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The period when France commenced to take a fitful yet vital interest in American exploration was one of intense maritime activity, of commercial enterprise which included also the taking of great and unknown risks, of dreams on the part of statesmen and active curiosity amongst intelligent and educated classes, of a stirring up in all the elements of adventure amongst the masses of the people. Spain through the genius and courage of Columbus, England by means of the Cabots, Italy through Amerigo Vespucci, Portugal through Corti-Real, France through Verrazanno, and then Cartier and Champlain, plunged into the search for new worlds or a new route to ancient lands. During this period of conflict and rivalry on sea and land, of golden galleons in southern seas and the deeds of Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher and many another in more northern waters, the pages of history reveal a prolonged struggle by merchants to carry commerce into great new countries which were slowly being opened up; they teem with the courageous, yet cruel deeds of buccaneers and pirates and gold seekers; they deal with events which made the Spanish Main, the West Indian shores and seas, the South American coasts, replete with elements of romance.

While English sailors were disputing the wealth and supremacy of the New World with the mighty ships of Spain and, at the same time, skirting the shores of the continent in a thousand places, planting the English flag at many points and carrying it into the farthest north and south, France was entering the portals of the St. Lawrence and making good her hold upon an immense region of the interior. Jacques Cartier, between 1534 and 1542, discovered and studied the shores of the St. Lawrence and named many places with the names of his beloved France. Brest Harbor on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the port of Blanc Sablon, the Isle de Bouays, the Isles de Margaulx, Brion Island and Baie des Chaleurs, are some of the designations which have lived. It was on his second voyage (1535) that Cartier called the waters around the present Ste. Genevieve Island the Baye Saint Laurens—the name which gradually grew into that of the whole vast body of water which he proceeded to partially explore.

The Island of Anticosti Cartier called L’Assomption in honor of the festival of that day, and indeed all through the explorations of the early French navigators the names of saints and other reminiscences of devotion to the Church of their fathers are continually in evidence. The Indians, according to Dr. S. E. Dawson—a careful authority—appear to have previously called the river Hochelaga, and the site of Quebec, Canada. To them, it must be remembered, these vast waters meant much. In their birch-bark canoes they paddled everywhere with ease, and came and went with almost invisible swiftness, through vast regions which could not otherwise have been traversed in months of time; on these various rivers they fished for food and attacked, or evaded, their foes. To the explorers the St. Lawrence and its great branches provided a scenery and surroundings which in summer were a constant source of enchantment. The waters teemed with myriad fish, and even whales, seal and walruses were seen in the Gulf and lower reaches of the St. Lawrence. The forests on the shore were green and rich with pine and maple and ash; in the autumn they burst into brilliant rainbow hues of beauty. Here and there meadows were discovered in blossom and flower—shadowed perhaps by rugged hill or mountain side. Everywhere were salmon or other fish in the shallows; wild pigeons and gulls winging through the air; penguins or great auks, wild ducks, guilemots, puffins, margaulx, and many other birds on the countless islands and along the shores. In winter, of course, this was all reversed, but with a cold splendor which still remained unique.

Through these islands and along the shores, through reefs and shoals and in places where the most experienced modern pilot goes cautiously with the aid of charts and surveys, Cartier seemed to sail by instinct—without accident or serious difficulty. At Saguenay the precipitous mountains of rock rose out of a deep dark river and struck Cartier as doubly singular because of the great forests which apparently grew from their bare sides without the need of earth. Here he seems, as was the case later on at Hochelaga, to have accepted local Indian names. To Isle-aux-Coudres he gave the name which still lives; a spacious green isle, rich in wild vines and fruitful soil, and now known as the Isle d’Orléans, he termed the Isle de Bacchus. At this point the footprints of the pioneer became an actual fact and to him came countless savages in their noiseless canoes seeking assurances of friendship or enmity, wondering at the marvelous ship with wings which flew over the surface of the water, ready to give an admiration and respect which might easily have been retained and which might have made easy the coming century of alien settlement.

From the point on the north shore where, at the mouth of the St. Charles River, Cartier rested for a few days (September, 1535) he could see all the wonderful panorama of nature provided by the promontory of Cape Diamond, by the sweep and curve of the great river at its base, by the blue hills of the Laurentides in the distance, untouched by the creations of civilization, unmarred by the growth of cities and towns. At the point of junction of the St. Charles and a small stream called the Lairet, Cartier erected a fort upon the remains of which, today, stands a monument to the explorer. On October 2d Cartier was welcomed at the Indian town of Hochelaga—now the site of Dorchester Street and the St. James Cathedral of Montreal. From here he ascended the elevation which he named Mount Royal and looked out upon a scene which left a deep impression upon his mind and which included the Ottawa River in the distance opening out into the Lake of Two Mountains, the main flood of the St. Lawrence broadening into the Lake St. Louis of modern times, the roaring rapids where this great body of water rushes down forty-five feet in seven miles, the dim Laurentian ranges far away, and detached hills and plains to the south covered with forests which flamed into color under the early frosts.

In 1540 Cartier received his royal commission for a third voyage to the new lands, and was described in this document as “the discoverer of the countries of Canada and Hochelaga,” said to be “a portion of Asia on its western side.” A sudden change occurred at Court, however, and eventually Cartier sailed under commission from La Roque, Sieur de Roberval, acting as the King’s Lieutenant-General. It was in August, 1541, that he again reached Stadacona, the Indian village nestling at the foot of Cape Diamond, and it was at Cap Rouge, afterwards the scene of a great timber industry and now covered with the summer residences of Quebec City, that he fortified his camp for a winter of suffering, disease and death. It was here that he found traces of iron and gold and “stones like diamonds,” and it was from the latter claim that Cape Diamond obtained its name. Amongst Cartier’s associates were Viscount de Beaupré, from whom, no doubt, came the name of the famous shrine of the future. In September Hochelaga was again visited, but, in the main, the footprints of Cartier during the ensuing period are records of endurance, Indian hostility, misfortunes and privation. De Roberval arrived in the summer of 1542 with a large expedition and met Cartier returning home. The arrogant and inexperienced nobleman went on his way up the river and erected forts and buildings on a considerable scale upon the site which Cartier had abandoned. No remains exist to-day, little is known of the ensuing winter and less of an alleged expedition into “the Province of Saguenay.” In the spring De Roberval returned to France and there is no proof that he ever made that somber trip up the Saguenay where he was supposed to have disappeared forever, and about which has been woven so much of romance and poetry:

Chill blew the wind in his face

As, still on his treasure chase,

He entered that gloomy place

Whose mountains in stony pride

Still soulless, merciless, sheer,

Their adamant sides uprear;

Naked and brown and drear,

High o’er the murky tide.

Cartier left imperishable memories in the history of Canada. Yet he was but a simple seaman, without rank, or brilliance, or outstanding qualities. Instinct and natural skill seemed to guide him in his seamanship; a certain primitive faith marked his actions and proved his inspiration. Bretagne, in his day, was far removed from the intellectual stir of the period and even from the national life of France. Despite all this he has left a wiser, better reputation than Columbus; his statecraft in dealing with the Indians was marked by only one fault, while that of Columbus in dealing with the Caribs inaugurated a disastrous system of forced labor which ran up a heavy score for future generations to settle. Cartier founded no great city and administered no great country, yet the landmarks of his presence loom large in French Canada.

Following him came an era of fitful action and hastily passing personalities. The region described by Cartier in letters and careful maps which, however, have perished somewhere in the centuries, soon came to be called New France. Trade seems to have been carried on between the old and new lands, but no settlements were made. In the Gulf and adjoining waters and up as far as Tadoussac, enterprising fishermen were numerous—notably the Spanish Basques with Bretons and Normans from France. Into this situation came also the English under Frobisher, Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and, in 1598, occurred the melancholy colonizing effort of the Marquis de la Roche, under mandate of Henri IV, which ended in the bones of most of his companions strewing the bleak shores of Sable Island. Amongst other adventurous spirits of this time was Françis Gravé, Sieur du Pont, who took an interest in the fur trade which centered at Tadousac, and, with Pierre Chauvin and others, made futile efforts in the beginning of the seventeenth century to found a settlement there. In 1603, however, an expedition was sent out under Samuel de Champlain, of Brouage, the practical father of Canada. With him was Pont-Gravé.

Chicoutimi, Saguenay River

The footprints of Champlain are everywhere in Canada. He was at once cautious and brave, a statesman and a soldier, a loyalist to both King and Church, a typical Frenchman of the age in all the finer national characteristics of his people. In him centered the earlier romance and around him has been woven much of the patriotism of French Canada. With a combined experience of sea and shore, the inspiration given all his followers in war by Henri IV, and with the added possession of high personal qualities, he made an ideal pioneer leader. One can imagine this determined and fearless explorer ascending the silent spaces of the great river and exploring in canoes the lesser waters running into it; standing on the beetling rock where he was to erect his future fort and house and lay the foundation of a great French state within a British empire of whose still greater scope he could not even dream; journeying with a few friendly Indians through the wilds of the interior, portaging around or perilously crossing swift rapids and great waterfalls, traversing vast forests and encountering great inland seas; standing upon the wooded heights of Mount Royal and gazing up and over the sweeping river which led to such vast, unknown regions and which held within its bosom such potentialities of war, and commerce, and shipping, and development. One can even picture this representative of the military civilization of Europe as, clad in steel breast-plate and plumed casque, with sword at his side and matchlock ready to hand, he passed through the mighty wilderness—ever listening for the war-whoop of the savage and ever on the alert for some new and undefined danger.

On his first voyage Champlain visited the meeting place of traders and Indians at Tadoussac, with its environment of granite hills and great mamelons of sand, and then passed up the Saguenay to a point a little beyond the modern Chicoutimi. So far as is known his passage through the mighty precipices of rock which we call Capes Trinity and Eternity, into the walled chasm half filled with water which is styled the Saguenay River, was the first visit of a white man to this wonderful region. It is not difficult to imagine this intrepid Frenchman in his tiny ship, with a superstitious and naturally terror-struck crew, traversing in ever-growing silence and somber fear mile after mile of this stupendous cleft in the Laurentian plateau which some earthquake or upheaval of prehistoric times had constructed. The unknown is often terrible, and in this case they would see on either side an almost unbroken line of lofty, naked cliffs, they could look down and around into waters so deep as to become black as pitch, with only purple glints in the sunlight, and so vast as to be capable of holding all the fleets of the world though with hardly a place for anchorage; they could almost feel the silence of dark solitudes which neither bird nor insect cared to share; they could not help but be profoundly impressed with what one writer has termed a River of Death and another described as making Lethe or the Styx look like purling brooks.

This first experience was a fitting one for such a man as Champlain. In the years that followed his footprints were stamped all over the center of the continent. He saw the beautiful falls below Stadacona—from which all Indian settlement had then passed—and named them after Admiral de Montmorenci; he passed over and named the broad waters of Lake St. Peter; he visited Mount Royal and stood on the site of the future commercial metropolis; he explored the lower St. Lawrence and visited Gaspé and Percé. His second voyage was financially aided by the Huguenot, Pierre du Guast, Comte de Monts, who was commissioned as Lieutenant-Governor for the King and in 1604 accompanied Champlain to Canada. With them were Biencourt de Poutrincourt and one hundred and twenty colonists, and following in another ship was Pont-Gravé with additional supplies. Along the coast of the Nova Scotia of to-day Champlain passed and named many places. A settlement was established at Ste. Croix Island and, finally, made at Port Royal under the authority of De Monts. Meantime Champlain had been traversing the coast north and south and at one time actually stood on Plymouth Rock, where fifteen years later the Pilgrims were to land as the first of that stream of population which was to one day check the sweep of French ambition and empire. To Port Royal in 1606 came further settlers with Marc Lescarbot, a bright and clever lawyer, and a writer who has left us the most reliable description of pioneer French conditions.

In his further explorations Champlain, frequently accompanied by Poutrincourt, searched the shores of the Bay of Fundy, visited the Halifax harbor of the distant future, studied with enthusiasm the Acadia of his time. At Port Royal he and his gallant associates had founded the first permanent settlement of Europeans, excepting the far distant Spanish posts in Southern America. They had instructed the local Indians in religion and won their hearts; with proper support from home, following upon Champlain’s further work in the interior and at Quebec, France might, at this early stage in American history, have established its position and held its vast possessions against the influences of the future.

After a period of three years’ absence Champlain returned to St. Malo and prepared another expedition. On June 3d he was again at Tadoussac and a little later he was busy clearing the ground and building a post or “Abitation,” where now stands the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires in the Lower Town of Quebec. A little later he started up the river with a few Frenchmen and a number of Indians. His footprints on this journey are numerous. He stood on the site of Three Rivers, called the Rivière du Loup of today by the name of Ste. Suzanne, styled the St. Francis River of the future the Rivière du Pont, named the Yamaska as the Rivière de Gennes. He discovered the Richelieu and called it the Rivière des Iroquois; with two Frenchmen and a number of Indians he started in birch canoes to explore its waters to their source. To the modern traveler who passes in a steamer up this great stream, who evades rapids by going through a canal and who sees smiling farms and villages on either side, it is difficult to realize the situation as the three Frenchmen were paddled by their somewhat doubtful allies over unknown waters with primeval forests standing on either side in dense and continuous masses of dark green foliage; with the knowledge also that hostile bands of Iroquois might be gathering in the woods to cut off the little party on its return. They persisted, however, and the intrepid explorer gave his own name to the great lake which they finally reached and which afterwards proved the scene of several battles, which was long a key to French Canada on the south, which English soldiers and American colonists so often sought to utilize.

As with Cartier, the site of Montreal had great attractions for Champlain, and in 1611 he examined the locality with care and appears to have proposed a settlement at Pointe à Callières where now stands the Custom House in the center of the modern city. In 1613 he explored the Ottawa River and narrowly escaped death in some of its turbulent waters. He stood on the site of the future Canadian capital; saw something of the Gatineau and its innumerable waterfalls; discovered the beauties of the Falls of the Chaudière which a succeeding civilization has tried to destroy with factories and mills; and passed up the Ottawa as far as Allumette Island which was then the center of the chief Algonquin nation. Following this journey Champlain, in 1615, passed into the mighty wilderness which afterwards became the Province of Ontario. Up the Ottawa again he went, up the Mattawa to its head, over to Lake Nipissing he passed by portage, and then down the French River to Georgian Bay. It was a laborious and difficult work of exploration and was ended by a visit to the Hurons at a point near the site of the present town of Midland in Simcoe County. He, of course, discovered Lake Simcoe and Balsam Lake, passed up the Otonabee River to Rice Lake and followed the River Trent to the Bay of Quinte, issuing thence into the waters of Lake Ontario at the site of the present town of Trenton. With the possible exception of Étienne Brulé, Champlain was thus the first white man to see Lake Ontario. On his return he spent some time at the point where Orillia now rests.

This ended the explorer’s wonderful work. He had studied the coasts of what are now the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with thoroughness; he had traversed the Saguenay and St. Maurice and Ottawa, the Mattawa and French Rivers; he knew the eastern shores of Lake Huron and understood the vastness of that body of water as he did of Lake Ontario; he had penetrated the northern part of New York State and hunted in the country between Kingston and Ottawa; he had traversed on foot much of Central and Western Ontario and knew fairly well the topography of a dozen modern Ontario counties. His analysis of soil and natural productions, his description of varied Indian tribes, his maps and cartographic studies are all able and wonderfully exact. As a builder of cities his selection of Quebec was an achievement; his hope of Montreal an inspiration. As a soldier he won the respect of the Indians and whenever he fought them was successful. As a statesman he seems to have held the confidence of Court and Church and Colonists—a difficult feat in those days; as a man he was the central figure of French Canada’s origin. Over much of the Canada of today his footprints are visible to the student, and while he did not excel in naming permanently the great waters he discovered or the places upon which he stood in the birthday of our history, he did leave an impress of personality and action which time cannot eradicate or events disturb.

Meanwhile, the spirit and efforts of Champlain were stirring up the adventurous feeling and ambitions of his countrymen in every direction. They found special attractions in the work of Canadian exploration. There was enough danger to attract men of spirit; there were spaces so vast and possibilities so varied as to excite the least curious mind; there were chances of wealth in furs and there were constant stories of gold and silver and precious stones. The immense size, numbers and varieties of the bodies of water in the interior of the continent and the myriad deep undulations along its ocean shores made travel easier than in waterless countries, while the presence of Indians added not only the spice of peril but also the element of service. The Indians also brought into play the religious spirit of the Jesuits and Récollets and to the labors of the priests were due many important discoveries. With them, or in advance of them at times, were the fur traders who acted from love of adventure or gain, or officiated as interpreters between the pioneer priests and the Indians, but did not, as a rule, care anything for geography or science or the records which constitute so important a part of discovery or exploration. The missionaries, on the other hand, recorded their data and posterity has, therefore, a double reason for gratitude to the devoted men who were pioneers for their nation.

An illustration of the fur-trading and commercial pioneer was Etienne Brulé, who caught the fever of travel from Champlain, a spirit of wildness from the Indians and added a quality of licentiousness all his own. He lived much amongst the savages and seems to have been the first white man to stand upon the site of Toronto. He explored central Pennsylvania and went down the Susquehanna to Chesapeake Bay, discovered the waters of Sault Ste. Marie and was the first white man to paddle along the shores of Lake Superior. Of the four Récollet friars whom Champlain brought from France in 1615 Father Le Caron was the first missionary to the Hurons and Father d’Olbeau to the Montagnais. With Father Sagard and other later arrivals they added much to the slowly accumulating volume of knowledge. In 1625 the Jesuits arrived and their Relations cover a long period and record a vast amount of travel and study as well as of noble missionary effort. Down to the Rapids in the rear of Montreal came the Récollet Father Nicholas Viel to meet one of the Jesuit Fathers, and the Huron Indians who were paddling him down the river threw him to his death in its waters. Hence the first Christian martyrdom in Canada and the Sault au Récollet of today.

Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, Quebec

In the succeeding year Father D’Aillon penetrated to and dwelt amongst the Neutral Indians on Niagara River. He seems to have heard of Niagara Falls, but there is no record of his having ever seen them nor, indeed, is there any evidence of other missionaries or explorers reporting at this time more than vague rumors of a mighty waterfall. Fathers Chaumonot and de Brébeuf discovered Lake Erie in 1640, and in 1678 Father Hennepin stood upon the cliffs of Niagara Falls as the first European who had seen that natural wonder of the world. Grand as it is today the spectacle must then have been absolutely awe-inspiring. The dark primeval forests on either hand, the roar of the vast cataract and rush of the turbulent rapids amidst the vast and otherwise unbroken solitudes of nature must have presented sights and sounds fit for the Olympians. This priest also explored the Wisconsin River up to the Falls of St. Anthony and appears to have stood upon the site of Minneapolis. Other Jesuits who left footprints of exploration across and down the continent in this period were Fathers Allouez, Dablon, André and Druillettes, with the saintly Marquette, who has been described as the “sweet-souled hero of Western discovery.” In this double work of exploration and missions, of labor for country and Church, there is, indeed, writ large upon this continent the thought of the French hymn:

The Royal banners forward go,

The Cross shines forth with mystic flow.

Louis Jolliet was a native Canadian who, with Father Marquette, appears to have been the first to discover the source and nature of the waters of the Mississippi. An explorer and trader by nature he was also a mathematician and hydrographer and his footprints extend from the Mississippi to Hudson’s Bay on the north and to Labrador on the east. In 1673 the trader and the priest, under commission from Frontenac, traversed the shores of Lake Michigan, turned into Fox River and passed to its head waters, thence journeyed to an elbow of the Wisconsin and at a place now called Prairie du Chien glided into the broad waters of the Mississippi, which Jolliet christened La Rivière Buade after Frontenac’s family name. They floated down the river, seeing bands of bison and flocks of wild turkeys, meeting ever new bodies of Indians, passing the mouth of the Missouri and the Arkansas and then returned rather than meet with the Spaniards and perhaps lose all the fruits of their discoveries. They ascended the Illinois and Chicago rivers and reached within four miles of the site of the western metropolis. They crossed the portage connecting the two great water systems of the continent and, late in September, reached the Fox River after a voyage of 2,800 miles.

Another Frenchman in the person of René Robert Cavelier de la Salle completed the labors of these two men. Proud, persevering and self-reliant he was a figure worthy of the great arena in which he was to move. He joined his brother, Abbé Jean de la Salle, at Montreal in 1667 and two years later accepted a commission from De Courcelles, the French Governor. The object of his expedition was to discover the Ohio of the Senecas and, despite the obscurity of the facts available, there is little doubt that he did ascend the Ohio River of today. In 1679, after varied vicissitudes, La Salle, accompanied by Henri de Tonty in a sailing vessel built under his orders, traversed Lake Erie, the St. Clair River and thence journeyed to Michilimackinac and Lake Michigan. After many adventures he and a portion of his party reached a place now known as South Bend, Indiana. Supplies failed here and the return was effected under conditions which the most vivid imagination would find it hard to create. In his next expedition La Salle seems to have touched the site of Toronto and to have passed by way of Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. He reached the Mississippi again, but was then obliged to return. Eventually, in 1682, he descended the great river to its mouth and issued out upon the Gulf of Mexico, where, on April 8, he erected a pillar upon the shore, bearing the arms of Louis XIV, and formally took possession of a vast unknown region in the name of his country.

This problem of the continent’s waterways, as well as those of the center and the north, had thus been solved by a Frenchman, and from the cold cliffs of the Saguenay to the tropical waters of the Mississippi delta the greatest bodies of fresh water in the world—over which was to some day pass an almost incalculable volume of commerce—had become, for a time, part of the New France of Frontenac and his brilliant dreams. Michilimackinac was at this time a name replete with memories of French pioneers and included somewhat varied and confusing localities. It covered the mythology-laden isle of Algonquin reverence in the middle of the strait between Lakes Michigan and Huron, the points of land on the north and south of the strait, the mission place of Father Marquette at St. Ignace on the north mainland, the fur-trade center into which this also developed and from which La Motte Cadillac went in 1701 to found Detroit, a later French fort on the south shore and still later an English fort on the island. St. Ignace was the center of much adventurous exploration, mission effort and fur-trading—familiar to Fathers Allouez and Hennepin and many another brave priest of the wilderness, to Jolliet, Radisson, La Salle, Du L’hut and many more.

Another leader of this period was the explorer whose name is enshrined in that of Duluth—“the zenith city of the unsalted seas” as an enthusiastic American once termed it. His variously spelled name appears to have been Daniel de Greysolon, Sieur du L’hut; he was of noble family and high social connections in France, but from preference and love of the wild free life of the forests and prairies he devoted himself to Canadian exploration. In 1678 he left Montreal to study the almost unknown Northwest, and passed along the shores of Lake Superior, across the Mississippi and down one of the streams to a Sioux village where he planted the flag of France. He held a great Council of the Sioux at Fond du Lac, the extreme western end of Lake Superior, and thereafter, for years, lived in and thoroughly explored all this great region—much of which no white man had ever seen. His main post was at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, and from here, where now rests the busy town of Fort William, he traveled and traded south and north, around the Lake of the Woods country and into the basin of the Winnipeg. On Lake Nepigon he had another post from which he dealt with the Crees and covered much of the vast region up to Hudson’s Bay. Through his friendship with the Indians, Du L’hut on more than one occasion was able to bring assistance to his Governors at Quebec, and in 1710 died at Montreal with a high reputation for bravery, chivalry and capacity.

Meanwhile Jean Nicollet, under special commission from Champlain, discovered, in 1634, the Strait of Michilimackinac and passed through it into the Lake Michigan of today. First amongst white men he traversed the beautiful strait with its clustering islands and haunts of Indian tradition; first amongst his people he saw the great “Freshwater Sea” which was believed to be one more portion of a mighty waterway leading to China and the glowing East. So vast were these waters that the silence and loneliness met by the explorer’s solitary canoe was little less than is encountered in later days of enormous traffic and great steamers. Paddling along the western shore of Lake Michigan the Frenchman came to what is now Green Bay and the Menominee River, and not long afterwards to the mouth of Fox River where he was met by about four thousand Indians. One can imagine the picturesque scene of splendid lake and river, wild forest and wilder red men, the explorer robed in embroidered Chinese damask and discharging, as he advanced to the meeting, a pistol from either hand. He was to the savages a Manitou, or god, wielding thunder and lightning, and to him, therefore, a warm welcome was given. Many such scenes occurred in the experience of the early pioneers. The explorer then passed up the Fox River, through Lake Winnibago, and up the river beyond to the portage of the Wisconsin. He seems to have stood upon the water-parting of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence basins.

Of explorers in the Northwest during this eventful time Pierre Esprit Radisson has left an impression which, like that of Jolliet or La Salle, would fill volumes if fully described. His experiences and adventures equal the most thrilling of romances. His family came to Three Rivers from France, in 1651. He, himself, lived much amongst and knew much of the Indians and at first proved a useful interpreter for the Jesuits. With his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, he explored Wisconsin and neighboring regions and appears to have been the first white man to traverse Lake Superior beyond the Sault Ste. Marie. Radisson saw much of the Mississippi, explored some of its lesser branches and studied its head waters, traversed the southern shores of Lake Michigan, wandered over what is now the State of Minnesota, traded and talked and lived with the Indians and started, in 1662, from La Pointe on Lake Superior to go to Hudson’s Bay. He and Chouart coasted its shores for some distance and returned by way of Moose River and, probably, the head waters of the Saguenay. The rest of the career of these men was one of adventure, perhaps, more than exploration or discovery, but was none the less remarkable in its way. Radisson appears to have been the real discoverer of what has been vaguely termed the Northwest—a phrase applicable to a great region in the United States and an equally important later center of attraction in Canada.

A later pioneer of the West was Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye, a gallant French Canadian soldier who was born at Three Rivers and essayed, time and again, to discover the fabled Western Sea which was supposed to lie between America and Japan. He had fought in New England and Newfoundland, been wounded at Malplaquet in Europe, and experienced many vicissitudes of fortune when, accompanied by fifty grizzled adventurers, he first started from Montreal on June 8, 1731, to trade, to explore, to discover, to fight or to do anything that might be necessary in the wild wastes of the North and West. Up the Ottawa and through the Great Lakes to Nipegon the party proceeded and thence to Michilimackinac, where De la Vérendrye was joined by his nephew Sieur de la Jemmeraie and by Father Messaiger the Jesuit. The two days’ journey from the Straits to Kaministiquia took the party in their frail canoes a month; thence the explorers proceeded to the Lake of the Woods or, as it was then called, Lake of the Isles. There they discovered the Winnipeg River and later on the lake of the same name.

Thence, up the Red River went the intrepid party until, at its junction with the Assiniboine, De la Vérendrye met a party of Crees (1738) on the spot where Winnipeg now stands and looked out upon an illimitable ocean of rolling prairie. He, with his three sons—Jean had been killed by the Sioux not long before—stood upon the site of a great modern city, studied the Assiniboine Valley, erected Fort Rouge on the banks of the river and for the first time the bugle call of the French sounded across the prairies of Manitoba. Up the Souris River, through the plains to the southwest, along ravines where grazed hundreds of thousands of buffalo, and accompanied by six hundred Indians, De la Vérendrye then proceeded to the Upper Missouri and again took possession of fresh territory for the French King. Meanwhile, Pierre, François and Louis de la Vérendrye, his sons, reached the banks of the Saskatchewan and erected a fort there and one on Lake Manitoba. Some years later, on New Year’s Day, 1734, Pierre and François de la Vérendrye were the first white men to sight from land the lofty peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The gallant father and his sons had set out to discover the Western Sea and they had found a sea of prairies and a sea of mountains; they had traversed parts of two great and hitherto unknown rivers—the Missouri and the Saskatchewan; they had planted plates with the royal arms of France in a new and vastly rich portion of the American continent.

In 1669 the Sulpicians, Dollier de Casson and Bréhant de Galinée, explored the north shore of Lake Erie, in March, 1670, encountered Marquette and Dablon at Sault Ste. Marie and returned by way of Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa. Galinée’s narrative of the expedition was sent to the King. Another picturesque pair of explorers was Nicholas Perrot and Daumont de St. Lusson. The former was a master of Indian tongues, a useful interpreter to De Denonville and De Vaudreuil, a widely-traveled explorer, and the discoverer of lead mines on what was afterwards the Des Moines River in Iowa. In 1665 he first encountered St. Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie. Six years later (June 14th), in one of the most picturesque scenes of French life in America, St. Lusson, who had been despatched by the Intendant Talon to take possession of the Northwest in the name of the King, did so on the heights overlooking Sault Ste. Marie amid much barbaric pageantry intermixed with civilized state and ceremony. Representatives were present from a dozen Indian tribes which roamed the prairies and lake-lands for hundreds of miles, and they affixed their names, or rather marks, to a document claiming for Louis XIV all of the known continent from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic seas of the north and to the far-off Labrador coast. An immense wooden Cross was erected and a cedar mast placed beside it with the King’s escutcheon affixed.

Following Marquette and Jolliet and La Salle the thoughts of French Canada toward the close of the seventeenth century had been mainly directed to the Mississippi Valley—despite the many and varied efforts to the far north and west. In 1689 Nicholas Perrot had forts at the mouth of the Wisconsin and on Lake Pepin. A little later Fathers Montigny, St. Cosmé, Davion and Thaumer de la Source established missions as far south as Baton Rouge; in 1700 Father Gravier reached the Gulf of Mexico with a similar purpose in view, while Father Le Sueur ascended the Minnesota and stood upon the site of St. Paul and Minneapolis. In 1699-1702 expeditions under Le Moyne d’Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville of Montreal founded Biloxi and Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico with a view to guarding for Old and New France the portals of the Mississippi. At the same time Henri de Tonty, noted for his association with La Salle, abandoned his Fort St. Louis on the Illinois and established another of the same name at Mobile, while French ports were also established on the site of Detroit and at Miami, Outanon and Vincennes in the Illinois region. In later years and around Lake Chatauqua, the source of the Alleghany River, Forts La Bœuf, Presqu’isle and Venango were built. Fort Duquesne was a famous place in the English-French wars. Up the Richelieu River, which was for long years the high road between French Canada and the English colonies under the name of Rivière aux Iroquois, the route was studded with forts of both nations and the soil of its shores is stamped with much of adventurous and romantic story.

There were many other French priests or missionaries, explorers or adventurers, traversing these wonderful wildernesses. Hudson’s Bay, discovered from the sea entrance by Henry Hudson in 1610, was a source of great attraction to many. Radisson and Chouart no doubt reached its shore from land before Father Albanel, who, however, is generally credited with having been the first to do so, and they are said to have suggested the formation of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the English at a time of personal resentment against D’Avaugour, the Governor at Quebec. In 1672 Father Albanel, following the unsuccessful expedition of Fathers Druillettes and Dablon in 1661, sighted its gloomy shores, found the English flag already there and is said to have torn it down. From Three Rivers in 1651 Father Buteux had, meanwhile, ascended and explored the River St. Maurice, which Cartier, Pont-Gravé and Champlain had all examined in lesser degree and with reference, chiefly, to the importance of Three Rivers as a fur-trading center. Father Buteux left a clear description of Shawinigan Falls amongst his limited geographical records and was murdered by the Iroquois while returning to the mouth of the river. The Upper Saguenay region was the home of prolonged missionary work by Fathers du Quen and de Crepieul, who, at Tadousac and Lake St. John, devoted more time to the souls of the heathen than to the geography of the region where later, under English rule, their missions were forgotten and the country for a long time regarded as being a hopeless wilderness.

At other points also the omniscient Jesuit was pursuing his adventurous way. Mission stations in the middle of the seventeenth century were established at the mouths of the chief rivers running into the St. Lawrence. Some have been already mentioned. Father Bailloquet ascended the Papinactoix on the north shore of the St. Lawrence and Father Nouvel explored the Manicouagan. On the south shore Father Druillettes passed by way of the Chaudière River, opposite Quebec, and the Kennebec, to the Atlantic seaboard; the missions to the Etchemins of New Brunswick were carried on from Rivière du Loup, opposite Tadousac, and by way of a portage to Lake Temiscouta and the Madawaska into the River St. John region. Restigouche and Nipisiquit on the Baie des Chaleurs, and Richibucto and Miramichi on the Gulf coast of New Brunswick, were mission centers and the bases of various missionary journeys. The far Labrador coast was the source of varied effort and Father Nicholas in 1673 opened a mission at Seven Islands.

It will thus be seen that from the far north to the furthest south of a great continent, the Frenchmen made their mark and left memorials of voyage and journey, exploration and settlement, adventure and peril, religious effort and self-sacrifice, upon all the wonderful water stretches of the interior and upon the shores of two of the greatest rivers of the world. They impressed upon the continent a splendid national imprint and the record of a great ambition which however often it might flicker or fail amidst the distractions and varied responsibilities of court life in Paris or Quebec, never wavered in the hearts of heroic missionaries and courageous pioneers. In the end the hope that New France would dominate a vast continent failed, but it was not the fault of the earlier representatives of the nation or the Church, in the heart of the wilderness, that such was the case. If failure did come in this great aim, success was all the more conspicuous in the record of individual achievement and individual example which these men of a bygone age have left to their people. It indeed forms a part of traditions and history which take no second place, in certain forms of comparison, even to a hundred years or more in the history of their greater motherland.