14: Part 2: Chapter IV
<< 13: Part 2: Chapter III || 15: Part 2: Chapter V >>
Evil reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease,
misery, and death, had heralded the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had
been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his
friends cold, his enemies active and keen. Poutrincourt, however, was
still full of zeal; and, though his private affairs urgently called for
his presence in France, he resolved, at no small sacrifice, to go in
person to Acadia. He had, moreover, a friend who proved an invaluable
ally. This was Marc Lescarbot, "avocat en Parlement," who had been
roughly handled by fortune, and was in the mood for such a venture,
being desirous, as he tells us, "to fly from a corrupt world," in which
he had just lost a lawsuit. Unlike De Monts, Poutrincourt, and others of
his associates, he was not within the pale of the noblesse, belonging to
the class of "gens de robe," which stood at the head of the bourgeoisie,
and which, in its higher grades, formed within itself a virtual
nobility. Lescarbot was no common man,—not that his abundant gift of
verse-making was likely to avail much in the woods of New France, nor
yet his classic lore, dashed with a little harmless pedantry, born not
of the man, but of the times; but his zeal, his good sense, the vigor of
his understanding, and the breadth of his views, were as conspicuous as
his quick wit and his lively fancy. One of the best, as well as
earliest, records of the early settlement of North America is due to his
pen; and it has been said, with a certain degree of truth, that he was
no less able to build up a colony than to write its history. He
professed himself a Catholic, but his Catholicity sat lightly on him;
and he might have passed for one of those amphibious religionists who in
the civil wars were called "Les Politiques."
De Monts and Poutrincourt bestirred themselves to find a priest, since
the foes of the enterprise had been loud in lamentation that the
spiritual welfare of the Indians had been slighted. But it was Holy
Week. All the priests were, or professed to be, busy with exercises and
confessions, and not one could be found to undertake the mission of
Acadia. They were more successful in engaging mechanics and laborers for
the voyage. These were paid a portion of their wages in advance, and
were sent in a body to Rochelle, consigned to two merchants of that
port, members of the company. De Monts and Poutrincourt went thither by
post. Lescarbot soon followed, and no sooner reached Rochelle than he
penned and printed his Adieu a la France, a poem which gained for him
some credit.
More serious matters awaited him, however, than this dalliance with the
Muse. Rochelle was the centre and citadel of Calvinism,—a town of
austere and grim aspect, divided, like Cisatlantic communities of later
growth, betwixt trade and religion, and, in the interest of both,
exacting a deportment of discreet and well-ordered sobriety. "One must
walk a strait path here," says Lescarbot, "unless he would hear from the
mayor or the ministers." But the mechanics sent from Paris, flush of
money, and lodged together in the quarter of St. Nicolas, made day and
night hideous with riot, and their employers found not a few of them in
the hands of the police. Their ship, bearing the inauspicious name of
the "Jonas," lay anchored in the stream, her cargo on board, when a
sudden gale blew her adrift. She struck on a pier, then grounded on the
flats, bilged, careened, and settled in the mud. Her captain, who was
ashore, with Poutrincourt, Lescarbot, and others, hastened aboard, and
the pumps were set in motion; while all Rochelle, we are told, came to
gaze from the ramparts, with faces of condolence, but at heart well
pleased with the disaster. The ship and her cargo were saved, but she
must be emptied, repaired, and reladen. Thus a month was lost; at
length, on the thirteenth of May, 1606, the disorderly crew were all
brought on board, and the "Jonas" put to sea. Poutrincourt and Lescarbot
had charge of the expedition, De Monts remaining in France.
Lescarbot describes his emotions at finding himself on an element so
deficient in solidity, with only a two-inch plank between him and death.
Off the Azores, they spoke a supposed pirate. For the rest, they
beguiled the voyage by harpooning porpoises, dancing on deck in calm
weather, and fishing for cod on the Grand Bank. They were two months on
their way; and when, fevered with eagerness to reach land, they listened
hourly for the welcome cry, they were involved in impenetrable fogs.
Suddenly the mists parted, the sun shone forth, and streamed fair and
bright over the fresh hills and forests of the New World, in near view
before them. But the black rocks lay between, lashed by the snow-white
breakers. "Thus," writes Lescarbot, "doth a man sometimes seek the land
as one doth his beloved, who sometimes repulseth her sweetheart very
rudely. Finally, upon Saturday, the fifteenth of July, about two o'clock
in the afternoon, the sky began to salute us as it were with
cannon-shots, shedding tears, as being sorry to have kept us so long in
pain; . . . but, whilst we followed on our course, there came from the
land odors incomparable for sweetness, brought with a warm wind so
abundantly that all the Orient parts could not produce greater
abundance. We did stretch out our hands as it were to take them, so
palpable were they, which I have admired a thousand times since."
It was noon on the twenty-seventh when the "Jonas" passed the rocky
gateway of Port Royal Basin, and Lescarbot gazed with delight and wonder
on the calm expanse of sunny waters, with its amphitheatre of woody
hills, wherein he saw the future asylum of distressed merit and
impoverished industry. Slowly, before a favoring breeze, they held their
course towards the head of the harbor, which narrowed as they advanced;
but all was solitude,—no moving sail, no sign of human presence. At
length, on their left, nestling in deep forests, they saw the wooden
walls and roofs of the infant colony. Then appeared a birch canoe,
cautiously coming towards them, guided by an old Indian. Then a
Frenchman, arquebuse in hand, came down to the shore; and then, from the
wooden bastion, sprang the smoke of a saluting shot. The ship replied;
the trumpets lent their voices to the din, and the forests and the hills
gave back unwonted echoes. The voyagers landed, and found the colony of
Port Royal dwindled to two solitary Frenchmen.
These soon told their story. The preceding winter had been one of much
suffering, though by no means the counterpart of the woful experience of
St. Croix. But when the spring had passed, the summer far advanced, and
still no tidings of De Monts had come, Pontgrave grew deeply anxious. To
maintain themselves without supplies and succor was impossible. He
caused two small vessels to be built, and set out in search of some of
the French vessels on the fishing stations. This was but twelve days
before the arrival of the ship "Jonas." Two men had bravely offered
themselves to stay behind and guard the buildings, guns, and munitions;
and an old Indian chief, named Memberton, a fast friend of the French,
and still a redoubted warrior, we are told, though reputed to number
more than a hundred years, proved a stanch ally. When the ship
approached, the two guardians were at dinner in their room at the fort.
Memberton, always on the watch, saw the advancing sail, and, shouting
from the gate, roused them from their repast. In doubt who the
new-comers might be, one ran to the shore with his gun, while the other
repaired to the platform where four cannon were mounted, in the valorous
resolve to show fight should the strangers prove to be enemies. Happily
this redundancy of mettle proved needless. He saw the white flag
fluttering at the masthead, and joyfully fired his pieces as a salute.
The voyagers landed, and eagerly surveyed their new home. Some wandered
through the buildings; some visited the cluster of Indian wigwams hard
by; some roamed in the forest and over the meadows that bordered the
neighboring river. The deserted fort now swarmed with life; and, the
better to celebrate their prosperous arrival, Poutrincourt placed a
hogs-head of wine in the courtyard at the discretion of his followers,
whose hilarity, in consequence, became exuberant. Nor was it diminished
when Pontgrave's vessels were seen entering the harbor. A boat sent by
Pountrincourt, more than a week before, to explore the coasts, had met
them near Cape Sable, and they joyfully returned to Port Royal.
Pontgrave, however, soon sailed for France in the "Jonas," hoping on his
way to seize certain contraband fur-traders, reported to be at Canseau
and Cape Breton. Poutrincourt and Champlain, bent on finding a better
site for their settlement in a more southern latitude, set out on a
voyage of discovery, in an ill-built vessel of eighteen tons, while
Lescarbot remained in charge of Port Royal. They had little for their
pains but danger, hardship, and mishap. The autumn gales cut short their
exploration; and, after visiting Gloucester Harbor, doubling Monoinoy
Point, and advancing as far as the neighborhood of Hyannis, on the
southeast coast of Massachusetts, they turned back, somewhat disgusted
with their errand. Along the eastern verge of Cape Cod they found the
shore thickly studded with the wigwams of a race who were less hunters
than tillers of the soil. At Chatham Harbor—called by them Port
Fortune—five of the company, who, contrary to orders, had remained on
shore all night, were assailed, as they slept around their fire, by a
shower of arrows from four hundred Indians. Two were killed outright,
while the survivors fled for their boat, bristling like porcupines with
the feathered missiles,—a scene oddly portrayed by the untutored
pencil of Champlain. He and Poutrincourt, with eight men, hearing the
war-whoops and the cries for aid, sprang up from sleep, snatched their
weapons, pulled ashore in their shirts, and charged the yelling
multitude, who fled before their spectral assailants, and vanished in
the woods. "Thus," observes Lescarbot, "did thirty-five thousand
Midianites fly before Gideon and his three hundred." The French buried
their dead comrades; but, as they chanted their funeral hymn, the
Indians, at a safe distance on a neighboring hill, were dancing in glee
and triumph, and mocking them with unseemly gestures; and no sooner had
the party re-embarked, than they dug up the dead bodies, burnt them, and
arrayed themselves in their shirts. Little pleased with the country or
its inhabitants, the voyagers turned their prow towards Port Royal,
though not until, by a treacherous device, they had lured some of their
late assailants within their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads
as trophies. Near Mount Desert, on a stormy night, their rudder broke,
and they had a hair-breadth escape from destruction. The chief object of
their voyage, that of discovering a site for their colony under a more
southern sky, had failed. Pontgrave's son had his hand blown off by the
bursting of his gun; several of their number had been killed; others
were sick or wounded; and thus, on the fourteenth of November, with
somewhat downcast visages, they guided their helpless vessel with a pair
of oars to the landing at Port Royal.
"I will not," says Lescarbot, "compare their perils to those of Ulysses,
nor yet of Aeneas, lest thereby I should sully our holy enterprise with
things impure."
He and his followers had been expecting them with great anxiety. His
alert and buoyant spirit had conceived a plan for enlivening the courage
of the company, a little dashed of late by misgivings and forebodings.
Accordingly, as Poutrincourt, Champlain, and their weather-beaten crew
approached the wooden gateway of Port Royal, Neptune issued forth,
followed by his tritons, who greeted the voyagers in good French verse,
written in all haste for the occasion by Lescarbot. And, as they
entered, they beheld, blazoned over the arch, the arms of Prance,
circled with laurels, and flanked by the scuteheons of De Monts and
Poutrincourt.
The ingenious author of these devices had busied himself, during the
absence of his associates, in more serious labors for the welfare of the
colony. He explored the low borders of the river Equille, or Annapolis.
Here, in the solitude, he saw great meadows, where the moose, with their
young, were grazing, and where at times the rank grass was beaten to a
pulp by the trampling of their hoofs. He burned the grass, and sowed
crops of wheat, rye, and barley in its stead. His appearance gave so
little promise of personal vigor, that some of the party assured him
that he would never see France again, and warned him to husband his
strength; but he knew himself better, and set at naught these comforting
monitions. He was the most diligent of workers. He made gardens near the
fort, where, in his zeal, he plied the hoe with his own hands late into
the moonlight evenings. The priests, of whom at the outset there had
been no lack, had all succumbed to the scurvy at St. Croix; and
Lescarbot, so far as a layman might, essayed to supply their place,
reading on Sundays from the Scriptures, and adding expositions of his
own after a fashion not remarkable for rigorous Catholicity. Of an
evening, when not engrossed with his garden, he was reading or writing
in his room, perhaps preparing the material of that History of New
France in which, despite the versatility of his busy brain, his good
sense and capacity are clearly made manifest.
Now, however, when the whole company were reassembled, Lescarbot found
associates more congenial than the rude soldiers, mechanics, and
laborers who gathered at night around the blazing logs in their rude
hall. Port Royal was a quadrangle of wooden buildings, enclosing a
spacious court. At the southeast corner was the arched gateway, whence a
path, a few paces in length, led to the water. It was flanked by a sort
of bastion of palisades, while at the southwest corner was another
bastion, on which four cannon were mounted. On the east side of the
quadrangle was a range of magazines and storehouses; on the west were
quarters for the men; on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the
principal persons of the company; while on the south, or water side,
were the kitchen, the forge, and the oven. Except the Garden-patches and
the cemetery, the adjacent ground was thickly studded with the Stumps of
the newly felled trees.
Most bountiful provision had been made for the temporal wants of the
colonists, and Lescarbot is profuse in praise of the liberality of Du
Monte and two merchants of Rochelle, who had freighted the ship "Jonas."
Of wine, in particular, the supply was so generous, that every man in
Port Royal was served with three pints daily.
The principal persons of the colony sat, fifteen in number, at
Poutrincourt's table, which, by an ingenious device of Champlain, was
always well furnished. He formed the fifteen into a new order,
christened "L'Ordre de Bon-Temps." Each was Grand Master in turn,
holding office for one day. It was his function to cater for the
company; and, as it became a point of honor to fill the post with
credit, the prospective Grand Master was usually busy, for several days
before coming to his dignity, in hunting, fishing, or bartering
provisions with the Indians. Thus did Poutrincourt's table groan beneath
all the luxuries of the winter forest,—flesh of moose, caribou, and
deer, beaver, otter, and hare, bears and wild-cats; with ducks, geese,
grouse, and plover; sturgeon, too, and trout, and fish innumerable,
speared through the ice of the Equille, or drawn from the depths of the
neighboring bay. "And," says Lescarbot, in closing his bill of fare,
"whatever our gourmands at home may think, we found as good cheer at
Port Royal as they at their Rue aux Ours in Paris, and that, too, at a
cheaper rate." For the preparation of this manifold provision, the Grand
Master was also answerable; since, during his day of office, he was
autocrat of the kitchen.
Nor did this bounteous repast lack a solemn and befitting ceremonial.
When the hour had struck, after the manner of our fathers they dined at
noon, the Grand Master entered the hall, a napkin on his shoulder, his
staff of office in his hand, and the collar of the Order—valued by
Lescarbot at four crowns—about his neck. The brotherhood followed,
each bearing a dish. The invited guests were Indian chiefs, of whom old
Memberton was daily present, seated at table with the French, who took
pleasure in this red-skin companionship. Those of humbler degree,
warriors, squaws, and children, sat on the floor, or crouched together
in the corners of the hall, eagerly waiting their portion of biscuit or
of bread, a novel and much coveted luxury. Being always treated with
kindness, they became fond of the French, who often followed them on
their moose-hunts, and shared their winter bivouac.
At the evening meal there was less of form and circumstance; and when
the winter night closed in, when the flame crackled and the sparks
streamed up the wide-throated chimney, and the founders of New France
with their tawny allies were gathered around the blaze, then did the
Grand Master resign the collar and the staff to the successor of his
honors, and, with jovial courtesy, pledge him in a cup of wine. Thus
these ingenious Frenchmen beguiled the winter of their exile.
It was an unusually mild winter. Until January, they wore no warmer
garment than their doublets. They made hunting and fishing parties, in
which the Indians, whose lodges were always to be seen under the
friendly shelter of the buildings, failed not to bear part. "I
remember," says Lescarbot, "that on the fourteenth of January, of a
Sunday afternoon, we amused ourselves with singing and music on the
river Equille; and that in the same month we went to see the
wheat-fields two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in the
sunshine."
Good spirits and good cheer saved them in great measure from the scurvy;
and though towards the end of winter severe cold set in, yet only four
men died. The snow thawed at last, and as patches of the black and oozy
soil began to appear, they saw the grain of their last autumn's sowing
already piercing the mould. The forced inaction of the winter was over.
The carpenters built a water-mill on the stream now called Allen's
River; others enclosed fields and laid out gardens; others, again, with
scoop-nets and baskets, caught the herrings and alewives as they ran up
the innumerable rivulets. The leaders of the colony set a contagious
example of activity. Poutrincourt forgot the prejudices of his noble
birth, and went himself into the woods to gather turpentine from the
pines, which he converted into tar by a process of his own invention;
while Lescarbot, eager to test the qualities of the soil, was again, hoe
in hand, at work all day in his garden.
All seemed full of promise; but alas for the bright hope that kindled
the manly heart of Champlain and the earnest spirit of the vivacions
advocate! A sudden blight fell on them, and their rising prosperity
withered to the ground. On a morning, late in spring, as the French were
at breakfast, the ever watchful Membertou came in with news of an
approaching sail. They hastened to the shore; but the vision of the
centenarian sagamore put them all to shame. They could see nothing. At
length their doubts were resolved. A small vessel stood on towards them,
and anchored before the fort. She was commanded by one Chevalier, a
young man from St. Malo, and was freighted with disastrous tidings. Dc
Monts's monopoly was rescinded. The life of the enterprise was stopped,
and the establishment at Port Royal could no longer be supported; for
its expense was great, the body of the colony being laborers in the pay
of the company. Nor was the annulling of the patent the full extent of
the disaster; for, during the last summer, the Dutch had found their way
to the St. Lawrence, and carried away a rich harvest of furs, while
other interloping traders had plied a busy traffic along the coasts,
and, in the excess of their avidity, dug up the bodies of buried Indians
to rob them of their funeral robes.
It was to the merchants and fishermen of the Norman, Breton, and
Biscayan ports, exasperated at their exclusion from a lucrative trade,
and at the confiscations which had sometimes followed their attempts to
engage in it, that this sudden blow was due. Money had been used freely
at court, and the monopoly, unjustly granted, had been more unjustly
withdrawn. De Monts and his company, who had spent a hundred thousand
livres, were allowed six thousand in requital, to be collected, if
possible, from the fur-traders in the form of a tax.
Chevalier, captain of the ill-omened bark, was entertained with a
hospitality little deserved, since, having been intrusted with sundry
hams, fruits, spices, sweetmeats, jellies, and other dainties, sent by
the generous De Monts to his friends of New France, he with his crew had
devoured them on the voyage, alleging that, in their belief, the inmates
of Port Royal would all be dead before their arrival.
Choice there was none, and Port Royal must be abandoned. Built on a
false basis, sustained only by the fleeting favor of a government, the
generous enterprise had come to naught. Yet Poutrincourt, who in virtue
of his grant from De Monts owned the place, bravely resolved that, come
what might, he would see the adventure to an end, even should it involve
emigration with his family to the wilderness. Meanwhile, he began the
dreary task of abandonment, sending boat-loads of men and stores to
Canseau, where lay the ship "Jonas," eking out her diminished profits by
fishing for cod.
Membertou was full of grief at the departure of his friends. He had
built a palisaded village not far from Port Royal, and here were
mustered some four hundred of his warriors for a foray into the country
of the Armouchiquois, dwellers along the coasts of Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, and Western Maine. One of his tribesmen had been killed by a
chief from the Saco, and he was bent on revenge. He proved himself a
sturdy beggar, pursuing Pontrincourt with daily petitions,—now for a
bushel of beans, now for a basket of bread, and now for a barrel of wine
to regale his greasy crew. Memberton's long life had not been one of
repose. In deeds of blood and treachery he had no rival in the Acadian
forest; and, as his old age was beset with enemies, his alliance with
the French had a foundation of policy no less than of affection. In
right of his rank of Sagamore, he claimed perfect equality both with
Poutrincourt and with the King, laying his shrivelled forefingers
together in token of friendship between peers. Calumny did not spare
him; and a rival chief intimated to the French, that, under cover of a
war with the Armouchiquois, the crafty veteran meant to seize and
plunder Port Royal. Precautions, therefore, were taken; but they were
seemingly needless; for, their feasts and dances over, the warriors
launched their birchen flotilla and set out. After an absence of six
weeks they reappeared with howls of victory, and their exploits were
commemorated in French verse by the muse of the indefatigable Lescarbot.
With a heavy heart the advocate bade farewell to the dwellings, the
cornfields, the gardens, and all the dawning prosperity of Port Royal,
and sailed for Canseau in a small vessel on the thirtieth of July.
Pontrincourt and Champlain remained behind, for the former was resolved
to learn before his departure the results of his agricultural labors.
Reaching a harbor on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, six leagues west
of Cansean, Lescarbot found a fishing-vessel commanded and owned by an
old Basque, named Savalet, who for forty-two successive years had
carried to France his annual cargo of codfish. He was in great glee at
the success of his present venture, reckoning his profits at ten
thousand francs. The Indians, however, annoyed him beyond measure,
boarding him from their canoes as his fishing-boats came alongside, and
helping themselves at will to his halibut and cod. At Cansean—a harbor
near the strait now bearing the name—the ship Jonas still lay, her
hold well stored with fish; and here, on the twenty-seventh of August,
Lescarbot was rejoined by Poutrincourt and Champlain, who had come from
Port Royal in an open boat. For a few days, they amused themselves with
gathering raspberries on the islands; then they spread their sails for
France, and early in October, 1607, anchored in the harbor of St. Malo.
First of Europeans, they had essayed to found an agricultural colony in
the New World. The leaders of the enterprise had acted less as merchants
than as citizens; and the fur-trading monopoly, odious in itself, had
been used as the instrument of a large and generous design. There was a
radical defect, however, in their scheme of settlement. Excepting a few
of the leaders, those engaged in it had not chosen a home in the
wilderness of New France, but were mere hirelings, without wives or
families, and careless of the welfare of the colony. The life which
should have pervaded all the members was confined to the heads alone. In
one respect, however, the enterprise of De Monts was truer in principle
than the Roman Catholic colonization of Canada, on the one hand, or the
Puritan colonization of Massachusetts, on the other, for it did not
attempt to enforce religions exclusion.
Towards the fickle and bloodthirsty race who claimed the lordship of the
forests, these colonists, excepting only in the treacherous slaughter at
Port Fortune, bore themselves in a spirit of kindness contrasting
brightly with the rapacious cruelty of the Spaniards and the harshness
of the English settlers. When the last boat-load left Port Royal, the
shore resounded with lamentation; and nothing could console the
afflicted savages but reiterated promises of a speedy return.
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