Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom — John Shaqi
Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to KingdomLaut, Agnes C.
History
Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom
Laut, Agnes C.
Canada -- History
Cartier had been home only a month when the Admiral of France ordered him
to prepare for another voyage. He himself was to command the _Grand
Hermine_, Captain Jalobert the _Little Hermine_, and Captain Le Breton
the _Emerillon_. Young gentlemen adventurers were to accompany the
explorers. The ships were provisioned for two years; and on May 16,
1535, all hands gathered to the cathedral, where sins were confessed, the
archbishop's blessing received, and Cartier given a Godspeed to the music
of full choirs chanting invocation. Three days later anchors were
hoisted. Cannon boomed. Sails swung out; and the vessels sheered away
from the roadstead while cheers rent the air.
Head winds held the ship back. Furious tempests scattered the fleet. It
was July 17 before Cartier sighted the gull islands of Newfoundland and
swung up north with the tide through the brown fogs of Belle Isle Straits
to the shining gravel of Blanc Sablon. Here he waited for the other
vessels, which came on the 26th.
The two Indians taken from Gaspé now began to recognize the headlands of
their native country, telling Cartier the first kingdom along the Great
River was Saguenay, the second Canada, the third Hochelaga. Near Mingan,
Cartier anchored to claim the land for France; and he named the great
waters St. Lawrence because it was on that saint's day he had gone
ashore. The north side of Anticosti was passed, and the first of
September saw the three little ships drawn up within the shadow of that
somber gorge cut through sheer rock where the Saguenay rolls sullenly out
to the St. Lawrence. The mountains presented naked rock wall. Beyond,
rolling back . . . rolling back to an impenetrable wilderness . . . were
the primeval {13} forests. Through the canyon flowed the river, dark and
ominous and hushed. The men rowed out in small boats to fish but were
afraid to land.
As the ships advanced up the St. Lawrence the seamen could scarcely
believe they were on a river. The current rolled seaward in a silver
flood. In canoes paddling shyly out from the north shore Cartier's two
Indians suddenly recognized old friends, and whoops of delight set the
echoes ringing.
Keeping close to the north coast, russet in the September sun, Cartier
slipped up that long reach of shallows abreast a low-shored wooded island
so laden with grapevines he called it Isle Bacchus. It was the Island of
Orleans.
Then the ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high
rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of
Montmorency leaping from precipice to river bed with roar of thunder.
Cartier had anchored near the west end of Orleans Island when there came
paddling out with twelve canoes, Donnacona, great chief of Stadacona,
whose friendship was won on the instant by the tales Cartier's Indians
told of France and all the marvels of the white man's world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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