Читать книгу The Diverting History of a Loyalist Town - Grace Helen Mowat - Страница 5

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The old Loyalist Town, that I tell you of, lies hidden from the bay of Fundy by countless islands, that shelter the peaceful waters of Passamaquoddy Bay. There it lies, stretching its length of sandstone shores peacefully in the sunshine, a tranquil little seaport, surrounded by hills and sea, resting in the afterglow of a romantic past and the peaceful leisure of an uncommercial present.

The Indians call this place Qua-nos-cumcook. This name looks formidable, written down, but it is clear music when an Indian says it. Sentimental tourists now call it “St.-Andrews by-the-Sea” without ever asking permission at the town office. But the Frenchman, who placed the St. Andrews cross there far back in the dim ages, called it St. Andrews, so the Indians said, and St. Andrews it has been ever since, and that is its name—St. Andrews, Shiretown of the County of Charlotte, in the Province of New Brunswick—by the Grace of God—possessing a court house, a jail, a town hall and five churches. What more is required in an old Loyalist Town? Only the romantic past, that I mentioned before, which is to be the subject of this history.

To begin at the beginning—the very beginning; a glacier—enormous, powerful, slow moving—came down straight from Baffin Land with a pocketful of little islands. At least, that is what a scientist told me, (and who can contradict a scientist?) On came the glacier, dragging everything before it. It took five hundred feet, or so, off the top of Chamcook mountain to add to its collection. And when it came to the water, it left the bay dotted with little islands, hundreds of them, all shapes and sizes, and there they have remained ever since.

Now, it was a pleasant gesture of the glacier to place all those little islands as it did; they make it nice for everybody. For the Indians who catch their seals and porpoise there; for the fishermen, to set their weirs and lobster traps; for the farmers, to pasture their sheep, and for tourists and pleasure seekers, for picnics and sailing parties; and so, many thanks to the glacier.

After the glacier came the Indians, a peaceable tribe of Micmacs. They had their headquarters at Joe’s Point and camped about, wherever the game was plentiful. Then one eventful day they saw what they thought were strange looking birds coming to them across the waters. But they were not birds, but white-sailed ships such as they had never seen before. So did the white man come to the waters of Quoddy.

We don’t know how many years the French and English traded with the Indians before they settled down to found a colony, but in the year 1604 Champlain came sailing across the bay, and up the wide mouth of the river and landed on a little island that, by mistake, had dropped out of the glacier’s pocket when it was wrestling with the top of Chamcook. On that Island was founded the first settlement of the white man in Acadia. They called both the island and the river St. Croix, because when sailing up the river they found it had three branches that formed a somewhat irregular cross.

With Champlain came a distinguished band of French gentlemen: Marc Lescarbot, the poet and historian, Sieur DeMonts and Jean Biencour, Pontgravé and Poutrincourt, Champdore and D’Orville; besides these were artisans, farmers, priests, Huguenots, soldiers, merchanics and adventurers, all anxious to settle the New World and claim it for France, or at least as much of it as they could. They were a courageous little company and well equipped too, with all kinds of tools and building material, garden seeds and ammunition.

They set themselves merrily to work through the pleasant summer and autumn. No place could be more delightful. They set up their cannon on the little island at the southern extremity that connected with the main island at low tide. Much of this tiny island fortress has been washed away since; indeed, the outlines of the whole island were much larger in Champlain’s day than they are now.

At the northern end of the island they built dwelling places and forts, a chapel and a gallery, wherein to exercise on stormy days.

Then Poutrincourt sailed back to France, promising to send them supplies in the spring. He left them one barque and one small boat. There they were for the winter, the only white settlement in all that vast wilderness. And little they knew about the winter that was ahead of them.

And the winter came upon them suddenly and unexpectedly. Nothing in their sunny France had prepared them for its piercing cold or the severity of its wild snow storms. They realized then that they had chosen their place of settlement unwisely. Their first thought had been its advantages of fortification from attacks by the Indians.

In the graceful words of that most charming person, Marc Lescarbot, the island had: “three special discommodities: want of wood (for that which was in the said isle, was spent in buildings); lack of fresh water, and the continued watch made by night, fearing some surprise from the savages that had lodged themselves at the foot of the said island, or some other enemy.

“When they had need of water or wood, they were constrained to cross over the river, which is twice as broad as the Seine. It was a thing painful and tedious in such sort that it was needful to keep the boat a whole day before one might get those necessaries.”

In addition to these “discommodities” it was impossible to keep their supplies from freezing; even their wine froze, so we are told. Worse still, an unknown sickness came upon them, probably scurvy, and many of their number died and the others were so prostrated it was difficult to care for the sick or bury the dead.

Marc Lescarbot thus describes it:

“For remedies there was none to be found. The poor sick creatures did languish, pining away by little and little for want of sweet meats, as milk or spoon meats for to sustain their stomachs, which could not sustain the hard meats by reason of let, proceeding from a rotten flesh, which grew and overbounded within their mouthes.”

The coming of spring and warmer weather brought relief to the sufferers, but the little colony was sadly wasted and disheartened. Of the seventy-nine who had remained on the island, thirty-five had died during the winter. DeMonts decided to remove the colony to Port Royal.

Pontgravé, returning from France, brought them fresh supplies and forty men, and assisted the distressed colony to move their possessions across the bay. The buildings that had been raised with so much hope and energy were abandoned and the Indians were left again in sole possession of the land.

Very little is known about this region for many years after that. We hear vague tales of traders and fishermen frequenting the Islands of Passamaquoddy. The Frenchmen, too, returned occasionally, for Lescarbot tells us that they had planted rye on the St. Croix Island, but left before it had matured; but that two years after, they returned to find that it had increased wonderfully so that “they did gather of it as fair, big and weighty as any in France”.

Of the Frenchman who placed the St. Andrews cross at the mouth of the river and said a prayer for the blessing of the land, we know only from Indian tradition, but the name St. Andrews was used for some time before the coming of the Loyalists.

The same Frenchman, so the Indians say, placed another cross at Point Migic, at the mouth of the Magaguadavic River, and this in after years led to much trouble and confusion as to which river was the real St. Croix.