 10 Dominique de Gorgas, 1567-1583. There was a gentleman of Montemarsan, Dominique de Gorgas, a soldier of ancient birth and high renown. It is not certain that he was a Huguenot. The Spanish analyst calls him a terrible heretic, but the French Jesuit, Charlevoix, anxious that the faithful should share the glory of his exploits, affirms that, like his ancestors before him, he was a good Catholic. If so his faith sat lightly upon him, and Catholic or heretic he hated the Spaniards with a mortal hate. Fighting in the Italian wars, for from boyhood he was wedded to the sword, he had been taken prisoner by them near Siena, where he had signalized himself by a fiery and determined bravery. With brutal insult they chained him to the oar as a galley-slave. After he had long endured this ignominy, the Turks captured the vessel and carried her to Constantinople. It was but a chains of tyrants, but soon after, while she was on a cruise, Gorgas, still at the oar, a galley of the Knights of Malta Hove in sight, bore down on her, recaptured her, and set the prisoner free. For several years after his restless spirit found employment in voyages to Africa, Brazil, and regions still more remote. His naval repute rose high, but his grudge against the Spaniards still rankled within him, and when, returning from his rovings, he learned the tidings from Florida, his hot, gas-gun blood boiled with fury. The honor of France had been foully stained, and there was none to wipe away the shame. The faction-ridden king was dumb. The nobles who surrounded him were in the Spanish interest. Then, since they proved recreate, he, Dominique de Gorgas, a simple gentleman, would take upon him to avenge the wrong and restore the dimmed luster of the French name. He sold his inheritance, borrowed money from his brother, who held a high post in Guien, and equipped three small vessels, navigable by sail or oar. On board he placed a hundred archboussiers and eighty sailors, prepared to fight on land if need were. The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieutenant for the king in Guien, gave him a commission to make war on the negroes of Benin, that is, to kidnap them as slaves, and adventure then held honorable. His true design was locked within his own breast. He mustered his followers, not a few of whom were of rank equal to his own, feasted them, and on the twenty-second of August, fifteen-sixty-seven, sailed from the mouth of the charrette. Off Cape Finestor, so violent a storm buffeted his ships that his men clamored to return, but Gorgas's spirit prevailed. He bore away for Africa, and landing at the Rio del Oro, refreshed and cheered them as best he might. Thence he sailed to Cape Blanco, where the jealous Portuguese, who had a fort in the neighborhood, set upon him three negro chiefs. Gorgas beat them off, and remained master of the harbor. Wents, however, he soon voyaged on to Cape Verde, and steering westward, made for the West Indies. Here, advancing from island to island, he came to Hispaniola, where between the fury of a hurricane at sea and the jealousy of the Spaniards on shore, he was in no small jeopardy. The Spaniards exclaimed the indignant journalist, who think that this new world was made for nobody with them, and that no other living man has a right to move or breathe here. Gorgas landed, however, obtained the water of which he was in need, and steered for Cape San Antonio, at the western end of Cuba. There he gathered his followers about him, and addressed them with his fiery Gascon eloquence. For the first time he told them his true purpose, invading against Spanish cruelty, and painted with angry rhetoric the butcheries of Fort Caroline and St. Augustine. What a disgrace, he cried, if such an insult should pass unpunished. What glory to us if we avenge it? To all this I have devoted my fortune. I relied on you. I thought you jealous enough of your country's glory to sacrifice life itself in a cause like this. Was I deceived? I will show you the way. I will be always at your head. I will bear the brunt of the danger. Will you refuse to follow me? At first his startled hearers listened in silence, but soon the passions of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words. The combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthusiasm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gorgas had much to do to make them wait till the moon was full before attempting the perils of the Bahama Channel. As time came at length, the moon rode high above the lonely sea, and, silvered in its light, the ships of the Avenger held their course. Meanwhile it had fared ill with the Spaniards in Florida. The goodwill of the Indians had banished. The French had been obtrusive and vexatious guests, but their worst trespasses had been mercy and tenderness compared to the daily outrage of the newcomers. Friendship had changed to aversion, aversion to hatred, and hatred to open war. The forest paths were beset, stragglers were cut off, and woe to the Spaniard who should venture after nightfall beyond Calvi Outposts. Menendez, however, had strengthened himself in his new conquest. St. Augustine was well fortified, Fort Carillon, now Fort San Mateo, was repaired, and two redoubts, or small forts, were thrown up to guard the mouth of the River of May, one of them near the present lighthouse at Mayport, and the other across the river on Fort George Island. Thence, on an afternoon in early spring, the Spaniards saw three sails steering northward. They suspected no enemy, and their batteries boomed to salute. Gorgazes' ships replied, then stood out to sea, and were lost in the shades of evening. They kept their course all night, and as day broke, anchored at the mouth of a river, the St. Mary's, or the Santilla, by their reckoning fifteen leagues north of the River of May. Here, as it grew light, Gorgazes saw the borders of the sea thronged with savages, armed and plumed for war. They too had mistaken the strangers for Spaniards, and mustered to meet their tyrants at the landing. But in the French ships there was a trumpeter who had been long in Florida, and knew the Indians well. He went towards them in a boat, with many gestures of friendship, and no sooner was he recognized than the naked crowd, with yelps of delight, danced for joy along the sands. Why had he ever left them, they asked, and why had he not returned before? The intercourse thus auspiciously begun was actively kept up. Gorgazes told the principal chief, who was no other than Satoriana, once the ally of the French, that he had come to visit them, make friendship with them, and to bring them presents. At this last announcement, so grateful to Indian ears, the dancing was renewed with double zeal. The next morning was named for a grand council. Satoriana sent runners to summon all Indians within call, while Gorgazes, for safety, brought his vessels within the mouth of the river. Morning came, and the woods were thronged with warriors. Gorgazes and his soldiers landed with Marshall Pomp. In token of mutual confidence, the French laid aside their ark-booses, and the Indians their bows and arrows. Satoriana came to meet the strangers, and seated their commander at his side, on a wooden stool, draped and cushioned with the gray Spanish moss. Two old Indians cleared the spot of brambles, weeds, and grass, and when their task was finished, the tribesmen took their places, ring within ring, standing, sitting, and crouching on the ground. A dusky concourse plumed in festal array, waiting with gray visages and intent eyes. Gorgazes was about to speak, when the chief, who, says the narrator, had not learned French manners, anticipated him, and broke into a vehement harangue, denouncing the cruelty of the Spaniards. Since the French fort was taken, he said, the Indians had had not one happy day. The Spaniards drove them from their cabins, stole their corn, ravished their wives and daughters, and killed their children. All this they had endured because they loved the French. There was a French boy who had escaped from the massacre at the fort. They had found him in the woods, and though the Spaniards who wished to kill him demanded that they should give him up, they had kept him for his friends. Look, pursued the chief, here he is. And he brought forward a youth of sixteen, named Pierre Débre, who became at once of the greatest service to the French, his knowledge of the Indian language making him an excellent interpreter. Despite as he was at this outburst against the Spaniards, Gorgas did not see fit to display the full extent of his satisfaction. He thanked the Indians for their good will, exhorted them to continue in it, and pronounced an ill-married eulogy on the greatness and goodness of his king. As for the Spaniards, he said, their day of reckoning was at hand, and if the Indians had been abused for their love of the French, the French would be their avengers. Here, Saturiana forgot his dignity and leaped up for joy. What, he cried, will you fight the Spaniards? I came here, replied Gorgas, only to reconnoiter the country and make friends with you, and then go back to bring more soldiers. But when I hear that you are suffering from them, I wish to fall upon them this very day and rescue you from their tyranny. Around the ring a clamour of applauding voices greeted his words. But you will do your part, pursued the Frenchman, you will not leave us all the honour. We will go, replied Saturiana, and die with you if need be. Then if we fight we ought to fight at once. How soon can you have your warriors ready to march? The chief asked three days for preparation. Gorgas cautioned him to secrecy, lest the Spaniards should take alarm. Never fear was the answer. We hate them more than you do. Then came the distribution of gifts, knives, hatchets, mirrors, bells, and beads, while the warrior rabble crowded to receive them, with eager faces and outstretched arms. The distribution over, Gorgas asked the chiefs if there was any other matter in which he could serve them. On this, pointing to his shirt, they expressed a peculiar admiration for that garment, and begged each to have one, to be worn at feasts and councils during life and in their graves after death. Gorgas complied, and his grateful Confederates were soon stalking about him, fluttering in the spoils of his wardrobe. To learn the strength and position of the Spaniards, Gorgas now sent out three scouts, and with them went a la Toraca, Satoriana's nephew, a young brave of great renown. The chief, eager to prove his good faith, gave as hostages his only surviving son and his favorite wife. They were sent on board the ships, while the Indians dispersed to their encampments, with leaping, stamping, dancing, and whoops of jubilation. The day appointed came, and with it the savage army, hideous in war-paint, and plumed for battle. The woods rang back their songs and yells, as with frantic gesticulation they brandished their war-clubs and vaunted their deeds of prowess. Then they drank the black drink, endowed with mystic virtues against hardship and danger, and Gorgas himself pretended to swallow the nauseous decoction. These ceremonies consumed the day. It was evening before the Allies filed off into their forests and took the path for the Spanish forts. The French on their part were to repair by sea to the rendez-vous. Gorgas mustered and addressed his men. It was needless, their ardor was at fever-height. They broke in upon his words and demanded to be led at once against the enemy. Ponceois Baudrillet, with twenty sailors, was left with the ships, and Gorgas affectionately bad him farewell. If I am slain in this most just enterprise, he said, I leave all in your charge, and pray you to carry back my soldiers to France. There were many embracings among the excited Frenchmen, many sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind, many messages left with them for wives, children, friends and mistresses, and then this valiant van pushed their boats from shore. It was a hair-brained venture, for as young Deborah had assured them the Spaniards on the river of May were four hundred in number, secure behind their ramparts. Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They glided slowly by the somber shores in the shimmering moonlight, to the sound of surf and the moaning of pine trees. In the gray of the morning they came to the mouth of a river, probably the Nassau, and here a northeast wind set in with a violence that almost wrecked their boats. Their Indian allies were waiting on the banks, but for a while the gale delayed their crossing. The bolder French would lose no time, rode through the tossing waves, and landing safely left their boats and pushed into the forest. Gorgas took the lead, in breastplate and back-piece. At his side marched the young chief, a loturaca, with a French pike in his hand, and the files of Arkbus men and armed sailors followed close behind. They plunged through swamps, hewed their way through brandly thickets and the matted intricacies of the forests, and at five in the afternoon, almost spent with fatigue and hunger, came to a river or inlet of the sea, not far from the Spanish fort. Here they found three hundred Indians waiting for them. Tired as he was, Gorgas would not rest. He wished to attack at daybreak, and with ten Arkbusiers and his Indian guide he set out to reconnoiter. Night closed upon him. It was a vain task to struggle on, in pitchy darkness, among trunks of trees, fallen logs, tangled vines, and swollen streams. Gorgas returned, anxious and gloomy. An Indian chief approached him, read through the darkness his perturbed look, and offered to lead him by a better path along the margin of the sea. Gorgas joyfully assented and ordered all his men to march. The Indians, better skilled in woodcraft, chose the shorter course through the forest. The French forgot their weariness and pressed on with speed. At dawn they and their allies met on the bank of a stream, probably Sister Creek, beyond which and very near was the fort. But the tide was in, and they tried in vain to cross. Greatly vexed, for he had hoped to take the enemy asleep, Gorgas withdrew his soldiers into the forest where they were no sooner ensconced than a drenching rain fell, and they had much adieu to keep their gun-matches burning. The light grew fast. Gorgas plainly saw the fort, the defenses of which seemed to slide and unfinished. He even saw the Spaniards at work within. A feverish interval elapsed till at length the tide was out, so far at least that the stream was affordable. A little higher up a clump of trees lay between it and the fort. Behind this friendly screen the passage was begun. Each man tied his powder-flask to his steel cap, held his arch-bus above his head with one hand, and grasped his sword with the other. The channel was a bed of oysters. The sharp shells cut their feet as they waded through. But the farther bank was gained. They emerged from the water, drenched, lacerated, and bleeding, but with unabated metal. Gorgas set them in a ray under the cover of trees. They stood with kindling eyes and hearts throbbing, but not with fear. Gorgas pointed to the Spanish fort, seen by glimpses through the bowels. Look, he said, there are the robbers who have stolen this land from our king. There are the murderers who have butchered our countrymen. With voices eager, fierce, but half suppressed, they demanded to be let on. Gorgas gave their word. Casanovae, his lieutenant, with thirty men, pushed for the fort gate. He himself with the main body for the glacis. It was near noon, the Spaniards had just finished their meal, and, says the narratives, were still picking their teeth, when a startled cry rang their ears. To arms, to arms! The French are coming! The French are coming! It was the voice of a canineer who had at that moment mounted the rampart and seen the assailants advancing in unbroken ranks, with heads lowered and weapons at the charge. He fired his cannon among them. He even had time to load and fire again, when the light-limbed, a lotaraca, bounded forward, ran up the glacis, leaped the unfinished ditch, and drove his pike through the Spaniard from breast to back. Gorgas was now on the glacis, when he heard Casanovae shouting from the gate that the Spaniards were escaping on that side. He turned and led his men thither at a run. In a moment the fugitives, sixty and all, were enclosed between his party and that of his lieutenant. The Indians came too, leaping to the spot. Not a Spaniard escaped. All were cut down, but a few, reserved by Gorgas for a more inglorious end. Meanwhile the Spaniards in the other fort, on the opposite shore, cannonated the victors without ceasing. The latter turned four captured guns against them. One of Gorgas's boats, a very large one, had been brought along shore, and entering it with eighty soldiers he pushed for the further bank. With loud yells the Indians leaped into the river, which is here about three-fourths of a mile wide. Each held his bow and arrows aloft in one hand while he swam with the other. A panic seized the garrison as they saw the savage multitude. They broke out of the fort and fled into the forest. But the French had already landed, and throwing themselves in the path of the fugitives they greeted them with a storm of lead. The terrified wretches recoiled, but flight was in vain. The Indian woot rang behind them, and war clubs and arrows finished the work. Gorgas's utmost effort saved but fifteen, not out of mercy, but from a refinement of vengeance. The next day was Quasimodo Sunday, or the Sunday after Easter. Gorgas and his men remained quiet, making ladders for the assault on Fort San Mateo. Meanwhile the whole forest was in arms, and far and near the Indians were wild with excitement. They beset the Spanish fort till not a soldier could venture out. The garrison, aware of their danger, though ignorant of his extent, devised an expedient to gain information, and one of them, painted and feathered like an Indian, ventured within Gorgas's outposts. He himself chanced to be at hand, and by his side walked his constant attendant, a Latoraca. The keen-eyed young savage pierced the cheat at a glance. The spy was seized, and being examined declared that there were two hundred and sixty Spaniards in San Mateo, and that they believed the French to be two thousand, and were so frightened that they did not know what they were doing. Gorgas, well pleased, pushed on to attack them. On Monday evening he sent forward the Indians to ambush themselves on both sides of the fort. In the morning he followed with his Frenchman, and as glittering ranks came into view, defiling between the forest and the river, the Spaniards opened on them with culverines from a projecting bastion. The French took cover in the woods with which the hills below and behind the fort were densely overgrown. Here, himself unseen, Gorgas could survey the whole extent of the defenses, and he presently described a strong party of Spaniards issuing from their works, crossing the ditch and advancing to Reconoiter. On this he sent Casanova, with an attachment to station himself at a point well hidden by trees on the flank of the Spaniards, who, with strange impatuation, continued their advance. Gorgas and his followers pushed on through the thickets to meet them. As the Spaniards reached the edge of the open ground, a deadly fire blazed in their faces, and before the smoke cleared the French were among them, soared in hand. The survivors would have fled, but Casanova's detachment fell upon their rear, and all were taken or killed. When their comrades in the fort beheld their fate, a panic seized them. Conscious of their own deeds, perpetrated on this very spot, they could hope no mercy, and their terror multiplied immeasurably the numbers of their enemy. They abandoned the fort in a body and fled into the woods, most remote from the French. But here a deadlier foe awaited them, for a host of Indians leaped up from ambush. Then rose those hideous war cries which have curdled the boldest blood and blanched the manliest cheek. The forest warriors, with savage ecstasy, raked their long arrears of vengeance, while the French hastened to the spot and lent their swords to the slaughter. A few prisoners were saved alive, the rest were slain, and thus did the Spaniards make bloody atonement for the butchery of Fort Caroline. But Gorgas's vengeance was not yet appeased. Hard by the fort, the trees were pointed out to him on which Menendez had hanged his captives, and placed over them the inscription, not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans. Gorgas ordered the Spanish prisoners to be led thither. Do you think, he sternly said, as the pallid wretches stood ranged before him, that so vile a treachery, so detestable a cruelty against a king so potent and a nation so generous, would go unpunished? I, one of the humblest gentlemen among my king's subjects, have charged myself with avenging it. Even if the most Christian and the most Catholic kings had been enemies at deadly war, such perfidity and extreme cruelty would still have been unpardonable. Now that they are friends and close allies, there is no name vile enough to brand your deeds, no punishment sharp enough to wreck with them. But though you cannot suffer as you deserve, you shall suffer all that an enemy can honourably inflict, that your example may teach others to observe the peace and alliance which you have so perfidiously violated. They were hanged where the French had hung before them, and over them was nailed the inscription, burned with a hot iron on a tablet of pine, not as to Spaniards but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers. Gorgas's mission was fulfilled. To occupy the country had never been his intention, nor was it possible, for the Spaniards were still in force at St. Augustine. His was a whirlwind visitation, to ravage, ruin, and vanish. He harangued the Indians and extorted them to demolish the fort. They fell to the work with an eagerness, and in less than a day not one stone was left on another. Gorgas returned to the forts at the mouth of the river, destroyed them also, and took up his march for his ships. It was a triumphal procession. The Indians thronged around the victors with gifts of fish and game, and an old woman declared that she was now ready to die, since she had seen the French once more. The ships were ready for sea. Gorgas bad his disconsolate allies farewell, and nothing would content them but a promise to return soon. Before embarking he addressed his own men. My friends, let us give thanks to God for the success he has granted us. It is he who saved us from tempests. It is he who inclined the hearts of the Indians toward us. It is he who blinded the understanding of the Spaniards. They were four to one, in forts well armed and provisioned. Our right was our only strength, and yet we have conquered. Not to our own swords, but to God only we owe our victory. Then let us thank him, my friends. Let us never forget his favors, and let us pray that he may continue them, saving us from dangers, and guiding us safely home. Let us pray, too, that he may so dispose the hearts of men that our perils and toils may find favour in the eyes of our king and of all France, since all we have done was for the king's service and for the honour of our country. Thus Spaniards and Frenchmen alike laid their reeking swords on God's altar. Gorgas sailed on the third of May, and gazing back along their foaming wake, the adventurers looked their last on the scene of their exploits. Their success had cost its price. A few of their numbers had fallen, and hardships still awaited the survivors. Gorgas, however, reached Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, and the Huguenot citizens greeted him with all honour. At court it fared worse with him. The king, still obsequious to Spain, looked on him coldly in a scance. The Spanish minister demanded his head. It was hinted to him that he was not safe, and he withdrew to Ronan, where he found asylum among his friends. His fortune was gone, debts contracted for his expedition weighed heavily on him, and for years he lived in obscurity, almost in misery. At length his prospects brightened. Elizabeth of England learned his merits and his misfortunes, and invited him to enter her service. The king, who, says the Jesuit historian, had always at heart been delighted with his achievement, openly restored him to favour, while some years later Don Antonio tendered him command of his fleet to defend his right to the crown of Portugal against Philip II. Gorgas, happy once more to cross swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced the offer. But in 1583, on his way to join the Portuguese prince, he died at tour of a sudden illness. The French mourned the loss of the man who had wiped a blot from the national scutcheon, and respected his memory as that of one of the best captains of his time. And in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor and skillful leadership are worthy of honour, then is such a tribute due to Dominique de Gorgas, slave-catcher and half pirate as he was, like other naval heroes of that wild age. Romantic as was his exploit, it lacked the fullness of poetic justice, since the chief offender escaped him. While Gorgas was sailing towards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in favour at court, where he told to approving ears how he had butchered the heretics. Borja, the sainted general of the Jesuits, was his fast friend, and two years later, when he returned to America, the Pope, Paul V, regarding him as an instrument for the conversion of the Indians, wrote him a letter with his benediction. He re-established his power in Florida, rebuilt Fort San Mateo, and taught the Indians that death or flight was the only refuge from Spanish tyranny. They murdered his missionaries and spurned their doctrine. The devil is the best thing in the world, they cried, we adore him, he makes men brave. Even the Jesuits despaired and abandoned Florida in disgust. Menendez was summoned home, where fresh honours awaited him from the crown, though according to the somewhat doubtful assertion of the heretic Grosius, his deeds had left a stain upon his name among the people. He was given command of the armada of three hundred sail and twenty thousand men, which in fifteen seventy-four was gathered at St. Andrew against England and Flanders. But now, at the height of his fortunes, his career was abruptly closed. He died suddenly at the age of fifty-five. Grosius affirms that he killed himself, but in his eagerness to point the moral of his story, he seems to have over-sept the bounds of historic truth. The Spanish bigot was rarely a suicide, for the rites of Christian burial and reposing consecrated ground were denied to the remains of the self-murderer. There is positive evidence, too, in a caudicelle to the will of Menendez, dated at St. Andrew on the fifteenth of September, fifteen seventy-four, that he was on that day seriously ill, though as the instrument declares of sound mind. There is reason, then, to believe that this pious cutthroat died a natural death, crowned with honours and soothed by the consolations of his religion. It was he who crushed French Protestantism in America. To plant religious freedom on this western soil was not the mission of France. It was for her to rear in northern forests the banner of absolutism and of Rome, while among the rocks of Massachusetts England and Calvin fronted her in dogged opposition, long before the ice-crusted pines of Plymouth had listened to the rugged psalmody of the Puritan. The solitudes of western New York and the stern wilderness of Lake Huron were trodden by the iron heel of the soldier and the sand-old foot of the Franciscan friar. France was the true pioneer of the Great West. They who bore the fleur-de-lis were always in the van, patient, daring and indomitable. And foremost on this bright roll of forest chivalry stands the half-forgotten name of Samuel de Champlain. End of Book 10 End of Part 1, The Huguenots in Florida Chapter 1 of Pioneers of France in the New World, Part 2 Champlain and His Associates This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman Part 2 Samuel Champlain and His Associates Chapter 1, Early French Adventure in North America 1488-1543 Part 1 When America was first made known to Europe, the part assumed by France on the borders of that New World was peculiar and is little recognised. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and avarice, and while England, with soberer steps and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France that those barbarous shores first learned to serve the end of peaceful commercial industry. A French writer, however, advances a more ambitious claim. In the year 1488, four years before the first voyage of Columbus, America, he maintains, was found by Frenchmen. Cousin, a navigator of Dieppe, being at sea off the African coast, was forced westward, it is said, by winds and currents to within sight of an unknown shore, where he presently described the mouth of a great river. On board his ship was one Pinzon, whose conduct became so mutinous that on his return to Dieppe Cousin made complaint to the magistracy who, thereupon, dismissed the offender from the maritime service of the town. Pinzon went to Spain, became known to Columbus, told him the discovery, and joined him on his voyage of 1492. To leave this cloudland of tradition and approach the confines of recorded history. The Normans, offspring of an ancestry of conquerors, the Bretons, that stubborn, hardy, unchanging race who, among druid monuments, changeless as themselves, still cling with Celtic obstinacy to the thoughts and habits of the past, the Basques, that primeval people older than history, all frequented from a very early date, the cod banks of Newfoundland. There is some reason to believe that this fishery existed before the voyage of Cabo in 1497. There is strong evidence that it began as early as the year 1504, and it is well established that in 1517, 50 Castilian, French, and Portuguese vessels were engaged in it at once, while in 1527, on the third of August, 11 sail of Norman, one of Breton, and two of Portuguese fishermen were to be found in the Bay of St John. From this time forth, the Newfoundland fishery was never abandoned. French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese made resort to the banks always jealous, often quarrelling, but still drawing up treasure from those exhaustless minds and bearing home bountiful provision against the season of Lent. On this dim verge of the known world, there were other perils than those of the waves. The rocks and shores of those sequestered seas had, so thought the voyagers, other tenants than the seal, the walrus, and the screaming sea fowl, the bears which stole away their fish before their eyes, and the wild natives dressed in seal skins. Griffins, so round the story, infested the mountains of Labrador. Two islands north of Newfoundland were given over to the fiends from whom they derived their name, the Isles of Demons. An old map pictures their occupants at length, devils rampant with wings, horns, and tail. The passing voyager heard the din of their infernal orgies and woe to the sailor or the fisherman who ventured alone into the haunted woods. "'Tru it is,' writes the old cosmographer, today, and I myself have heard it, not from one, but from a great number of the sailors and pilots with whom I have made many voyagers, that when they passed this way they heard in the air on the tops and about the masts a great clamour of men's voices confused and inarticulate, such as you may hear from the crowd at a fair or marketplace, when upon they well knew that the Isle of Demons was not far off, and he adds that he himself, when among the Indians, had seen them so tormented by these infernal persecutors, that they would fall into his arms for relief, upon which, repeating a passage of the Gospel of St John, he had driven the imps of darkness to a speedy Exodus. "'They are comely to look upon,' he further tells us, yet by reason of their malice, that island is of late abandoned, and all who dwelt there have fled for refuge to the main.' While French fishermen plied their trade along these gloomy coasts, the French government spent its energies on a different field. The vitality of the kingdom was wasted in Italian wars. Milan and Naples offered a more tempting prize than the wilds of Bacallus. Eager for glory and for plunder. A swarm of restless nobles followed their night-errant king, the would-be Paladin, who misschapened in body and fantastic in mind, had yet the power to raise a storm which the laps of generations could not quell. Under Charles VIII and his successor, war and intrigue ruled the day, and in the world of Italian politics there was no leisure to think of a new world. Yet a private end-price was not quite benommed. In 1506 one Denis of Hanfleur explored the gulf of St. Lawrence. Two years later, Aubert of Dieppe followed in his track, and in 1518 the Baron de Liri made an abortive attempt at settlement on Sable Island, where the cattle left by him remained and multiplied. The crown passed at length to Francis of Angelum. There were, in his nature, seeds of nobleness, seeds destined to bear little fruit. Chivalry and honour were always on his lips, but Francis I, a foresworn gentleman, a despotic king, vain glorious, selfish, sunk in debaucheries, was but the type of an era which retained the forms of the Middle Age without its soul, and added to a still-prevailing barbarism, the pestilential vices which hung fog-like around the dawn of civilisation. Yet he esteemed arts and letters, and still more coveted the ecla, which they could give. The light which was beginning to pierce the feudal darkness gathered its rays around his throne. Italy was rewarding the robbers who prayed on her with the treasures of her knowledge and her culture, and Italian genius of whatever stamp found ready patronage at the hands of Francis. Among artists, philosophers, and men of letters enrolled in his service stands the humbler name of a Florentine navigator, John Verrazano. He was born of an ancient family which could boast names eminent in Florentine history, and of which the last survivor died in 1819. He has been called a pirate, and he was such in the same sense in which Drake, Hawkins, and other valiant sea rovers of his own in later times merited the name. That is to say, he would plunder and kill a Spanish on the high seas without waiting for a declaration of war. The wealth of the Indies was pouring into the coffers of Charles V, and the exploits of Cortes had given new luster to his crown. Francis I begrudged his hated rival, the glories and profits of the new world. He would feign have his share of the prize, and Verrazano, with four ships, was dispatched to seek out a passage westward to the rich kingdom of Cathay. Some doubt has of late been cast on the reality of this voyage of Verrazano, and evidence, mainly negative in kind, has been induced to prove the story of it a fabrication. But the difficulties of incredulity appear greater than those of belief, and no ordinary degree of skepticism is required to reject the evidence that the narrative is essentially true. Towards the end of the year 1523 his four ships sailed from Dieppe, but a storm fell upon him, and with two of the vessels he ran back in distress to a port of Brittany. What became of the other two does not appear. Neither is it clear why, after a preliminary cruise against the Spaniards, he pursued his voyage with one vessel alone, a caravale called the Dauphine. With her he made for Madeira, and on the 17th of January 1524 set sail from a barren islet in its neighbourhood, and bore away for the unknown world. In forty-nine days they neared a low shore not far from the site of Wilmington in North Carolina. A new land, exclaims the Voyager, never before seen of any man either ancient or modern. Verrazano steered southward in search of a harbour, and finding none turned northward again. Presently he sent a boat ashore. The inhabitants, who had fled at first, soon came down to the strand in wonder and aberration, pointing out a landing-place and making gestures of friendship. These people, says Verrazano, grow altogether naked, except only certain skins of beasts like unto martens, which they fasten unto a narrow girdle made of brass. They are of colour, russet, and not much unlike the Saracens, their hair black, thick, and not very long, which they tie together in a knot behind, and wear it like a tail. He describes the shore as consisting of small low hillocks of fine sand, intersected by creeks and inlets, and beyond these a country full of palm trees, bay trees, and high cypress trees, and many other sorts of trees, unknown in Europe, which yield most sweet savers far from the shore. Still advancing northward, Verrazano sent a boat for a supply of water. The surf ran high, and the crew could not land, but an adventurous young sailor jumped overboard and swam shoreward with a gift of beads and trinkets for the Indians who stood watching him. His heart failed as he drew near. He flung his gift among them, turned, and struck out for the boat. The surf dashed him back, flinging him with violence on the beach among the recipients of his bounty, who seized him by the arms and legs, and, while he called lustily for aid, answered him with outcries designed to allay his terrors. Next, they kindled a great fire, doubtless to roast and devour him before the eyes of his comrades gazing in horror from their boat. On the contrary, they carefully warmed him, and were trying to dry his clothes. When recovering from his bewilderment, he betrayed a strong desire to escape to his friends, whereupon, with great love, clapping him fast about, with many embracings, they led him to the shore and stood watching till he had reached the boat. It only remained to requite this kindness, and an opportunity soon occurred. For coasting the shores of Virginia or Maryland, a party went on shore and found an old woman, a young girl, and several children hiding with great terror in the grass. Having, by various blandagements, gained their confidence, they carried off one of the children as a curiosity, and since the girl was comely, would feign have taken her also, but desisted by reason of her continual screaming. Veretzano's next resting place was the Bay of New York. Rowing up, in his boat, through the narrows, under the steep heights of Staten Island, he saw the harbor within dotted with canoes of the feathered natives coming from the shore to welcome him. But what most engaged the eyes of the white men were the fancied signs of mineral wealth in the neighboring hills. Following the shores of Long Island, they came to an island which may have been Block Island, and thence to a harbor which was probably that of Newport. Here they stayed 15 days, most courteously received by the inhabitants. Among others appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed in painted deer skins, kings, as Veretzano calls them, with attendant gentlemen, while a party of squaws in a canoe kept by their jealous lords at a safe distance from the caravelle, figuring the narrative as the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to its utmost to do the stranger's honor, copper bracelets, lynx skins, raccoon skins, and faces bedorbed with gaudy colors. Again they spread their sails, and on the 5th of May bed farewell to the primitive hospitalities of Newport, steered along the rugged coasts of New England, and surveyed, ill-pleased, the surf-beaten rocks, the pine-tree and the fur, the shadows and the gloom of mighty forests. Here man and nature alike was savage and repellent. Perhaps some plundering straggler from the fishing banks, some man-stealer like the Portuguese Quartereal, or some kidnapper of children and ravisher of squaws like themselves had warned the denizens of the woods to beware of the worshippers of Christ. Their only intercourse was in the way of trade. From the brink of the rocks which overhung the sea the Indians would let down a cord to the boat below, demand fish-hooks, knives, and steel in barter for their furs, and, their bargain made, salute the voyagers with unseemly gestures of derision and scorn. The French once ventured ashore, but a war-whoop and a shower of arrows sent them back to their boats. Cezarno coasted the seaboard of Maine and sailed northward as far as Newfoundland, where, provisions failing, he steered for France. He had not found a passage to café, but he had explored the American coast from the 34th degree to the 50th, and at various points had penetrated several leagues into the country. On the 8th of July he wrote from Dieppe to the King the earliest description known to exist of the shores of the United States. This was the joy that hailed his arrival, and great were the hopes of emolument and wealth from the Newfound shores. The merchants of Lyon were in a flush of expectation. For himself, he was earnest to return, plant a colony, and bring the heathen tribes within the pale of the church. But the time was inauspicious. The year of his voyage was to France a year of disasters, defeat in Italy, the loss of Milan, the death of the heroic Bayard, and while Verrazano was writing his narrative at Dieppe, the trade of Bourbon was invading Provence. Preparation two was soon on foot for the expedition which a few months later ended in the captivity of Francis on the field of Pavia. Without a king, without an army, without money convulsed within and threatened from without, France, after that humiliation, was in no condition to renew her transatlantic enterprise. Henceforth few traces remain of the fortunes of Verrazano. Ramosio affirms that on another voyage he was killed and eaten by savages in sight of his followers, and a late writer hazards the conjecture that this voyage, if made at all, was made in the service of Henry VIII of England. But a Spanish writer affirms that in 1527 he was hanged at Puerto Del Pico as a pirate, and this assertion is fully confirmed by authentic documents recently brought to light. The fickle-minded king, always ardent at the outset of an enterprise and always flagging before its close, divided, moreover, between the smiles of his mistresses and the assaults of his enemies, might probably have dismissed the new world from his thoughts. But among the favourites of his youth was a high-spirited young noble, Philippe de Brion-Chabot, the partner of his joustings in tennis-playing, his gaming, and his gallantries. He still stood high in the royal favour, and after the treacherous escape of Francis from captivity held the office of admiral of France. When the kingdom had rallied in some measure from its amenities, he conceived the purpose of following up the path which Verrazano had opened. The ancient town of Saint-Malo thrust out like a buttress into the sea, strange and grim of aspect, breathing war from its walls and battlements of ragged stone, a stronghold of privateers, the home of a race whose intractable and defiant independence by the time nor change is subdued, has been for centuries a nursery of hardy mariners. Among the earliest and most eminent on its list stands the name of Jacques Cartier. His portrait hangs in the town hall of Saint-Malo. Bold, keen features, bespeaking a spirit not apt to quail before the wrath of man or of the elements. In him, Chabot found a fit agent of his design if, indeed, its suggestion is not due to the Breton navigator. Sailing from Saint-Malo on the 20th of April, 1534, Cartier steered for Newfoundland, passed through the Straits of Belle Isle, entered the Gulf of Chalur, planted a cross at Gaspé, and never doubting that he was on the high road to café, advanced up the St. Lawrence until he saw the shores of Anticoste. But autumnal storms were gathering. The voyages took counsel together, turned their prowess eastward, and bore away for France, carrying Viveur as a sample of their natural products of the new world, two young Indians lured into their clutches by an act of villainous treachery. The voyage was a mere reconnaissance. The spirit of discovery was awakened. A passage to India could be found, and a new France built up beyond the Atlantic. Mingled with such views of interest and ambition was another motive scarcely less potent. The heresy of Luther was convulsing Germany, and the deeper heresy of Calvin infecting France. Devout Catholics kindling with redoubled zeal would feign requite the church for her losses in the old world by winning to her foal the infidels of the new. But in pursuing an end at once so pious and so politic, Francis I was setting at naught the supreme Pontiff himself, since, by the preposterous bull of Alexander VI, all America had been given to the Spaniards. In October 1534, Cartier received from Chabot another commission, and in spite of secret but bitter opposition from jealous traders of San Malo, he prepared for a second voyage. Three vessels, the largest, not above 120 tons, were placed at his disposal, and Claude de Pompriar, Charles de Pomeret, and other gentlemen of birth enrolled themselves for the adventure. On the 16th of May 1535, officers and sailors assembled in the Cathedral of San Malo, where, after confession and mass, they received the parting blessing of the bishop. Three days later, they set sail. The dingy walls of the rude old seaport and the white rocks that lie in the neighboring shores of Brittany faded from their sight, and soon they were tossing in a furious tempest. The scattered ships escaped the danger, and reuniting at the Straits of Bell Isle, steered westward along the coast of Labrador until they reached a small bay opposite the island of Anticoste. Cartier called it the Bay of St. Lawrence, a name afterwards extended to the entire gulf and to the Great River above. To ascend this Great River and tempt the hazards of its intricate navigation with no better pilots than the two young Indians kidnapped the year before, was a venture of no light risk. But skill or fortune prevailed, and on the 1st of September, the voyagers reached in safety the gorge of the gloomy Saguenay, with its towering cliffs and sullen depth of waters. Passing the E. L. Okodra and the lofty promontory of Cape Torment, they came to anchor in a quiet channel between the northern shore and the margin of a richly wooded island, where the trees were so thickly hung with grapes that Cartier named it the Island of Bacchus. Indians came swarming from the shores, paddled their canoes about the ships, and clambered to the decks to gaze in bewilderment at the novel scene and listen to the story of their travelled countrymen, marvellous in their ears as a visit to another planet. Cartier received them kindly, listened to the long harangue of the great chief Donacona, regaled him with bread and wine, and when relieved at length of his guests set forth in a boat to explore the river above. As he drew near the opening of the channel, the Hoshelaga again spread before him the broad expanse of its waters. A mighty promontory rugged and bare thrust its scarped front into the surging current. Here, clothed in the majesty of solitude, breathing the stern poetry of the wilderness rose the cliffs now rich with heroic memories, where the fiery Count Frontenac cast defiance at his foes, where Wolf, on calm and mongomery fell. As yet all was a nameless barbarism, and the cluster of wigwams held the sight of the rock-built city of Quebec. Its name was Stadecone, and it owned the sway of the royal Donacona. Cartier set out to visit this greasy potentate, ascended the river Saint-Charles, called by him the Saint-Croix, landed, crossed the meadows, climbed the rocks, thredded the forest, and emerged upon a squalid hamlet of bark cabins. When having satisfied their curiosity, he and his party were rowing for the ships, a friendly interruption met them at the mouth of the Saint-Charles. An old chief had rang them from the bank. Men, boys, and children, screeched welcome from the meadow, and a group of hilarious squawors danced knee-deep in the water. The gift of a few strings of beads completed their delight, and redoubled their agility, and from the distance of a mile their shrilled songs of jubilation still reached the ears of the receding Frenchman. The hamlet of Stadecone, with its king, Donacona, and its naked lords and princes, was not the metropolis of this forest state, since a town far greater, so the Indians avert stood by the brink of the river many days journey above. It was called Hoshelaga, and this great river itself, with a wide reach of adjacent country, had borrowed its name. Dither, with his two young Indians' guides, Cartier resolved to go. But misgivings seized the guides as time drew near, while Donacona and his tribesmen, jealous of the plan, set themselves to thwart it. The Breton captain turned a deaf ear to their dissuasion, on which, failing to touch his reason, they appealed to his fears. One morning, as the ships lay still at anchor, the French beheld three Indian devils, descending in a canoe towards them, dressed in black and white dog-skins, with faces black as ink and horns long as a man's arm. Thus arrayed they drifted by, while the principal fiend, with fixed eyes, as of one piercing the secrets of futurity, uttered in a loud voice a long harangue. Then they paddled for the shore, and though sooner did they reach it, then each fell flat like a dead man in the bottom of the canoe. Aid, however, was at hand, for Donacona and his tribesmen, rushing pale metal from the adjacent woods, raised the swooning masqueraders, and with shrill clamours, bore them in their arms within the sheltering thickets. Here, for a full half-hour, the French could hear them haranguing in solemn conclave. Then the two young Indians, whom Cartier had brought back from France, came out of the bushes, enacting a pantomime of amazement and terror, clasping their hands and calling on Christ and the Virgin, whereupon Cartier, shouting from the vessel, asked what was the matter. Then they replied that the god, Coudinogne, had sent to warn the French against all attempts to ascend the Great River, since, should they persist, snows, tempests, and drifting ice would requite their rashness with inevitable ruin. The French replied that Coudinogne was a fool, that he could not hurt those who believed in Christ, and that they might tell this to his three messengers. The assembled Indians, with little reverence for their deity, pretended great contentment at this assurance, and danced for joy along the beach. Cartier now made ready to depart, and first he caused the two larger vessels to be towed for safe harbourage within the mouth of the St. Charles. With the smallest, a galleon of forty tons, and two open boats carrying in all fifty sailors besides Pombriand, Lepomere, and other gentlemen, he set out for Hoshelaga. End of chapter one, part one. Recording by David Nicholle, Halifax Nova Scotia. Chapter one of Pioneers of France in the New World, part two, Champlain and his associates. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman, part two, Samuel Champlain and his associates. Chapter one, early French adventure in North America, fourteen eighty-eight to fifteen forty-three, part two. Slowly gliding on their way by walls of verger brightened in the autumnal sun, they saw forests festooned with grapevines and waters alive with wildfowl. They heard the song of the blackbird, the thrush, and as they fondly thought, the nightingale. The galleon grounded. They left her and advancing with the boats alone on the second of October, neared the goal of their hopes, the mysterious hoca-laga. Just below, where now are seen the keys and storehouses of Montreal, a thousand Indians thronged to the shore, wild with delight, dancing, singing, crowding about the strangers, and showering into the boats their gifts of fish and maize. And as it grew dark, fires lighted up the night, while far and near the French could see the excited savages leaping and rejoicing by the blaze. At dawn of day, marshalled and accoutered, they marched for hoca-laga. An Indian path led them through the forest which covered the site of Montreal. The morning air was chill and sharp, the leaves were changing hue, and beneath the oaks the ground was thickly strewn with acorns. They soon met an Indian chief with a party of tribesmen, or as the old narrative has it, one of the principal lords of the said city, attended with a numerous retinue. Greeting them after the concise courtesy of the forest, he led them to a fire kindled by the site of the path for their comfort and refreshment, seated them on the ground, and made them along harangue, receiving in requital of his eloquence, two hatchets, two knives, and a crucifix, the last of which he was invited to kiss. This done, they resumed their march and presently came upon the open fields covered far and near with the ripened maze, its leaves rustling and its yellow grains gleaming between the parting husks. Before them, wrapped in forests painted by the early frosts, rose the ridgey back of the mountain of Montreal, and below, encompassed with its cornfields, lay the Indian town. Nothing was visible but its encircling palisades. They were of trunks of trees set in a triple row. The outer and inner ranges inclined till they met and crossed near the summit, while the upright row between them, aided by transverse braces, gave to the whole an abundant strength. Within were galleries for the defenders, rude ladders to mount them, and magazines of stones to throw down on the heads of assailants. It was a mode of fortification practiced by all the tribes speaking dialects of the Iroquois. The voyagers entered the narrow portal. Within they saw some fifty of those large oblong dwellings so familiar in after years to the eyes of the Jesuit apostles in Iroquois and Huron forests. They were about fifty yards in length, and twelve or fifteen wide, framed of sapling poles closely covered with sheets of bark, and each containing several fires and several families. In the midst of the town was an open area or public square, a stone's throw in width. Here Cartier and his followers stopped, while the surrounding houses of bark disgorged their inmates, swarms of children and young women and old, their infants in their arms. They crowded about the visitors crying for delight, touching their beards, feeling their faces, and holding up the screeching infants to be touched in turn. The marvelous visitors, strange in hue, strange in attire, with mustached lip and bearded chin, with archibus, halberd, helmet, and cuirass, seemed rather demigods than men. Due time having been allowed for this exuberance of feminine rapture, the warriors interposed, banished the women and children to a distance, and squatted on the ground around the French, row within row of swarthy forms and eager faces. As if, says Cartier, we were going to act a play. Then appeared a troop of women, each bringing a mat with which they carpeted the bare earth for the behoof of their guests. The latter being seated, the chief of the nation was born before them on a deerskin by a number of his tribesmen, a bed-ridden old savage, paralyzed and helpless, squalid as the rest in his attire, and distinguished only by a red fillet in rot with the dyed quills of the Canada porcupine and circling his lank black hair. They placed him on the ground at Cartier's feet, and made signs of welcome for him, while he pointed feebly to his powerless limbs, and implored the healing touch from the hands of the French chief. They complied, and received in acknowledgement the red fillet of his grateful patient. Then from surrounding dwellings appeared a woeful throng, the sick, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the decrepit, brought or led forth and placed on the earth before the perplexed commander, as if he says a god had come down to cure them. His skill in medicine being far behind the emergency, he pronounced over his petitioners a portion of the Gospel of St. John, made the sign of the cross and uttered a prayer, not for their bodies only, but for their miserable souls. Next he read the passion of the Saviour, to which, though comprehending not a word, his audience listened with grave attention. Then came a distribution of presence. The squads and children were recalled, and with the warriors placed in separate groups. Knives and hatchets were given to the men and beads to the women, while pewter rings and images of the agnus day were flung among the troop of children, whence ensued a vigorous scramble in the square of Hoka Laga. Now the French trumpeters pressed their trumpets to their lips and blew a blast that filled the air with warlike din and the hearts of the hearers with amazement and delight. Bidding their hosts farewell, the visitors formed their ranks and defiled through the gate once more, despite the efforts of a crowd of women who, with clamorous hospitality, beset them with gifts of fish, beans, corn, and other vians of unenviting aspect, which the Frenchman courteously declined. A troop of Indians followed and guided them to the top of the neighboring mountain. Cartier called it Mont-Royle, Montréal, and hence the name of the busy city, which now holds the sight of the vanished Hoka Laga. Staticone and Hoka Laga, Quebec and Montréal, in the 16th century as in the 19th, were the centres of Canadian population. From the summit, that noble prospect met his eye, which at this day is the delight of tourists, but strangely changed since first of white men, the Breton Voyager gazed upon it. Tower and dome and spire, congregated roofs, white sail and gliding steamer animate its vast expanse with varied life. Cartier saw a different scene. East and west and south, the mantling forest was overall, and the broad blue ribbon of the great river glistened amid a realm of verger. Beyond, to the bounds of Mexico, stretched a leafy desert, and the vast hive of industry, the mighty battleground of later centuries, lay sunk in savage torpor, wrapped in illimitable woods. The French re-embarked, bad farewell to Hoka Laga, retraced their lonely course down the St. Lawrence, and reached Stadacone in safety. On the bank of the St. Charles, their companions had built in their absence a fort of palisades, and the ships hauled up the little stream, lay moored before it. Here the self-exiled company were soon besieged by the rigors of the Canadian winter. The rocks, the shores, the pine trees, the solid floor of the frozen river, all alike were blanketed in snow beneath the keen cold rays of the dazzling sun. The drifts rose up the sides of their ships. Mast spars and cordage were thick with glittering incrustations and sparkling rows of icicles, a frosty armor four inches thick, and cased the bullocks. Yet in the bitterest weather, the neighbouring Indians, hardy, says the journal, as so many beasts, came daily to the fort, wading half-naked waist deep through the snow. At length their friendship began to abate. Their visits grew less frequent, and during December had wholly ceased when a calamity fell upon the French. A malignant scurvy broke out among them. Man after man went down before the hideous disease till twenty-five were dead, and only three or four were left in health. The sound were too few to attend to the sick, and the wretched sufferers lay in helpless despair, dreaming of the sun and the vines of France. The ground, hard as flint, defied their feeble efforts and unable to bury their dead, they hid them in snow drifts. Cartier appealed to the saints, but they turned to deaf ear. Then he nailed against a tree an image of the virgin, and on a Sunday summoned forth his wobegon followers, who, haggard, reeling, bloated with their maladies, moved in procession to the spot and kneeling in the snow, sang litanies and psalms of David. That day died Philippe Rougement of Amboise age twenty-two years. The holy virgin ordained no other response. There was fear that the Indians, learning of their misery, might finish the work that Scurvy had begun. None of them therefore were allowed to approach the fort, and when a party of savages lingered within hearing, Cartier forced his invalid garrison to beat with sticks and stones against the wall, that their dangerous neighbors, deluded by the clatter, might think them engaged in hard labour. These objects of their fear proved, however, the instruments of their salvation. Cartier, walking one day near the river, met an Indian who not long before had been prostrate like many of his fellows with a Scurvy, but who was now to all appearance in high health and spirits. What agency had wrought this marvellous recovery? According to the Indian, it was a certain evergreen, called by him a meida, a decoction of the leaves of which was sovereign against the disease. The experiment was tried. The sick men drank copiously of the healing draught, so copiously indeed, that in six days they drank a tree as large as a French oak. Thus vigorously assailed, the distemper relaxed its hold, and health and hope began to revisit the hapless company. When this winter of misery had worn away, and the ships were thawed from their icy fetters, Cartier prepared to return. He had made notable discoveries, but these were as nothing to the tales of wonder that had reached his ear, of a land of golden rubies, of a nation white like the French, of men who lived without food, and of others to whom nature had granted but one leg. Should he stake his credit on these marvellous? It were better that they who had recounted them to him should, with their own lips, recount them also to the king. And to this end he resolved that Donacana and his chiefs should go with him to court. He lured them, therefore, to the fort, and led them into an emboscott of sailors, whose seizing the astonished guests hurried them on board the ships. Having accomplished this treachery, the voyagers proceeded to plant the emblem of Christianity. The cross was raised, the fleur-de-lis planted near it, and spreading their sales they steered for home. It was the 16th of July, 1536, when Cartier again cast anchor under the walls of Saint Malo. A rigorous climate, a savage people, a fatal disease, and a soil barren of gold were the allurements of New France. Nor were the times auspicious for a renewal of the enterprise. Charles V. flushed with his African triumphs, challenged the most Christian king to single combat. The war flamed forth with renewed fury, and ten years elapsed before a hollow truce varnished the hate of the royal rivals with a thin pretense of courtesy. Peace returned, but Francis I was sinking to his ignominious grave under the scourge of his favorite goddess, and Chabot, patron of the former voyages, in disgrace. Meanwhile, the ominous adventure of New France had found a champion in the purses of Jean-François de la Roque, Sieux de Robertval, a nobleman of Picardy. Though a man of high account in his own province, his past honors paled before the splendor of the titles said to have been now conferred on him. Lord of Norm-Bega, viceroy and lieutenant general in Canada, Huckleaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Balil, Carpent, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Bacalaus. To this windy gift of ink and parchment was added a solid grant from the Royal Treasury, with which five vessels were procured and equipped, and to Cartier was given the post of Captain General. We have resolved, says Francis, to send him again to the lands of Canada and Huckleaga, which formed the extremity of Asia towards the West. His commission declares the objects of the enterprise to be discovery, settlement, and the conversion of the Indians who are described as men without knowledge of God or use of reason. A pious design held doubtless in full sincerity by the royal profligate, now in his decline, a fervent champion of the faith and a strenuous tormentor of heretics. The machinery of conversion was of a character somewhat questionable, since Cartier and Roberval were empowered to ransack the prisons for thieves, robbers, and other malefactors to complete their crews and strengthen the colony. Whereas, says the king, we have undertaken this voyage for the honor of God our creator, desiring with all our heart to do that which shall be agreeable to him. It is our will to perform a compassionate and meritorious work towards criminals and malefactors to the end that they may acknowledge the creator, return thanks to him, and mend their lives. Therefore we have resolved to cause to be delivered to our aforesaid lieutenant, Roberval, such and so many of the aforesaid criminals and malefactors detained in our prisons as may seem to him useful and necessary to be carried to the aforesaid countries. Of the expected profits of the voyage, the adventurers were to have one third and the king another while the remainder was to be reserved towards defraying expenses. With respect to Donacana and his tribesmen, basically kidnapped at Staticon, their souls had been better cared for than their bodies. For having been duly baptized, they all died within a year or two to the great detriment as it proved of the expedition. Meanwhile, from far beyond the Pyrenees, the most Catholic king with alarmed and jealous eye, watched the preparations of his most Christian enemy. America, in his eyes, was one vast province of Spain to be vigilantly guarded against the intruding foreigner. To what end were men mustered and ships fitted out in the Breton seaports? Was it for colonization? And if so, where? Was it in southern Florida or on the frozen shores of Baca Laos, of which Breton codfishers claimed the discovery? Or would the French build forts on the Bahamas once they could wailay the gold ships in the Bahama Channel? Or was the expedition destined against the Spanish settlements of the islands or the main? Reinforcements were dispatched in haste and a spy was sent to France, who, passing from port to port, Quimper, St. Malo, Brest, Morley, came back freighted with exaggerated tales of preparation. The Council of the Indies was called. The French are bound for Baca Laos. Such was the substance of their report. Your Majesty will do well to send two caravels to watch their movements and to force to take possession of the said country. And since there is no other money to pay for it, the gold from Peru, now at Panama, might be used to that end. The Cardinal of Seville thought lightly of the danger and prophesied that the French would reap nothing from their enterprise but disappointment and loss. The King of Portugal, sole acknowledged partner with Spain in the ownership of the New World, was invited by the Spanish ambassador to take part in an expedition against the encroaching French. They can do no harm at Baca Laos, was the cold reply. And so, adds the indignant ambassador, this king would say, if they should come and take him here at Lisbon, such as the softness they show here on the one hand, while on the other, they wished to give law to the whole world. The five ships, occasions of this turmoil and alarm, had laid at Sant Malo waiting for cannon and munitions from Normandy and Champagne. They waited in vain, and as the King's orders were stringent against delay, it was resolved that Cartier should sail at once, leaving Robeval to follow with additional ships when the expected supplies arrived. On the 23rd of May, 1541, the Breton captain again spread his canvas for New France, and passing in safety the tempestuous Atlantic, the fog banks of Newfoundland, the island rocks clouded with screaming sea fowl, and the forests breathing piney odors from the shore, cast anchor again beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Canoes came out from shore filled with feathered savages, inquiring for the kidnapped chiefs. Donaconda replied Cartier is dead, but he added the politic falsehood that the others had married in France and lived in state like great lords. The Indians pretended to be satisfied, but it was soon apparent that they looked a scant on the perfidious strangers. Cartier pursued his course, sailed three leagues and a half up the St. Lawrence, and anchored off the mouth of the river of Cap Rouge. It was late in August, and the leafy landscape sweltered in the sun. The Frenchman landed, picked up quartz crystals on the shore, and thought them diamonds. Climbed to the steep promontory, drank at the spring near the top, looked abroad on the wooded slopes beyond the little river, waded through the tall grass of the meadow, found a quarry of slate, and gathered scales of a yellow mineral which glistened like gold, then returned to their boats, crossed to the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and languid with the heat, rested in the shade of forests laced with an entanglement of grapevines. Now their task began, and while some cleared off the woods and sowed turnip seed, others cut a zig-zag road up the height, and others built two forts, one at the summit and one on the shore below. The forts finished, the Vicente de Beaupris took command while Cartier went with two boats to explore the rapids above Hockilaga. When at length he returned, the autumn was far advanced, and with the gloom of a Canadian November came distrust, foreboding, and homesickness. Roberval had not appeared. The Indians kept jealously aloof. The motley colony was sullen as the dull, raw air around it. There was disgust and ire at Charlebourg Royale, for so the place was called. Meanwhile, unexpected delays had detained the impatient Roberval, nor was it until the 16th of April, 1542, that with three ships and 200 colonists, he set sail from Rochelle. When on the 8th of June, he entered the harbor of Saint-Jean, he found 17 fishing vessels lying there at anchor. Soon after, he described three other sail rounding the entrance of the haven, and with anger and amazement, recognized the ships of Jacques Cartier. That voyager had broken up his colony and abandoned New France. What motives had prompted a desertion little consonant with the resolute spirit of the man it is impossible to say, whether sickness within or Indian enemies without? Disgust with an enterprise whose unripened fruits had proved so hard and bitter, or discontent at finding himself reduced to a post of subordination in a country which he had discovered and where he had commanded. The viceroy ordered him to return, but Cartier escaped with his vessels under cover of night and made sail for France. Carrying with him as trophies a few quartz diamonds from Cap Rouge and grains of sham gold from the neighbouring slate ledges. Thus closed the third Canadian voyage of this notable explorer. His discoveries had gained for him a patent of nobility and he owned the senorial mansion of Limoualu, a rude structure of stone still standing. Here and in the neighbouring town of Saint-Malo, where he also had a house, he seems to have lived for many years. Robert Valle once more set sail, steering northward to the straits of Belial and the dreaded aisles of demons. And here an incident befell which the all-believing Teve records in manifest good faith and which, stripped of the adornments of superstition and the love of the marvellous, has without doubt a nucleus of truth. I give the tale as I find it. The viceroy's company was of a mixed complexion. There were nobles, officers, soldiers, sailors, adventurers, with women too and children. Of the women some were of birth and station and among them a damsel called Marguerite, a niece of Robert Valle himself. In the ship was a young gentleman who had embarked for love of her. His love was too well-requited and the stern viceroy scandalized and enraged at a passion which scorned concealment and set shame at defiance, cast anchor by the haunted island, landed his indiscreet relative, gave her four archibuses for defense, and with an old Norman nurse named Bastien, who had pandered to the lovers, left her to her fate. Her gallant threw himself into the surf and by desperate effort gained to the shore with two more guns and a supply of ammunition. The ship weighed anchor, reseeded, vanished, and they were left alone. Yet not so, for the demon lords of the island beset them day and night, raging around their hut with a confused and hungry clamoring, striving to force the frail barrier. The lovers had repented of their sin, though not abandoned it, and heaven was on their side. The saints vouchsafed their aid and the offended virgin, relenting, held before them her protecting shield. In the form of beasts or other shapes abominably and unutterably hideous, the brood of hell, howling in baffled fury, tore at the branches of the silvan dwelling. But a celestial hand was ever interposed and there was a viewless barrier which they might not pass. Marguerite became pregnant. Here was a double prize, two souls in one, mother and child. The fiends grew frantic but all in vain. She stood undaunted amid these horrors, but her lover, dismayed and heartbroken, sickened and died. Her child soon followed, then the old Norman nurse found her unhollowed rest in that accursed soil and Marguerite was left alone. Neither her reason nor her courage failed. When the demons assailed her, she shot at them with her gun. But they answered with hellish merriment and thenceforth she placed her trust in heaven alone. There were foes around her of the upper no less than of the nether world. Of these the bears were the most redoubtable, yet being vulnerable to mortal weapons, she killed three of them. All says the story, as white as an egg. It was two years and five months from her landing on the island, when, far out at sea, the crew of a small fishing-craft saw a column of smoke curling upward from the haunted shore. Was it a device of the fiends to lure them to their ruin? They thought so and kept aloof. But misgivings seized them. They warily drew near and described a female figure in wild attire waving signals from the strand. Thus at length was Marguerite rescued and restored to her native France, where a few years later the cosmographer Tévet met her at Natron in Périgor and heard the tale of wonder from her own lips. Having left his offending niece to the devils and bears of the Isles of Demons, Roberval held his course up the St. Lawrence and dropped anchor before the heights of Cap Rouge. His company landed. There were bivouacs along the strand, a hubbub of pick and spade, ax, saw and hammer, and soon in the wilderness up rose a goodly structure, half barric, half castle, with two towers, two spacious halls, a kitchen, chambers, storerooms, workshops, sellers, garrets, a well, an oven, and two watermills. Roberval named it France Roy and it stood on that bold aclivity where Cartier had before entrenched himself, the St. Lawrence in front and on the right the river of Cap Rouge. Here all the colony housed under the same roof, like one of the experimental communities of recent days, officers, soldiers, nobles, artisans, laborers, and convicts with the women and children in whom lay the future hope of New France. Experience and forecast had both been wanting. There were storehouses but no stores, mills but no grist, an ample oven, and a dearth of bread. It was only when two of the ships had sailed for France that they took account of their provision and discovered its lamentable shortcoming. Winter and famine followed. They bought fish from the Indians and dug roots and boiled them in whale oil. Disease broke out and before spring killed one third of the colony. The rest would have quarreled, mutinied, and otherwise aggravated their inevitable woes, but disorder was dangerous under the iron rule of the inexorable Roberval. Michel Gaillon was detected in a petty theft and hanged. Jean Donat for a more venial offense was kept in irons. The quarrels of men and the scolding of women were alike requited at the whipping post, by which means, quaintly says the narrative, they lived in peace. Today, while calling himself the intimate friend of the viceroy, gives a darker coloring to his story. He says that, forced to unceasing labor and chafed by arbitrary rules, some of the soldiers fell under Roberval's displeasure and six of them, formerly his favorites, were hanged in one day. Others were banished to an island and there kept in fetters, while for various light offenses, several, both men and women, were shot. Even the Indians were moved to pity and wept at the sight of their woes. And here, midway, our guide deserts us. The ancient narrative is broken and the latter part is lost, leaving us to divine as we may the future of the ill-starred colony. That it did not long survive is certain. The king, in great need of Roberval, sent Cartier to bring him home and this voyage seems to have taken place in the summer of 1543. It is said that in after years, the viceroy essayed to repossess himself of his transatlantic domain and lost his life in the attempt. Teve, on the other hand, with ample means of learning the truth, affirms that Roberval was slain at night near the church of the innocents in the heart of Paris. With him closes the prelude of the French-American drama. Tempestuous years and a rain of blood and fire were in store for France. The religious wars begot the hapless colony of Florida, but for more than half a century, they left New France a desert. Order rose at length out of the sanguinary chaos, the zeal of discovery and the spirit of commercial enterprise once more awoke, while closely following, more potent than they, moved the black-robed forces of the Roman Catholic reaction. End of chapter one, recording by Christine Dufour, pioneer California. Chapter two of Pioneers of France in the New World, part two, Champlain and his associates. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman. Part two, Samuel Champlain and his associates. Chapter two, La Roche Champlain de Mont. 1542 to 1604. Years rolled on. France, long tossed among the surges of civil commotion, plunged at last into a gulf of fratricidal war. Blazing hamlets, sacked cities, fields steaming with slaughter, profane daulters and ravished maidens, marked the track of the tornado. There was little room for schemes of foreign enterprise. Yet far aloof from siege and battle, the fishermen of the western port still plied their craft on the banks of Newfoundland. Humanity, morality, decency might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful inland and on fast days. Still the wandering Eskimos saw the Norman and Breton sails hovering around some lonely headland or anchored in fleets in the harbor of St. John, and still through salt spray and driving mist, the fishermen dragged up the riches of the sea. In January and February 1545, about two vessels a day sailed from French ports for Newfoundland. In 1565, Pedro Menendez complains that the French ruled despotically in those parts. In 1578, there were 150 French fishing vessels there besides 200 of other nations, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Added to these were 20 or 30 Biscayne whalers. In 1607, there was an old French fisherman at Canso who had voyage to these seas for 42 successive years. But if the wilderness of ocean had its treasures, so too had the wilderness of woods. It needed but a few knives, beads, and trinkets, and the Indians would throng to the shore burdened with the spoils of their winter hunting. Fishermen threw up their old vocation for the more lucrative trade in bear skins and beaver skins. They built rude huts along the shores of Anticoste, where at that day the bison, it is said, could be seen wallowing in the sands. They outraged the Indians, they quarreled with each other, and this infancy of the Canadian fur trade showed rich promise of the disorders which marked its ripe growth. Others, meanwhile, were ranging the gulf in search of walrus tusks, and the year after the battle of Ivory, Samalo sent out a fleet of small craft in quest of this new prize. In all the western seaports, merchants and adventurers turned their eyes towards America, not like the Spaniards seeking treasures of silver and gold, but the more modest gains of codfish and train oil, beaver skins, and marine ivory. Samalo was conspicuous above them all. The rugged Bretons loved the perils of the sea and saw with a jealous eye every attempt to shackle their activity on this its favorite field. When in 1588, Jacques Noël and Estien Chaton, the former and nephew of Cartier and the latter pretending to be so, gained a monopoly of the American fur trade for 12 years, such a clamor arose within the walls of Samalo that the obnoxious grant was promptly revoked. But soon a power was in the field against which all Samalo might clamor in vain. A Catholic nobleman of Brittany, the Marquis de la Roche, bargained with the king to colonize New France. On his part, he was to receive a monopoly of the trade and a profusion of worthless titles and empty privileges. He was declared Lieutenant-General of Canada, Hokalaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, and the country's adjacent with sovereign power within his vast and ill-defined domain. He could levy troops, declare war and peace, make laws, punish or pardon at will, build cities, forts, and castles, and grant out lands in fiefs, seniors, counties, vicounties, and baronies. Thus was a feat and cumbers feudalism to make a lodgement in the New World. It was a scheme of high-sounding promise, but in performance less than contemptible. La Roche ransacked the prisons and gathering thence a gang of thieves and desperados embarked them in a small vessel and set sail to plant Christianity and civilization in the West. Suns rose and set and the wretched bark, deep-frated with brutality and vice, held on her course. She was so small that the convicts, leaning over her side, could wash their hands in the water. At length on the gray horizon, they described a long gray line of ridgy sand. It was Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia. A wreck lay stranded on the beach and the surf broke ominously over the long submerged arms of sand, stretched far out into the sea on the right hand and the left. Here La Roche landed the convicts forty in number while with his more trusty followers he sailed to explore the neighboring coasts and choose a site for the capital of his new dominion to which in due time he proposed to remove the prisoners. But suddenly a tempest from the West assailed him. The frail vessel was forced to run before the gale which howling on her track drove her off the coast and chased her back towards France. Meanwhile the convicts watched in suspense for the returning sail, days passed, weeks passed and still they strained their eyes in vain across the waste of ocean. La Roche had left them to their fate. Roofful and desperate, they wandered among the sand hills through the stunted wordleberry bushes, the rank sand grass and the tangled cranberry vines which filled the hollows. Not a tree was to be seen but they built huts of the fragments of the wreck. For food they caught fish in the surrounding sea and hunted the cattle which ran wild about the island, sprung perhaps from those left here eighty years before by the Baron de Léry. They killed seals, trapped black foxes and clothed themselves in their skins. Their native instincts clung to them in their exile as if not content with inevitable miseries they quarreled and murdered one another. Season after season dragged on, five years elapsed and of the forty only twelve were left alive. Sand, sea and sky, there was little else around them. Though to break the dead monotony the walrus would sometimes rear his half human face and glistening sides on the reefs and sandbars. At length on the far verge of the watery desert they described a sail. She stood on towards the island. A boat's crew landed on the beach and the exiles were once more among their countrymen. When La Roche returned to France the fate of his followers sat heavy on his mind but the day of his prosperity was gone. A host of enemies rose against him and his privileges and it is said that the Duke de Mercur seized him and threw him into prison. In time however he gained a hearing of the king and the Norman pilot, Chef Dottel, was dispatched to bring the outcasts home. He reached Sable Island in September 1603 and brought back to France eleven survivors whose names are still preserved. When they arrived Henry IV summoned them into his presence. They stood before him says an old writer like river gods of yore for from head to foot they were clothed in shaggy skins and beards of prodigious length hung from their swarthy faces. They had accumulated on their island a quantity of valuable furs of these Chef Dottel had robbed them but the pilot was forced to disgorge his prey and with the aid of a bounty from the king they were enabled to embark on their own account in the Canadian trade. To their leader fortune was less kind. Broken by disaster and imprisonment La Roche died miserably. In the meantime on the ruin of his enterprise a new one had been begun. Pongrav a merchant of Sam Malo lead himself with Chauvin a captain of the Navy who had influence at court. A patent was granted to them with a condition that they should colonize the country but their only thought was to enrich themselves. At Tadusac at the mouth of the Sikini under the shadow of savage and inaccessible rocks feathered with pines, furs and birch trees they built a cluster of wooden huts and store houses. Here they left 16 men to gather the expected harvest of furs. Before the winter was over several of them were dead and the rest scattered through the woods living on the charity of the Indians. But a new era had dawned on France. Exhausted with 30 years of conflict she had sunk at last to a repose uneasy and disturbed yet the harbinger of recovery. The rugged soldier whom for the wheel of France and of mankind Providence had cast to the troubled surface of affairs was thrown in the Louvre composing the strife of factions and the quarrels of his mistresses. The bear hunting prince of the Pyrenees wore the crown of France and to this day as one gazes on the time-worn front of the Tweedleries above all other memories rises the small strong finger the brow wrinkled with cares of love and war the bristling mustache the grizzled beard the bold, vigorous and with all somewhat odd features of the mountaineer of Warn. Too few has human liberty owed so deep a gratitude or so deep a grudge. He cared little for creeds or dogmas. Impressible, quick in sympathy his grim lip lighted often with a smile and his war-worn cheek was no stranger to a tear. He forgave his enemies and forgot his friends. Many loved him, none but fools trusted him. Mingled of mortal good and ill frailty and force of all the kings who for two centuries and more had sat on the throne of France Henry IV alone was a man. Art, industry and commerce so long crushed and overborn were stirring into renewed life and a crowd of adventurous men nurtured in war and incapable of repose must seek employment for the restless energies in fields of peaceful enterprise. Two small quaint vessels not larger than the fishing craft of Gloucester and Marblehead one was of twelve, the other of fifteen tons held their way across the Atlantic past the tempestuous headlands of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence and with adventurous night errantry glided deep into the heart of the Canadian wilderness. On board of one of them was the Breton merchant Pongrav and with him a man of spirit widely different a Catholic of good family Samuel de Champlain born in 1567 at the small seaport of Pronage on the Bay of Biscay. His father was a captain in the Royal Navy where he himself seems also to have served though during the war he had fought for the king in Brittany under the banners of Dommand, Saint-Luc and Brissac. His purse was small his merit great and Henry IV out of his own slender revenues had given him a pension to maintain him near his person but rest was penance to him. The war in Brittany was over the rebellious Duke de Merqueur was reduced to obedience and the Royal Army disbanded. Champlain, his occupation gone conceived a design consonant with his adventure as nature. He would visit the West Indies and bring back to the king a report of those regions of mystery when Spanish jealousy excluded foreigners and where every intruding Frenchman was threatened with death. Here much knowledge was to be won and much peril to be met. The joint attraction was resistless. The Spaniards, allies of the vanquished Leaguers were about to evacuate Blavet their last stronghold in Brittany. Wither Champlain repaired and here he found an uncle who had charge of the French fleet destined to take on board the Spanish garrison. Champlain embarked with them and reaching Cadiz succeeded with the aid of his relative who had just accepted the post of pilot general of the Spanish Marine in gaining command of one of the ships about to sail for the West Indies under Don Francisco Colombo. At Dieppe there is a curious old manuscript in clear, decisive and somewhat formal handwriting of the 16th century garnished with 61 colored pictures in a style of art which a child of 10 might emulate. Here one may see ports, harbors, islands and rivers adorned with portraitures of birds, beasts and fishes there too pertaining. Here are Indian feasts and dances Indians flogged by priests for not going to mass Indians burned alive for heresy six in one fire Indians working the silver mines Here too are descriptions of natural objects each with its illustrative sketch some drawn from life and some from memory as for example a chameleon with two legs others from hearsay among which is the portrait of the griffin said to haunt certain districts of Mexico a monster with the wings of a bat the head of an eagle and the tail of an alligator this is Champlain's journal written and illustrated by his own hand in that defiance of perspective an absolute independence of the cannons of art which marked the earliest efforts of the pencil a true hero after the chivalrous medieval type his character was dashed largely with the spirit of romance though earnest, sagacious and penetrating he leaned to the marvelous and the faith which was the life of his hard career was somewhat prone to overstep the bounds of reason and invade the domain of fancy hence the erratic character of some of his exploits and hence his simple faith in the Mexican griffin his West Indian adventure occupied him more than two years he visited the principal ports of the islands made plans and sketches of the mall after his fashion and then landing at Vera Cruz journeyed inland to the city of Mexico on his return he made his way to Panama here more than two centuries and a half ago his bold and active mind conceived the plan of a ship canal across the isthmus by which he says the voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by more than 1500 leagues on reaching France he repaired to court and it may have been at this time that a royal patent raised him to the rank of the untitled nobility he soon wearied of the antechambers of the Louvre it was here however that his destiny awaited him and the work of his life was unfolded Amir de Chaste commander of the order of Saint John and governor of Dieppe a gray haired veteran of the civil wars wished to mark his closing days with some notable achievement for France and the church to know man was the king more deeply indebted in his darkest hour when the hosts of the league were gathering round him when friends were falling off and the Parisians exulting in his certain ruin were hiring the windows of the Rue Saint Antoine to see him led to the Bastille de Chaste without condition or reserve gave up to him the town and castle of Dieppe thus was he enabled to fight beneath its walls the battle of Arc the first in a series of successes which secured his triumph and he had been heard to say that to this friend in his adversity he owed his own salvation and that of France de Chaste was one of those men who amid the strife of factions and rage of rival fanaticism make reason and patriotism their watch words and stand on the firm ground of a strong and resolute moderation he had resisted the madness of Liger and Huguenot alike yet though a foe of the league the old soldier was a devout Catholic and it seemed in his eyes a noble consummation of his life to plant the cross and the fleur de lis in the wilderness of New France Chauvin had just died after wasting the lives of a score or more of men in a second and third attempt to establish the fur trade at Tadusac de Chaste came to court to beg a patent of Henry IV and says his friend Champlain though his head was crowned with gray hairs as with years he resolved to proceed to New France in person and dedicate the rest of his days to the service of God and his king the patent costing nothing was readily granted and de Chaste to meet the expenses of the enterprise and forestall the jealousies which his monopoly would awaken among the keen merchants of the western ports formed a company with a more prominent of them Pongrav who had some knowledge of the country was chosen to make a preliminary exploration this was the time when Champlain fresh from the West Indies appeared at court de Chaste knew him well young, ardent, yet ripe in experience a skillful seamen and a practised soldier he above all others was a man for the enterprise he had many conferences with the veteran under whom he had served in the royal fleet off the coast of Brittany de Chaste urged him to accept a post in his new company and Champlain, nothing loath, consented provided always that permission should be had from the king to whom he says, I was bound no less by birth than by the pension with which his majesty honoured me to the king therefore de Chaste repaired the needful consent was gained and armed with a letter to Pongrav Champlain set out for en fleur here he found his destined companion and embarking with him as we have seen they spread their sails for the West like specks on the broad bosom of the waters the two pygmy vessels held their course up the lonely St. Lawrence they passed Abandoned Tadusac the Channel of Orléans and the gleaming cataract of Montmorency the tenetless rock of Quebec the wide lake of St. Peter and its crowded archipelago till now the mountain reared before them its rounded shoulder above the forest plain of Montréal all was solitude Hoka Laga had vanished and of the savage population that Cartier had found here sixty-eight years before no trace remained in its place were a few wandering Algonquins of different tongue and lineage in a skiff with a few Indians Champlain essayed to pass the rapids of St. Louis ores, paddles, and poles alike proved vain against the foaming surges and he was forced to return on the deck of his vessel the Indians drew rude plans of the river above with its chain of rapids its lakes and cataracts and the baffled explorer turned his prow homeward the objects of his mission accomplished but his own adventurous curiosity unscathed when the voyagers reached Avre de Kras a grievous blow awaited them the commander de Shostes was dead his mantle fell upon Pierre du Guaste, Sire de Mont gentlemen in ordinary of the king's chamber and governor of Paul's undaunted by the fate of La Roche this nobleman petitioned the king for leave to colonize Lacadi or Akadi a region defined as extending from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude or from Philadelphia to beyond Montréal the king's minister, Sully, as he himself tells us opposed the plan on the ground that the colonization of this northern wilderness would never repay the outlay but de Mont gained his point he was made lieutenant general in Acadia with vise regal powers and withered feudalism with her antique forms and tinseled follies was again to seek a new home among the rocks and pine trees of Nova Scotia the foundation of the enterprise was a monopoly of the fur trade and in its favor all past grants were unceremoniously annulled Saint Malo, Rouen, Dieppe and Rochelle greeted the announcement with unavailing outcries patents granted and revoked, monopolies decreed and extinguished had involved the unhappy traders in ceaseless embarrassment de Mont, however, preserved de Chasse's old company and enlarged it thus making the chief malcontents sharers in his exclusive rights and converting them from enemies into partners a clause in his commission empowered him to impress idlers and vagabonds as material for his colony an ominous provision of which he largely availed himself his company was strangely incongruous the best and the meanest of France were crowded together in his two ships here were thieves and ruffians dragged on board by force and here were many volunteers of condition and character with Baron de Putrencourt and the indefatigable Champlain here too were Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers for though de Mont was a Calvinist the church as usual displayed her banner in the van of the enterprise and he was forced to promise that he would cause the Indians to be instructed in the dogmas of Rome end of chapter two recording by Christine Dufour pioneer California