Читать книгу Canadian Footprints - Melvin Ormond Hammond - Страница 17

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THROUGH countless ages the Atlantic storms have battered the sea coast of North America. On the Gaspé shore, at the extremity of Quebec, the Alleghanies reached salt water and lost their battle with the ocean. The “drowned mountains” which lie between the mainland and Newfoundland became the home of the cod, and for that rich harvest adventurous men sailed westward from Europe in the great age born of the Renaissance. In that “bright dawn of human reason, the springtime of the soul,” France joined in rivalry with England and Spain, and while art and literature flourished at home, exploration and commerce pushed their little galleons into distant waters and captured empires.

Jacques Cartier carried the flag of Francis I to the new world and discovered Canada. He left St. Malo in 1534, cruised past Newfoundland, glanced at Southern Labrador where, he scornfully observed, he could not find “a cartload of good earth”; touched Prince Edward Island, and presently was driven by heavy winds into Gaspé Bay.

Now began the fur trade which has never ceased to draw European merchants to the centre of North America. Cartier met savages on the shore of Gaspé, and he thus describes this opening incident in the long story of Canadian merchandising:

“We gave them knives, combs, beads of glass, and other trifles of small value, for which they made many signs of gladness.”

The Frenchmen got furs from the wretched Indians, whom Cartier said were “the sorriest folk that could be found in the world,” for the “whole lot of them had not anything above the value of five sous, their canoes and fishing nets excepted.”

Cartier erected a cross on the shore of the inner harbour, the Gaspé Basin of today, proclaimed the name of the French King, lured two sons of the Chief on board his vessel, and departed for France, the anxiety of the bereaved Indians being readily soothed by gifts.

Through the centuries since Cartier’s day the Gaspé shore has warred with the ocean and preserved its simplicity, rugged grandeur and isolation. The Shickshocks and other mountains are visible long before passengers entering the St. Lawrence can see the fishing stations which crowd the narrow beach and give their odours to the restless winds. Percé Rock, with its famous arch, crumbles from the attacks of the sea, but its agate and jasper pebbles still glisten in the sun and water. Overhead the clouds of seafowl scream in their struggle with the wind and with each other in the battle for existence.

Champlain skirted the coast in 1603 and named the headland above the Bay Cap des Rosiers, because of its profusion of wild roses. David Kirke, in 1628, here overtook the heavier French squadron of de Roquemont and overwhelmed it by great daring. Hovenden Walker’s fleet, en route from Boston to attack Quebec in 1711, was smashed on the rocks of Gaspé. Wolfe, sent on a disagreeable mission to harass the French fishing villages after the capture of Louisbourg, rested in Gaspé for a month and then sailed home to prepare for the capture of Quebec.

Finally, in the autumn of 1914, Canada’s first contingent of 33,000 men, for the Great War, assembled in Gaspé Basin, and departed thence for England, convoyed by an imposing fleet of battleships.

Gaspé Basin and Landing Place of Jacques Cartier