Читать книгу Canada - Jean Newton McIlwraith - Страница 15

HILE France was busy at home, in the war with Spain, fighting her own subjects also about their religion, she had no time to attend to Canada, and left it alone for half a century. So soon as there was peace within the borders of Old France, the Marquis de la Roche was made viceroy of New France, with power to control its trade, grant land to settlers, and, in short, to have all things his own way; but these wide powers proved to be of small use to him.

1598. As colonists he had to take prisoners from the jails, and his sailors too were mostly pressed into the service against their will. Being afraid that his settlers would desert if he landed on, or near, the mainland of America, the Marquis put them ashore on Sable Island, more than a hundred miles from the coast of Nova Scotia, to stay there until he found a place for them; but his little ship was caught up in a gale from the west and driven straight back to France. There he found his enemies in power, and they had him put in prison, so that it was five years before he could get the ear of the king to tell him about the convicts he had left to their fate.

As if cold and hunger were not enough to fight, those wretched men had fallen to fighting one another, and when at last a ship was sent to rescue them from Sable Island, only twelve out of the forty were found alive. They had built a frail house for themselves out of an old wreck, and had lived by fishing and by hunting the descendants of the cattle Baron de Léry had left on the island. Henry the Fourth expressed a wish to see these long-bearded, fierce-looking men, dressed in the skins of wild animals, and when he heard their story he gave them fifty crowns apiece and a pardon for all their past sins; but the Marquis de la Roche was so much disappointed at the failure of his grand schemes for a colony that he pined away and died.

The next attempt to found a settlement in Canada was made at Tadousac, where the Saguenay River enters the St. Lawrence. Out of sixteen men who were left there to get valuable furs from the Indians in exchange for a few beads, knives, and hatchets, four died, and the rest would have shared their fate had not the natives taken pity on them, and when winter came, warmed and fed them in their wigwams.

Pontgravé was the name of the merchant who had thus tried to add to his riches by the fur trade, but upon his next voyage to the St. Lawrence for the same purpose, four years later, he had with him a man of a higher stamp. This was Captain Samuel de Champlain, of the Royal Navy, who had served as a soldier too, yet was like a priest in his piety, and zeal for converting the heathen.

1603. Pontgravé and Champlain crossed the ocean in two vessels so small that a man would be considered mad who would venture out upon the inland lakes in one of them, if the water were rough. Nevertheless, they arrived safely in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and sailed up the broad river of the same name, past the present sites of Quebec and Montreal, where the Indian villages that Cartier had found there were no longer to be seen. But the rapids of St. Louis, near the island of Mount Royal, ran swiftly as ever, and as before they had prevented Cartier from going further up the river, they now prevented Champlain. He returned to France and did not go into the St. Lawrence upon his second voyage the next year. This was taken in company with a Huguenot nobleman, M. de Monts, who had got leave from the king to colonise Acadia, a tract of country in which were included the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine.

De Monts was made viceroy of all that region; and besides Champlain, there sailed with him the Baron de Poutrincourt, while Pontgravé followed later with supplies. They explored the Bay of Fundy and discovered the beautiful Annapolis Basin, with which Poutrincourt was so much delighted that De Monts made him a present of land upon its shores. After seeing that suitable site for a colony, why they should have fixed upon St. Croix, a barren little island at the mouth of the river of the same name, cannot be told. But there the settlers were landed—a mixture of nobles and convicts, Protestants and Catholics, soldiers and working men—eighty in all. A rude fort was built, as well as a chapel, a house for the viceroy, barracks and storehouses.

Poutrincourt went home to bring out another band of colonists for the settlement he intended to found at his new domain on Annapolis Basin which he called Port Royal. Pontgravé went off on a trading trip up the St. Lawrence, and thence back to France, but De Monts and Champlain spent the winter at St. Croix. A bitter cold one it turned out to be. The men fell ill of the scurvy, and nearly half of them died before Pontgravé came to their relief with supplies in the spring. Champlain alone had kept up his courage, and whenever the weather permitted he had sailed on exploring trips, visited different points along the coast, as far south as Cape Cod, and gone also some distance inland, which none before him had done. Being geographer to the king, he took notes of the natives and their customs, as well as of the plants and animals he saw; and he wrote them down in his diary with good literary style.

1605. Nowhere had either he or the viceroy seen a better place for a settlement than Poutrincourt's grant at Port Royal, so rather than spend another winter at St. Croix, the colony was moved over there in August. The buildings taken down on one side of the Bay of Fundy were set up on the other. Then De Monts and Poutrincourt went home to France on business while Pontgravé and Champlain were left in charge at Port Royal. The second winter was not nearly so hard as the first had been, and Champlain, as before, did his best to keep up the spirits of the colonists, but it was not easy to do that when the food began to run short.

Pontgravé feared that DeMonts had forgotten his settlers, and he had actually embarked with all but two to seek help from some of the French fishing-boats likely to be found near the banks of Newfoundland, when M. de Poutrincourt sailed into the basin. Pontgravé and his shipload were not far off, and were soon recalled to make a fresh start at Port Royal.

The third winter was mild for Acadia, and the settlers had learned through their hard times how and what to hunt for food. They had made friends with the Micmac Indians of the neighbourhood, especially with an old chief, called Membertou, who brought a number of his people to set up their wigwams near Port Royal. They taught the French to trap the hare and the beaver, to follow the big moose on snowshoes far into the trackless woods, and in return they were made welcome to the fort and to the fare within, whatever it might be.

There were fish and game in plenty, and Champlain started a spirit of friendly rivalry among fifteen of his comrades to see which would provide the best fare for the table of Poutrincourt. These skilful sportsmen called themselves "The Order of the Good Time," and good times indeed seemed in store for the whole colony when it suddenly got a "Notice to Quit." The power granted to De Monts had been taken from him as carelessly as it had been given, and therefore the colony he had tried so hard to plant in Acadia had to be deserted just as the sun was beginning to shine upon it.

Such a thing as a settlement supporting itself, as those of New England did, was never dreamed of in New France. The Pilgrim Fathers came out to Plymouth of their own free will, to escape persecution for their religion at home, as the Huguenots of France would have been only too glad to do, had they been allowed. The first settlers of Canada were taken out by some rich nobleman, like De Monts, to whom the king had given a charter. When the Viceroy of Acadia could no longer keep up Port Royal, it was deserted, and the fields that had been cleared and planted were left to Membertou and his tribe.

While the French had thus been striving to keep a hold upon Acadia, English sailors were reaching into the heart of the northern regions. Henry Hudson had made three voyages to America and had left his name on a river of modern New York before he sailed through the straits called after him, into the vast bay which also bears his name. He spent the winter upon its shores, but his cowardly crew rose against him and set him adrift in an open boat along with his son and a few loyal sailors. They were never heard of again.

Always searching for a passage to the Pacific, English explorers kept on sailing into Hudson's Bay, in spite of the fate of its discoverer; but they did no more than christen unknown waters, such as Baffin's Bay and James Bay.

1610. The same year that Hudson was lost saw Poutrincourt back in Acadia. He was determined not to give up the land which had been granted to him, and which was his by right. It was three years before he could get the king to listen to his claim, but when at last he landed again in Port Royal with a shipload of settlers, he found the houses and furniture just as they had been left. The Indians had stolen nothing, and they were overjoyed to see the Frenchmen back again, especially the chief, Membertou, who was now over one hundred years old.

Poutrincourt had a brave young son, called Biencourt, eighteen years of age, whom he sent home to France to get help for the colony, but by that time Henry the Fourth was dead, and with him had died all interest in Acadia except among the Jesuit priests and a few of their wealthy converts. Beincourt came back and Poutrincourt went over, but in his absence a crushing blow fell on Port Royal.

1613. Captain Samuel Argall, of Virginia, sailing northward to the fishing banks of Newfoundland, was filled with patriotic wrath at hearing of the French settlement, for had not Cabot claimed the whole of the mainland for England before Verrazano took possession of it for France? The Virginians landed and utterly destroyed Port Royal. Biencourt was from home at the time, or they might not have had so easy a victory. With Charles de la Tour and a few remaining followers, he spent the winter in the woods, without a roof for shelter, and there his father, Poutrincourt, found him in the spring.

Argall's raid called the attention of England to Acadia, and King James the First resolved to settle some of his own countrymen in it.

1620. He granted the whole of Acadia to a Scotchman, Sir William Alexander, who brought colonists to the Port Royal Basin.

Poutrincourt died in 1615, but Biencourt had never given up his rights to the region, and at his death he left the property to his friend and comrade, Charles de la Tour. This brave young man made his headquarters near Cape Sable, at the place now named after him, while his father, Claude de la Tour, had a post on the Penobscot.

For awhile the Scotch and the French dwelt in peace, as Acadia was large enough for both, but presently war broke out between France and England, and Sir William Alexander thought the time had come to claim the whole country, and divide it among the proposed Order of Knights-Baronets of Nova Scotia, who would bring out settlers to their estates—when they got them.

To further this end, Sir William offered to include the La Tours, father and son, among the Knights-Barons, if they would peaceably give up their rights to the whole country, and be content with a portion. Claude de la Tour was well content to do this, for he had been to England as a prisoner, had married a wife there, and been well treated; so that he sailed with a load of colonists to occupy the estate promised to him and his son. They were both Huguenots, and could look for more kindness as English subjects than as French; but Charles de la Tour would not forsake his country. He held out in his Fort St. Louis, even against his own father, and Claude was obliged to take his settlers round to where the Scotch were already planted near Port Royal, which had been taken by the English.

1632. When peace came again, and the whole of Acadia was given back to France by the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Claude de la Tour had to seek safety with his son, who for his loyalty was made Lieutenant-General of Acadia. Other Frenchmen of high and low degree came out to lord it over the Scotch settlers, and to keep the English of Massachusetts at a proper distance; but Port Royal was deserted.

1643. The Seigneur d'Aulnay Charnisy, commander of a new Port Royal on the other side of the Basin from the old one, was very jealous of Charles de la Tour, to whom the king had granted land directly across the Bay of Fundy, at the mouth of the river St. John, where he had better trade with the Indians of whom he was an old and tried friend. La Tour being a Protestant, there were many enemies ready to bear false witness against him when Charnisy sailed to France on purpose to gain his arrest. He got his desire—an order to take Charles across the sea to stand his trial—but the stouthearted La Tour refused to be taken, so Charnisy blockaded him in his fort and then lay in wait for a vessel with one hundred and forty emigrants and supplies that was coming from the Protestant city of Rochelle. When at length she appeared, Charles de la Tour and his wife managed to slip through the blockade in a rowboat, and got on board the Rochelle vessel, which took them off to Boston, and there they got help.

Charnisy never knew that his prey had escaped him till five ships from Boston appeared at his back and chased him across to his own side of the Bay of Fundy. Once more he tried to take the fort of La Tour when the master of it was away in Boston, and only the mistress left to defend it. This she did so bravely that Charnisy had to withdraw, very angry at being beaten by a woman for the second time. He had tried and failed to get her arrested for treason while she was in France clearing the good name of her husband.

Two months later, when Charles de la Tour was almost home with help from Boston, Charnisy came again to attack Madame de la Tour, and by this time the food was all done and her followers were in despair. She gave up the fight on the strength of the victor's promise to spare the brave men who had defended her husband's property and herself, but Charnisy basely broke his word and hanged them all. Madame was brought out, with a halter round her neck, to see them die, and Charnisy took her back to Port Royal with him, where she lived only three weeks.

1667. This bad man prospered for a time, but five years later he was drowned in a little river on his own estate, and who should marry his widow and fall heir to his command but Charles de la Tour? The King of France came to see that he was a much-wronged man, and made him governor of all Acadia. No sooner was he settled once more, and beginning to grow rich through the fur trade, than the country was taken by the English. La Tour went over to England, and laid before the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, the grants made to himself and his father by Sir William Alexander, and these were restored to him. He had to do the same when Charles the Second came to the throne, but finally the whole of Acadia was given back to France by the Treaty of Breda.

By this time the English had planted a settlement in Newfoundland, but it did not grow very fast because the rich fish merchants did not want people coming in, as they thought, to spoil their trade. The French came in, however, and by 1660 they had a strong post at Placentia, although they had only got leave from the English to land on the island for the purpose of drying fish.