The White and the Gold (7 page)

Taking none of the unfriendly natives with him as guides, Cartier and fifty of his men went on in the pinnace. After nine days of easy sailing they reached what is now the island of Montreal. Here they were greeted by a thousand natives with demonstrations of wonder and delight. If Cartier’s description is to be accepted, Hochelaga itself was the most formidable settlement in the whole of North America. It stood in the midst of broad cleared fields, at the base of a mountain which he proceeded to christen Mount Royal. The city was round and “compassed about with timber, with three courses of rampires, one within another, framed like sharp spikes.” The city had one entrance only, which was kept shut and well guarded with stakes
and bars. Over the entrance, and in many places along the palisades as well, there was a platform for use in defending against attacks. The platform was full of stones to be dropped on the heads of besiegers.

Inside the walls were about fifty houses, built all of wood. Some of them were fifty paces long and twelve or fifteen broad. They were covered over with bark “very finely and cunningly joined together.” Each of these houses had a center court for the making of fires and they were cut up into many rooms, lodgings, and chambers.

The people of Hochelaga gathered in a central court to welcome the white men officially. Their chief, a veteran so afflicted with palsy that his legs had lost all power of movement, was carried in on the shoulders of ten braves and deposited on a stag’s skin. The old man begged the white chief to cure him, and Cartier responded by rubbing the afflicted limbs.

The most interesting information gleaned at Hochelaga, by means of gestures, had to do with the nature of the country. The existence of the Kingdom of Saguenay was confirmed and was confidently asserted to lie along the powerful Ottawa, which emptied into the St. Lawrence at one end of the island on which Hochelaga stood. Pointing to the silver chain of Cartier’s whistle and the handle of a dagger of copper-gilt dangling at the belt of a sailor, one of the natives made it clear that these metals were to be found in the country through which the Ottawa ran. A word of warning accompanied this information. The land where the silver and gold would be found belonged to
Agojudas
, who were cruel and wicked people. It was explained also that the country of Canada extended much farther to the west, that it was enclosed by immense lakes and guarded by waterfalls of great height.

In the minds of recent historians some doubts have been lodged as to the accuracy of Cartier’s description of Hochelaga. They point out that he returned there on his third voyage but made no mention of the place. Furthermore, Samuel de Champlain, who would visit the island nearly a century later, found nothing there at all, nor has anyone since discovered traces of the existence of such a large community.

As a result, there is a tendency to wonder if the report of the sea captain of St. Malo was exaggerated for a purpose. Could it be that this section of his report was designed to encourage hopes in King Francis of great wealth to be found in the New World? Was the
emphasis laid on the legend of the Kingdom of Saguenay a part of the same conspiracy?

A settlement of some importance existed there without a doubt. Cartier’s description might very well have been applied to the Iroquois villages which Champlain saw later in the country of the Finger Lakes in northern New York. It could not, therefore, be sheer fabrication. It may have been that a hand other than Cartier’s was responsible for certain interpolations which colored the version far beyond the limits of the truth. The mariner of St. Malo was a man of honest purpose, lacking the guile to invent such stories. The fact that in this part of the report there are faulty nautical references which a skilled and meticulous navigator would not use may be adduced as proof that some changes were made after the document was out of his hands. It may be pointed out further that Cartier was dead before the documents were published.

One thing is certain: if Hochelaga existed as set forth in the Cartier report, it soon thereafter vanished. This is understandable in the light of what Champlain found later. There was no trace of either Stadacona or Hochelaga when he followed in the footsteps of Cartier. The Indian tribes which the latter had seen had disappeared from the face of the earth, being replaced by entirely new stock.

Whether or not the Indians living under the shelter of Mount Royal ever built themselves such elaborate defenses and lived under bark roofs ingeniously contrived, there can be no doubt that they were a superior race. They were tall and vigorous, with strongly aquiline features and skins the hue of copper. Cartier speaks with wonder of their strength and powers of endurance. They had considerable skill at agriculture, and the cleared space about the settlement was filled with ripening corn and other cereals. It was indeed a noble prospect spread out before the eyes of the one and fifty brave Frenchmen. This was the time of harvest and the trees were loaded with fruit. A pleasant haze of heat still lay over the land, but the russets and reds and yellows of autumn were already showing themselves. The deep, invigorating waters of the river raced by the shore with the promise of plentiful fish.

Here was a land of plenty, and a better and truer picture to take back to the King of France, grasping though he might be, than stories of a fabulous kingdom where gold could be picked up on the streets and the natives strutted with rubies in their neckbands. If Francis, the great sophisticate, desired an empire across the seas,
here it was: a land where men could live and raise fat crops and, in the course of time, increase and multiply, not a run-down and debased civilization which could be squeezed of its wealth and then abandoned.

The men who had been left at Stadacona while Cartier made his trip to Mount Royal had utilized the time in building a stockade on the banks of the Lairet, a small tributary of the St. Charles. It was solidly fortified, with cannon from the ships mounted to command all approaches. The commander’s first care was to strengthen it still further. He had a moat dug around it and constructed a drawbridge as the only means of entrance. Fifty of the men were selected to garrison this fort while the rest remained on the ships. Watches were set at all hours of the day and night and bugles were sounded to warn the lurking red men that the visitors were vigilant. Here the party settled in for the winter. Perhaps Cartier looked sometimes at the great rocky heights looming up over Stadacona and wished that he had been able to build his fort on that impregnable peak.

From the middle of November the ships were solidly held in the frozen waters of the St. Lawrence. The cold was more intense than the Frenchmen had ever conceived possible and they suffered from it a great deal. Snow fell frequently in considerable volume along the northern shores of France, but Cartier’s men had never seen anything to equal the blanket of white in which the world was now wrapped. The flakes came down endlessly, falling from the gray skies in a damp and ghostly silence until no other color was left in the world, and the drifts climbed like besieging foes as high as the narrow slits in the walls where the sentries stood. It turned the trees into white wigwams when it did not bank them over, an implacable as well as a silent antagonist. There was no use in clearing it away, for it blew back incessantly, and what had been an open path at twilight was a great white drift by dawn. Sometimes the snow was incredibly lovely: when the sun was out and the cold set the blood in human veins to pounding furiously and the surface of white was like a vast tray in a goldsmith’s shop, sparkling with diamonds.

The chief menace for the closed-in Frenchmen, however, was the lack of fresh food. A disease of which they knew little began to manifest itself early, scurvy, the inveterate foe of seamen. Their gums
rotted and their teeth fell out; their limbs became swollen and scarred with clotted blood. Eight men died before the end of the year, and the disease became progressively worse as the rigors of January and February held nature in an iron clutch. The mortality became such that Cartier had to bury the victims at night under the drifts of snow. This was necessary so that the ever-watchful Indians, egged on by Taignoagny, “that craftie knave,” would not know how fast the ranks were being depleted. Those who were well enough were set to work at hammering and sawing so that the savages would be convinced a healthy activity existed both on shore and in the hulls of the ships.

It was not until fifty men had perished miserably that a cure was discovered. The disease was also taking its toll in the crowded and stinking wigwams of Stadacona, and Damagaya had been stricken with it finally. One day Cartier, who remained hale and healthy himself, met his one-time interpreter walking on the snowbanked surface of the river, clad in the thinnest of skin coat and leggings. Damagaya explained that he had been restored to full health by the use of the bark and leaves of the white spruce, which made an infallible cure when ground up and boiled.

This medicine was tried with some reservations, but in no time at all—a mere matter of weeks, in fact—all traces of scurvy had left the fort on the Lairet, and the crews on the ships had become normal and filled with new activity and spirits.

During the latter stages of the winter Donnacona and Taignoagny were missing from the Indian encampment. Later they returned, and it was found then that they had been with the more warlike tribes of the south. They had brought back with them a band of auxiliaries, fierce-looking strangers who hid themselves in Stadacona and whose presence was discovered by chance. A sense of mounting fear took possession of the Frenchmen, for it was now clear that at the first opportunity the red men, aided by these grim allies, would launch an attack.

Cartier decided to get away as soon as the river became navigable. He laid his plans so carefully that the natives, crafty and alert, had no suspicion of his purpose. On May 3, when the broken ice was churning and roaring down the great river, he erected another tall cross on the riverbank near the fort with a scroll carrying the words,
Franciscus Primus Dei Gratia Francorum Rex Regnat
. Then he invited a party of the Indians, including Donnacona and the two
interpreters, to come aboard the ships for feasting and exchange of presents. The Indians, who were anxious to discover for themselves the state of the French defenses, came willingly in response. Ten climbed the bulwarks and were promptly made prisoners.

The next day, May 6, 1536, the flagship and the little pinnace hauled up their anchors and started off on the return voyage. It was necessary to leave the
Petite Hermine
in a state of emptiness at anchor, the size of the party having been cut down too sharply by the ravages of the disease to make it possible for them to navigate all three. Donnacona and his fellows were allowed to stand on deck and shout reassuringly to the tribesmen who followed sullenly and sorrowfully in their inadequate canoes.

Cartier was taking back the certain knowledge that here was a great continent ripe for settlement, fair land which could be made into the empire so avidly desired by the ambitious King and a rewarding home for the poor of the overflowing cities and towns of France.

F
RANCIS I is said to have listened with deep attention to Cartier’s verbal report of the second voyage, studying the sea captain with quick, darting glances of his tawny eyes. Later the monarch talked with Donnacona, who had acquired in the meantime some knowledge of the French language. This was a chance for the unhappy chief to indulge in the lengthy periods and the elaborate metaphors of native oratory; and Donnacona, without a doubt, spoke so warmly of Canada that the royal listener found himself stirred to a deep interest. They presented quite a contrast: the debonair King with his appliquéd and jeweled sleeves puffed out like twin cobras, his slashed doublet of rich hues trimmed with the rare genet which only royalty was permitted to use, his chains of gold and his magnificent rings; and the unkempt red man in his frayed leggings and scanty skin shirt, causing a twitch of distaste at the end of the fastidious royal nose.

From one cause and another Francis became convinced that the continent over the western rim of the world was worth his royal attention. The Spanish Ambassador, whose master wanted to keep the rest of the nations out of America, had the ears of spies at all diplomatic keyholes, and word came to him promptly that Francis was getting ready to act. The French King, he was told, was talking much about the remarkable discoveries which would be made soon in the country of the “River of Cod.”

Soon thereafter Francis succeeded in making a truce with Charles of Spain and felt free to consider again the question of America. He had to move cautiously because he knew that Charles would regard any efforts to claim a part of the New World as a hostile act. Time passed, therefore, before the decision was made. Francis decided
finally to send a larger expedition to Canada than any his rival had sent out.