily was in the wrong direction and blew the flames of the Huron torches away from the fort. Champlain himself, while trying to make the unruly Hurons obey his orders, was twice wounded, and many of his followers were killed. Then it was that the foolish Huron chiefs became disheartened. They lost faith in the "Man -with -the -Iron -Breast" and decided to give up the attempt and retreat homewards before the winter set in. In vain Champlain besought them; they were obdurate. As it was, when they got to the place, eighty miles away, where their canoes had been left, high winds and snowstorms had begun, and their wounded, including Champlain, suffered much. Solemnly had they promised the French leader that after the attack on the Iroquois they would carry him down the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga, but now they became traitors to their word and refused him even two guides for such a journey. There was nothing else to do: Champlain was obliged to go back with them and spend the whole of the succeeding winter in their lodges. On the way they made many halts to allow the Hurons time to procure stores of fish and game, which were very plentiful in the region north of Lake Ontario. Not until two days before Christmas was the journey ended.

Champlain was not idle that winter, for when his wounds had healed he moved amongst the tribes, making himself acquainted with the country and the language. The woods were filled with June flowers ere he returned to Quebec, where he had been mourned as one dead. You can imagine how rejoiced were the band of martial pioneers there to see their leader once more alive and well. They cheered and sang songs and waved flags in his honour, and even discharged the great cannon, whose echoes startled the Indians prowling afar on the green banks of the St. Lawrence.

Verily the part which Samuel de Champlain and his little band of Frenchmen had played in giving armed assistance to the Hurons and Algonquins was to have terrible results. It threw the Iroquois into friendship with the Dutch and other enemies of the French, who supplied them with firearms. It caused them to bear a hate to Champlain and all his countrymen almost as great as the hate they bore to the dusky Hurons.

All this time Champlain, great as was his ambition, can only be regarded as the agent or manager of a company of men in France whose first wish was to make money out of the fur trade. These men in their hearts had very little sympathy for Champlain's schemes of colonisation and conversion of the savages, and, becoming dissatisfied with the profits Champlain was making for them, they tried repeatedly to procure his recall. In order to baffle the intrigues against him and explain to the King himself the importance of Canada to the kingdom of France, Champlain sailed away yet again for home, leaving sixty men, the entire French population of Canada, behind him in Quebec. By his zeal and eloquence he was able to obtain some fresh supplies for his colony, and also some more soldiers and workers. Amongst these was an apothecary named Louis Hébert, who is often spoken of as the first emigrant to Canada, because he took with him his wife and two children, intending to settle as a farmer on the land. Direct descendants of Hébert are alive in Canada to this day. Two years later Champlain managed to bring a body of eighty colonists out to New France, and the next year (1620) his own wife, Helen de Champlain, accompanied him for the first time to the colony. This time he had triumphed over those who wished to depose him, and was now confirmed in his title of Viceroy of New France, and all seemed in the general rejoicings on his return to promise well for his enterprise. Not only the French in Quebec, but the Indians were delighted at the beauty and manners of the Governor's wife, then only twenty-two years of age. They tell of her that she wore always a small mirror suspended from her neck, according to the custom of the ladies in those days. When the red-men who drew near her looked in the little mirror they saw each, to his astonishment, his own face reflected there, and went about telling one another that the beautiful wife of the white chief cherished an image of each in her heart.