Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

St. Croix (St. Charles), and there the Frenchmen endured the terrible cold of a Canadian winter from November until late in March. Their sufferings were grievous. The scurvy which prevailed among the natives at Quebec, extended to the Frenchmen, and of the one hundred and ten Europeans there, eight died, and nearly all of the others were sick.

The ice remained so long in the St. Lawrence that Cartier could not depart until May. On the third of that month he erected a huge cross, thirty-five feet in height, on the site of Dalhousie Bastion, the highest point of Cape Diamond, the promontory at Quebec, and upon it he hung the arms of France with a Latin inscription: "Francis First, by the grace of God King of France, reigns." On the same day, Donnacona, whose unstinted kindness Cartier had enjoyed, was invited with nine of his chiefs to a feast on the French flag-ship, where they were treacherously detained, and were borne away captives three days afterward. Cartier sailed out of the St. Lawrence on the southern side of Anticosti. He reached the open sea from the gulf, between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, and reached St. Malo on the 6th of July, 1536. The Petite Hermione was found to be so unseaworthy that she was left in the St. Charles, where her remains were found in the year 1848, imbedded in the mud.

At about the time when Cartier sailed from Quebec, two English vessels, the Trinity and the Minion, sailed from Gravesend, with the good wishes of Henry the Eighth, bearing "thirty gentlemen and ninety seamen," to explore the region of the St. Lawrence, and to plant a colony in Newfoundland. The expedition was organized by "Master How, of London, a man of goodly stature, and of great courage, and given to the study of cosmography." His companions were young men of rank and fortune. The ships were two months on the voyage to Cape Breton, where they first touched and then sailed to Newfoundland. There the company came very near starving to death. The famine was so great that some of the stouter sailors killed weaker ones in the woods, and ate them. The "gentlemen" were about to cast lots to determine which of their number should become food for the rest, when a French fishing-vessel, amply provisioned, came into the port. The Englishmen seized her, and with that vessel and their own they returned to England. The Frenchmen laid their case before Henry, who, when he learned how great had been the necessities of his countrymen when they took possession of the vessel, did not punish them, but paid the foreigners the value of their property out of his private purse.

Cartier's report of his second voyage was not cheering. The rigors of the climate on the St. Lawrence in winter; the ice-bound condition of that stream for several months, and the barrenness of the land in precious stones

DE LA ROQUE'S ENTERPRISE.

113 and metals, were so discouraging that more than four years passed away before another like expedition from a French port was planned. The king was then fighting Charles with more intense hatred than ever under the impression that the emperor had caused the death of the eldest son of Francis, who died from the effects of poison. For two years the father could think of nothing but revenge, when through the intervention of the Pope and the Queen of Hungary, the two monarchs whose mutual exasperation was intense, became reconciled and embraced and kissed each other as friends. But the French treasury was drained by long wars, and Francis would not listen to propositions for colonization in America, until late in 1540. Then Francis de la Roque, Lord of Robertval, in Picardy, importuned the king for permission to make further discoveries and plant a colony in New France. The monarch had, meanwhile, talked with Donnacona and learned much about Canada which Cartier could not know. He told him of the large numbers of fur-bearing animals in its woods and waters; the delicious salmon in its rivers, and the richness of its soil and value of its pine timber. Francis was willing to make another trial, and he gave his consent to the fitting out of ships according to the plan of De la Roque. He commissioned that gentleman Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of "Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Cape Breton and Labrador;" and as the services of Cartier were indispensable, he was recommissioned "Captain and Pilot of the King," and appointed chief mariner of the expedition, in which six or seven ships were to be employed. De la Roque was authorized to make conquests in the name of France and to plant a colony. To obtain men for the latter purpose-for the founders of a Statethe prisons of France were ransacked, and many desperate characters were mingled with good men in making up the required number. The work of preparation went vigorously on, and the harbor of St. Malo was alive with busy men in the spring of 1541. Every thing and every body were in readiness late in May excepting De la Roque.

Cartier was not pleased with being made subservient to the Lord of Robertval, in the enterprise before him, and when five vessels were ready, he was glad to find De la Roque dilatory. He gathered the whole company that were to go in them, in the cathedral, where all received absolution and blessings, and on the 23d of May they sailed from St. Malo for the St. Lawrence, leaving De la Roque to follow when he pleased. Storms arose when they approached the tracks of the polar icebergs as they were voyaging toward the tropics, and chilling fogs lay along their paths. It was late in August when the squadron entered the harbor of Stadacona or Quebec. The people there, led by King Agona, the successor of Donnacona, pressed

eagerly to the ships to welcome their old monarch, for Cartier had assured them that he would bring him back. Alas! Donnacona was no more.

He

and his eight chiefs had been baptized in France, but had grieved themselves to death in slavery. All of them had died before Cartier's departure on his third voyage. The mariner dared not tell the whole truth to the people for fear of their resentment; he only acknowledged that Donnacona was dead, and then told them that the other chiefs had all become great lords in France, had remained there, and would never return. In token of his good faith he showed them the pretty little daughter of the Huron chief at Hochelaga, whom he had brought back. The people had grave doubts. They were sullen and unfriendly. The kidnapping-the inexcusable treachery-had left a bitter sting of wrong in their hearts. Their sullenness grew more cloudy, and very soon signs of absolute hostility were manifested.

Cartier sailed up the river a few leagues above Quebec, where he found a better anchorage; and at the beginning of September he sent two of his vessels back to France with an account of his doings, and to communicate the fact that De la Roque had not arrived. He again visited Hochelaga to ascertain whether there were serious obstructions to navigation above that town, and to give back to her father the little Indian princess. He gave to the chief a "cloak of Paris red, which cloak was set with yellow and white buttons of tin, and small bells." These acts made a favorable impression upon the Hurons, and they loaded him with favors. After visiting the rapids between Montreal and La Chine, he returned to Quebec, when the temper of the natives was so manifestly hostile that he was admonished to provide for the safety of himself and his followers. He accordingly built a fort on the island of Orleans, and made his winter quarters there, mooring his vessels in a cove. He waited patiently for the coming of the Viceroy, but he had not appeared when the St. Lawrence was bound with ice.

The winter was long, cold and gloomy. The Frenchmen were almost. buried in the snow-drifts, and suffered much; and when the spring opened, the natives were evidently preparing to attack them. Their provisions being almost exhausted, and no tidings of De la Roque reaching him, Cartier left the St. Lawrence toward the end of May, 1542, and sailed for France. Running into the harbor of St. John near the southeastern extremity of Newfoundland, he there found De la Roque, Lord of Robertval, with three ships and two hundred men, and about twenty French fishing-vessels. la Roque had left Rochelle in France on the 16th of April, and reached the harbor he was in on the 8th of June. He had been there several days when Cartier arrived. They held a conference, when the Pilot told the Viceroy that he had left the St. Lawrence because he could not withstand the

De

EVENTS AT NEWFOUNDLAND.

115

natives, who were becoming very hostile. The country, he said, did not seem very fertile, and there were no mines of precious stones and valuable minerals. A few "diamonds"-quartz crystals-which he had gathered, and a small quantity of gold, were all that he had to show of mineral wealth, and he advised De la Roque to go no further, for he could never make a colony on the St. Lawrence profitable to himself or his king. The Viceroy regarded this advice as selfish, believing Cartier's object to be to bear all the honor of his discoveries, and the glory of founding a new empire, himself. De la Roque therefore determined to go on, and ordered Cartier to go with him to the St. Lawrence, not doubting that their united forces might overawe the Indians and secure peace and prosperity. But the Pilot resolved not to submit to the Viceroy. With apparent compliance with the commands of his superior, he returned to his ship. At twilight he secretly conferred with the captains of his two other vessels, and at midnight, when the heavens were cloudy and moonless and the darkness was intense, he escaped from the harbor with his little squadron and sailed for St. Malo. Cartier was then about fifty years of age, and seems to have abandoned the sea, for he afterward lived quietly at St. Malo and at a little village near, alternately. When and where he died is not known. It is believed that he lived in comparative poverty, and died soon after his return from his third voyage to Canada.

Toward the end of June, De la Roque left Newfoundland for the St. Lawrence, passing through the straits of Belle Isle. He did not stop at Quebec, for he found the natives very hostile, as Cartier had told him they were. He went further up the river, probably to the place where the Pilot's vessels were anchored when he sent the two ships back to France the previous year. There De la Roque built a fort, but there is no record of what else he did in Canada, excepting that he and his companions suffered severely during the following winter, and early in June, 1543, made an exploring voyage to the Saguenay, where one of his vessels was lost. In the autumn of that year he returned to France. Finding his king again warring fiercely with his old enemy Charles, against whose empire he had hurled five different armies at as many points, the Viceroy abandoned all projects of foreign colonization and re-entered the military service in which he had often before distinguished himself. Six years later, when Francis was dead (having perished because of his personal excesses at the age of fifty-three years), and Henry the Second, who had married Catharine de Medici, was on the throne of France, the Lord of Robertval again sailed for the St. Lawrence, and was never heard of afterward.

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]

The Protestant Reformation-The Huguenots or French Protestants-Coligny and Catharine de Medici-Permission Granted for a French Protestant Settlement in America-A Settlement Planted on the Coast of South Carolina-The Colony Neglected-Helped by the Natives-A Huguenot Colony in Florida-Friendship of the Natives-They Bui'd a Fort on the St. John's River-Appearance there of a Spanish Fleet-The Colonists Warned Concerning it-The Spaniards Land at the Site of St. Augustine-Fruitless Expedition Against Them.

OW was the period of those earnest theological discussions and intense theological antagonisms in Europe, known as the Era of the Reformation. There had been a revolt in Germany, led by Luther and Melancthon, against the Italian hierarchy or rulers in the Christian Church whose head was the Bishop or Pope of Rome. A similar revolt had broken out in Switzerland, led by Zwingli. It was a movement in favor of intellectual liberty-the perfect equality of all men, in Church and State, in the exercise of the inalienable rights of private judgment in matters of religion and politics. When, at a Diet or Congress held at Spires, in 1529 (at which Luther and several princes who were in sympathy with him appeared), the Church, by a decree, was made master in both spiritual and temporal affairs, the reformers entered a solemn protest. So they acquired for their party the name of protest-ants or PROTESTANTS. They found the Church so strong that they soon afterward formed a league for mutual defence, and so first organized the Reformation as an aggressive moral power. This led to theological and political combinations which resulted, twenty-five years later, in the freedom of the Germans from the domination of the Italian Church. So popular were the doctrines of the Reformers, in Germany, that as early as 1558 not more than one-tenth of the people there were adherents of the Church of Rome.

But that Church was not disposed to yield its supremacy without a struggle, and it put forth all its energies for the maintenance of its power. By the mighty agencies of its traditions, its vantage-ground of possession, the Order of Jesuits which it had just created, and the Inquisition which it had re-established with new powers, its warfare was keen and terrible, and its

E

« AnteriorContinuar »