Читать книгу The Picturesque St. Lawrence - Clifton 1865-1940 Johnson - Страница 4

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The St. Lawrence, measured from its most distant source, is over two thousand miles long, but ordinarily the name is only applied to the seven hundred miles between Lake Ontario and the Gulf. It drains an immense portion of North America, and the amount of water it carries to the ocean is exceeded by no other river on the globe except the Amazon. Nearly all its feeders are clear woodland trout or salmon streams, and its purity is no less remarkable than its volume. Its waters shake the earth at Niagara; and “The Great Lakes are its camping grounds, where its hosts repose under the sun and stars in areas like that of states and kingdoms.”

The breadth of its upper course is seldom less than a mile, and in several places there are expansions of such extent that they have received the name of lake. Below Quebec it has a width of from twenty to thirty miles. The influence of the tide is felt more than five hundred miles from the gulf, and the river is navigable for large sea-going vessels to Montreal, eighty miles farther inland. Rapids interrupt progress in the river itself beyond that point, but by the aid of canals continuous water communication is obtained to the head of Lake Superior. Indeed, taking the river, the canals and lakes together, this is the grandest system of inland navigation in the world.

Some of the river's tributaries are themselves of notable size. The largest are the Ottawa and the Saguenay, which flow into it from the north; but mention should also be made of those historic water thoroughfares—the Richelieu and St. Francis, which come from the south. As a rule, the tributary streams run a rough and tortuous course and abound in rapids and waterfalls that give them beauty and often furnish valuable power.

The streams were the main highways of the savages, and they built their villages on the banks, fished in the waters and hunted in the neighboring woodlands. The Indians had no horses or other beasts of burden, and this lack, as much as the difficulties of the wilderness, hindered their travel by land. Their journeying was therefore largely confined to the lakes and streams leaving no trail by which their movements could be traced, except where they carried their light birch-bark canoes around rapids or falls, or where a portage was necessary from one waterway to another.

The rivers and the lakes in like manner served the early comers from Europe when they wanted to penetrate inland, and on their banks were established the homes of such settlers as ventured away from the seacoast. Under these conditions it is only natural that the whole history of Canada should be closely interwoven with that of the St. Lawrence, and it was by way of this stream that the pioneers from France overran a great part of the interior of the continent before the settlers of the Atlantic Coast had crossed the Appalachians.

Within a few years after Columbus made his first voyage to the New World, the French fishing boats began to frequent the cod-banks of Newfoundland. This fishery soon became well established, and as early as 1517 no less than fifty Spanish, French and Portuguese vessels were engaged in it at the same time. But there was little inclination on the part of the voyagers to make permanent settlements on the rocky shores that bordered the fishing grounds or to attempt inland exploration, for the region was regarded with a good deal of superstitious fear. Griffins were supposed to infest the gloomy mountains of Labrador; and fiends, with wings, horns and tail, were said to have taken possession of an island north of Newfoundland. Voyagers passing this “Isle of Demons” heard the din of infernal orgies; and the mariners who had occasion to set foot on its shores would never venture alone into the haunted woods. It was even affirmed that the Indians had abandoned the island, so tormented were they by the imps of darkness.

Montreal and Mount Royal as seen from Helen's Isle

Fishermen and explorers gradually made known the contour of Newfoundland and the adjoining mainland; but the first person to go up the St. Lawrence was Jacques Cartier. He was a man who came of a family of hardy sailors, and had gone to sea as a mere boy. Later he became a corsair roaming the high seas in search of weaker vessels to capture, generally, though not always, those of a nation with which his own chanced to be at war; and his ideas of right and wrong were never very clear. When he sailed from France in 1534 on his earliest voyage to the New World he was forty years old, with a well-established reputation for courage and energy. This venture was made in the hope of adding to his own and his country's prosperity by finding a short route to China and India. His two little vessels were smaller than most modern yachts, but they safely crossed the pathless waste of waters, and at the end of three weeks the voyagers sighted Newfoundland and put into a harbor to repair their ships. Then they sailed northward to the coast of Labrador which looked so dreary, even in the month of June, that they were persuaded it must be the land told of in the Bible, set apart for Cain; and the inhabitants were so unfriendly it seemed quite likely they were that outcast's descendants.

Cartier passed between Labrador and Newfoundland through the Straits of Belle Isle and cruised southward to the coast of New Brunswick where he entered Miramichi Bay. While there so many savages paddled out in their canoes to see the wonderful strangers in boats moving with wings that Cartier fired his cannon to scare them away. But the next day he went on shore and made friends with the chief of the Indians by giving him a red hat.

When the little vessels resumed their voyage they went up the coast to the peninsula that thrusts out into the gulf south of the great river. At Gaspé, Cartier landed and planted a cross and took captive two young Indians from far up the St. Lawrence who had come down to the sea to catch mackerel. Then he crossed to the Island of Anticosti, where he was actually at the entrance of the river, had he only known it. But stormy autumn was at hand, and he bore away for France carrying with him, as a sample of the natural products of the region he had explored, the two Indian captives.

The following year, in May, Cartier again sailed for the New World, this time with three vessels. His followers consisted of a mixed company of gentleman rovers who wanted to go, criminals from the jails who did not want to go, and the two kidnapped Indians. When the Atlantic had been crossed Cartier went through the Straits of Belle Isle just as he had on his previous voyage. Then he put into a small bay on the Labrador coast to which he gave the name of St. Lawrence, a name afterward applied to the entire gulf and to the great river beyond.

Later, as he was sailing westward along the bleak coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, where to the south could be seen the blue Gaspé range of mountains with its lofty sentinels, the Shickshaws, Cartier questioned his Indians as to the nature of the channel before them.

“It is a river without end,” they replied.

The breadth of the channel and the saltness of the water made Cartier doubt that it could really be a river, and he sailed on hoping he had found a passage to the Indies. It seemed a hazardous undertaking to go on thus with no better pilots than the two young Indians; but fortune favored, and on the first of September the voyagers reached the gorge of the Saguenay with its towering cliffs and marvellous depth of water. The savage, mountainous shores of this stream from the north disinclined Cartier to explore in that direction, though his Indians told him wonderful stories of mines and gems that could be found beyond the rocky barriers. He continued up the St. Lawrence and anchored a few miles below what is now Quebec, between the northern shore and the richly wooded Isle of Orleans. Indians came swarming from the shores paddling their canoes about the ships and clambering to the decks to gaze in bewilderment at the voyagers and their belongings.

Cartier received them kindly, listened to a long speech by their great chief, Donnacona, whom he regaled with bread and wine; and after his guests departed set forth in a boat to explore the river above.

When he came to the west end of the Isle of Orleans the river again spread broad before him, and on ahead a mighty promontory thrust its rugged front out into the current from the north shore of the mainland. East of the crag a tributary joined the main stream. This was the river now called the St. Charles. Cartier ascended it a short distance, landed, crossed the meadows, clambered up the rocks through the forest and emerged on a clearing where there was a squalid hamlet of bark huts. Here dwelt the chief that Cartier had entertained on his vessel, and the village was called Stadacona. The name, which means “a crossing on floating wood,” originated in the fact that at high tide the mouth of the St. Charles was frequently so blocked with driftwood it could be crossed on foot. After satisfying their curiosity the visitors returned to their ships.

The mountainous northern shore of lower river

The Indians said that many days' journey up the river was a much larger village, named Hochelaga; but when Cartier told them he would go to see it they tried to dissuade him, probably because they did not wish to share with others the advantages of trading with the white men. Their arguments availed nothing, and they concluded to try another sort of appeal. One morning, the Frenchmen, looking up the river from their anchored ships, beheld three Indians attired to represent devils approaching in a canoe. The masqueraders were dressed in black and white dog skins, they had blackened their faces, and on their heads were antlers as long as a man's arm. They allowed their canoe to drift slowly past the ship while the chief fiend delivered a loud-voiced harangue.

Then they paddled to the shore where their fellow-tribesmen rushed pell-mell from the bordering woods, and with shrill clamors bore them into the sheltering thickets. In this leafy seclusion the French heard the Indians declaiming in solemn conclave for a full half hour. At length the two young Indians who had been Cartier's captives came out of the bushes and enacted a pantomime of amazement and terror. Cartier shouted from the vessel to ask what was the matter. They replied that the god Coudouagny had sent to warn the French against attempting to ascend the river, and that if the voyagers persisted in going thither they would be overwhelmed with snowstorms, gales and drifting ice.

The French replied that Coudouagny was a fool, and made ready for the expedition. Cartier set out for Hochelaga in his smallest ship and two open boats, accompanied by several of the gentlemen who had come with him from France, and fifty sailors. They glided on their way with the forests of gay autumnal verdure on either hand festooned with grape-vines, and the water alive with wild-fowl. The ship grounded, but they went on in the boats, and on the second of October neared Hochelaga. The Indians had seen them coming, and when they approached the shore, just below where now are Montreal's quays and storehouses on the southern side of the great island that the city occupies, they found a throng of savages gathered to receive them. As soon as the boats touched the land the Indians crowded around, dancing and singing, and bestowing on the strangers gifts of fish and maize. The natives continued to express their delight even after it grew dark; for the night was lighted up far and near with fires around which the savages could be seen from the French camp, still engaged in their revels.

At dawn the French started to follow a path leading northward through the forest that covered the site of the future city. Presently they met an Indian chief with a numerous retinue, who greeted them courteously and invited them to pause and warm themselves by a fire kindled beside the path. When they had seated themselves the chief made them a speech, and was requited for his eloquence by two hatchets, two knives, and a crucifix. Then the march was resumed, and soon the strangers came to open fields covered with ripened maize, and on beyond rose a steep, wooded mountain with the Indian town at its base.

The town was encircled with palisades formed of trunks of trees set in a triple row. The middle row was upright, while the outer and inner ones inclined and crossed near the summit where they were lashed to a horizontal pole. On the inner side of the palisades were galleries for the defenders with rude ladders to mount to them and quantities of stones ready to throw down on the heads of assailants. When the voyagers entered the narrow portal they found about half a hundred large oblong dwellings, each serving for several families. These were fifty yards or so long, and twelve or fifteen wide, and had frames of slender poles covered with sheets of bark. Through the middle of each wigwam ran a passage with stone fireplaces at intervals and openings in the roof above to allow some of the smoke to escape. Kettles of baked clay were used for cooking purposes. Along the borders of the apartments were benches covered with furs to serve for beds; and on the walls hung sheaves of stone arrows, and occasional tomahawks, flint knives, red clay pipes and dried human scalps.

The dwellings were arranged about an open area a stone's throw in width, and here Cartier and his followers were surrounded by swarms of women and children. With their white skins, bearded faces and strange attire and weapons, they doubtless seemed demigods rather than men. Presently a troop of women brought mats, the bare earth was carpeted for the guests, and they sat down. Then the feminine and juvenile rabble was banished to a distance by the warriors, who squatted row on row around the whites. As soon as they had settled themselves the bed-ridden old chief of the nation, paralyzed, helpless and squalid, was borne on a deerskin by some of his subjects into the midst of the assembly and placed before Cartier. The aged savage pointed feebly to his powerless limbs and implored the healing touch from the hand of the French chief. Then from the surrounding dwellings came a woful procession of the sick, the lame, the blind, carried or led forth, and all gathered before the perplexed commander as if he were a powerful magician capable of restoring them to immediate health.

The best he could do was to pronounce over his petitioners some verses from the Bible, make the sign of the cross, and utter a prayer. Then came a distribution of presents. Knives and hatchets were given to the men, and beads to the women, while pewter rings and other trinkets were thrown among the children who engaged in a vigorous scramble to secure these treasures.

Now the French filed out of the town, and, accompanied by a troop of Indians, climbed to the top of the neighboring mountain, whence they could see in all directions the mantling forest, broken only by the cornfields just below, and by the broad river glistening amid the realm of verdure. Cartier called the height Mount Royal, and this same name in slightly different form is that of the busy city which now occupies the site of the old Indian town.

The French presently returned to their boats and rowed away down the river. When they arrived at Stadacona they found that their companions had built a fort of palisades on the bank of the St. Charles, and close by were moored the ships. Here they were all soon besieged by the rigors of the Canadian winter. The streams were frozen over, and the snow blanketed everything with white, and drifted above the sides of the ships. At first the Indians came daily wading through the snow to the fort, but by the end of December their visits had almost ceased. Scurvy broke out among the French, and man after man succumbed, till twenty-five had died, and only three or four were left in health. The ground was so hard they could not bury their dead, and they hid the bodies in the snowdrifts. Cartier nailed an image of the Virgin against a tree, and on a Sunday summoned forth his followers, who, haggard and woe-begone, moved in feeble procession to the spot. There they knelt in the snow before the holy symbol and sang litanies and psalms. That day another of the party died.

There was fear that the Indians, hearing of the weakness of the whites, might finish the work the scurvy had begun. So none were allowed to approach the fort; and when a party of savages lingered within hearing, the invalid garrison beat with sticks and stones against the walls that the clatter might delude their dangerous neighbors into thinking the men in the fort were engaged in hard labor. One day, Cartier, walking near the river, met an Indian who had been suffering not long before with scurvy, as had many of the other Indians. He was now in high health and spirits. Cartier asked him by what means he had been cured, and the Indian replied it was by drinking a decoction made from the leaves of the arbor-vitæ. As soon as possible, after Cartier had returned and reported at the fort, a copious quantity of this healing draught was prepared. The men drank freely and health and hope began to revisit the hapless company.

The winter at last wore away, the ships were released from the grip of the ice, and the French made ready to sail for France. Cartier wanted to take back some of the natives to tell of the marvels of the region he had discovered, and as he knew they would not go of their own free will, he lured Donnacona and several of his chiefs to the fort where he had them seized and hurried on board the ships. Then the voyagers erected a cross on the bank of the stream, raised the flag of France near by and sailed away down the river. The tribesmen of Donnacona followed in their canoes as far as the Isle of Hazels begging for the release of the kidnapped chiefs, but without avail. Cartier kept on his course and reached France in midsummer.

In his account of this year in the New World he calls the St. Lawrence “the River of Hochelaga,” or “the great river of Canada.” Canada was an Indian word equivalent to town or village and was at first applied by the French to only a limited portion of the valley about Stadacona. But the extent of territory it covered was gradually enlarged until it now embraces all the British dominions in North America except Newfoundland and Labrador.

Five years passed, and we find Cartier for a third time on his way across the Atlantic. “We have resolved,” said the king, “to send him again to the lands of Canada and Hochelaga, which form the extremity of Asia toward the west.” The object of the expedition was discovery, settlement, and the conversion of the Indians.

Quebec Citadel and Lower Town in winter

In the course of time Cartier's fleet of five ships cast anchor beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Canoes came out from the shore filled with feathered savages inquiring for their kidnapped chiefs. But Cartier answered evasively. As a matter of fact the captives had all died within a year or two, though he only acknowledged the death of Donnacona and declared that the others had married white women and were so contented with their new life that they had refused to come back.

The French presently went a few miles farther up the river to Cap Rouge where they landed. Here they picked up quartz crystals on the shore and thought them diamonds, rambled through the tall grass of the meadow in an adjacent glen that opened back inland, climbed the steep promontory whence they looked down on the neighboring wooded slopes, and in a quarry of slate gathered scales of a yellow mineral that glistened like gold. Later they cleared off a patch of woods, sowed some turnip seed, cut a zigzag road up the height, and built two forts, one at the summit and one on the shore below.

A nobleman named Roberval was to follow Cartier from France and reinforce his expedition; and after considerable delay, he set sail with three ships and two hundred colonists. But hardly had he crossed the Atlantic when he met Cartier's fleet on its way home. What prompted so resolute a man as Cartier to thus abandon the New World is not known. Roberval ordered him to return, but under cover of night Cartier slipped away and continued his voyage to France.

Roberval had a mixed company of nobles, soldiers, sailors and adventurers, and a number of women and children. Among the women was a very comely maiden named Marguerite, a niece of Roberval himself. The same ship in which she sailed carried a young gentleman who had embarked for love of her, and she loved him. This was not to Roberval's liking. He demanded that they should renounce each other, but the lovers defied him, and in his rage he anchored off the Isle of Demons, landed Marguerite with an old Norman nurse who had taken the lovers' part, gave them four arquebuses for their defence and left them to their fate. Roberval thought he had effectually separated the maiden and her betrothed but the young man threw himself into the sea, and by desperate effort gained the shore.

The ship sailed on its way, and, during the long months that followed, the three dwellers on the island contrived to subsist on beasts and birds shot with the arquebuses. In the course of a year a child was born to Marguerite, the first child born of European parentage in all the vast domain now known as British North America. Soon afterward the father of the babe died, and the two women laid him to rest as best they could. A few months later the child died also, and its little body was buried beside that of its father. The old nurse did not survive much longer, and then Marguerite was left alone. Sometimes the white bears prowled around her dwelling, and she shot three. Sometimes the demons assailed her, but she discharged her guns at them and they retired with shrieks and threats. Two years and five months after she landed on the island, she saw a small fishing-craft far out at sea and hastily made a fire to attract its attention. The crew presently observed the column of smoke curling upward from the haunted shore, and they warily drew near, until they descried a woman in wild attire waving signals to them. So they took Marguerite from the island, and she went with them back to France.

Her uncle had gone on up the St. Lawrence and started a settlement in the wilderness at Cap Rouge. On the height where Cartier had intrenched himself Roberval erected a castle-like structure with two spacious halls, a kitchen, chambers, storerooms, workshops, cellars, a well, an oven and two water-mills. Here all the colony dwelt under the same roof. At length two of the ships sailed for home, and winter came on. Then the colony found that though they had storehouses there were no stores; they had mills, but no grist; an ample oven, yet lacked bread. They bought fish of the Indians, and dug roots which they boiled in whale-oil. Disease broke out, and before spring a third of the settlers had died. Roberval ruled his followers with a rod of iron. The quarrels of the men and the scolding of the women were alike punished at the whipping-post, “by which means they lived in peace.” An attempt to explore the upper river resulted in the loss of eight men, and the whole experience of the colony was so dismal that the remnants presently returned to their native land.

Of the final fate of Roberval there are conflicting accounts. The most interesting one is to the effect that he made another voyage to the New World and went up the Saguenay; and it is affirmed by the natives that he and his followers have never returned but are still wandering somewhere in the interior.

The Tadousac landing at the mouth of the Saguenay