A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 2

[Footnote 29: From Ramusio, quoted in 'a note of Sebastian Cabot's voyage of discovery' (Hakluyt's _Divers Voyages_, p. 25). For the much-vexed question of the Cabots and their voyages, reference should be made to _John Cabot the Discoverer of North America and Sebastian his son_, by Henry Harrisse, London, 1896; to the _Journal of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real_, edited for the Hakluyt Society by Sir Clements Markham, 1893; to Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol. i, Appendix B, 'The Cabots and their Voyages'; and to Mr. Raymond Beazley's _John and Sebastian Cabot_ ('Builders of Greater Britain' series, 1898). The result of a great deal of learning is after all little but conjecture.]

[Sidenote: _Corte Real._]

The next great voyager to North America was Gaspar Corte Real, a Portuguese. Twice he sailed to the north-west, in 1500 and 1501, on the earlier voyage sighting Greenland {20} and the east coast of Newfoundland, and on the later working north from Chesapeake Bay. He was lost on the second voyage; and his brother Miguel, who went in search of him in 1502, after finding 'many entrances of rivers and havens,' was lost also.[30]

[Footnote 30: The voyages of the Corte Reals are given in Purchas'

_Pilgrims_, pt. 2, bk. x. See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, on Cortereal, Verrazano, &c. See also the volume of the Hakluyt Society referred to in the previous note.]

[Sidenote: _French explorers._]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, Frenchmen took their place among the explorers of the world, and the Norman and Breton seaports began to send their ships across the Atlantic. Denys of Honfleur is said to have reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506; in 1508, Aubert of Dieppe brought American Indians back to France; and in 1518 Baron de Lery made the first, a stillborn, attempt to found a French colony in North America.[31]

[Footnote 31: See above, p. 16, note 23.]

[Sidenote: _Verrazano._]

At the end of the fifteenth century, the consolidation of France had been completed by the marriage of Charles VIII with Anne of Brittany, and from this time France began to compete with Spain. Francis I came to the throne in 1515, and his personal rivalry with Charles V, German Emperor and Spanish King in one, quickened the compet.i.tion between the French and Spanish peoples. Thus it was that the French court turned its attention to the work of exploration, and Francis sent forth the Italian Verrazano with four ships from Dieppe 'to discover new lands by the ocean.'[32] Sailing at the end of 1523, Verrazano was driven back by tempest; but, starting again, he left Madeira to cross the Atlantic on January 17, 1524. He reached the sh.o.r.es of Carolina; then coasted northward, landing at various points; and, having sailed as far north as {21} Newfoundland--'the land that in times past was discovered by the Britons (Bretons), which is in fifty degrees'--he 'concluded to return into France.'

[Footnote 32: From 'The relation of John Verarza.n.u.s,' given in Hakluyt's _Divers Voyages_, p. 55, and there also headed 'The Discovery of Morum Bega' (Norumbega). It is given too in the ordinary collection, vol. iii, p. 357.]

He brought home to his King a sober and systematic report of the North American coast--a report which meant business, and was not tricked out with vague surmises and impossible tales; but, within a year from his return, the strength of France was for a while broken at the battle of Pavia. He himself died soon afterwards, hanged, it is said, by the Spaniards as a pirate; and for ten years there is no record of any French explorer following in his steps, though French ships found their way over the ocean to the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: _Cartier._]

The year 1534 is a memorable one in the annals alike of France and of North America. It is the year from which must be dated the first beginnings of New France on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The discoverer of Canada was Jacques Cartier, a Breton sailor of St.

Malo. He went out to explore the unknown world, not at his own risk, but as the agent of Brian Chabot, High Admiral of France. Sailing from St. Malo, on April 20, 1534, he came to Newfoundland, pa.s.sed through the straits of Belle Isle, and entered the Gulf of St.

Lawrence. He sailed into Chaleurs Bay under the July sun, describing the country as 'hotter than the country of Spain, and the fairest that can possibly be found';[33] and, having set up a cross on Gaspe Peninsula, he reached St. Malo again on September 5, bringing with him two Indian children as living memorials of his voyage.

[Footnote 33: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 257.]

He had discovered a hot, fair land, widely different from the bleak and rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the good report which he brought of his discoveries was more than enough to find him backing for a second venture. Accordingly, in the following year, on May 19, 1535, he sailed again from St. Malo, and, reaching {22} the straits of Belle Isle after storm and tempest, took his way, the first of European explorers, up the great river of Canada. He moored his three ships below the rock of Quebec--then the site of Stadacone, a native Indian village, and the dwelling-place of a chief Donnaconna, who is styled in the narrative the Lord of Canada. There he left his two larger vessels, and pushed on in his pinnace and boats to the town of Hochelaga. That town, the Indians had told him, was the capital of the land; and he found it, palisaded and fortified in native fashion, where Montreal now stands.[34] The Frenchmen were received as G.o.ds by the Indians; they were asked, like the Apostles of old, to touch and heal the sick; and, ever mindful of the duty of spreading the Christian religion, they read the gospel to their savage admirers in the strange French tongue, to cure their souls if they could not mend their bodies.

[Footnote 34: As Mr. Parkman points out (_Pioneers of France_, p.

212), Quebec and Montreal were in old days, as now, the centres of population in Lower Canada. 'Stadacone and Hochelaga, Quebec and Montreal, in the sixteenth century, as in the nineteenth, were the centres of Canadian population.']

Returning down stream to their ships, they pa.s.sed the winter underneath Quebec, amid ice and snow, stricken with scurvy, and distrustful of their Indian neighbours; and at length, on the return of summer, they set sail for France, carrying away the Indian chief Donnaconna and some of his companions, to die in a far-off land. They reached St. Malo in the middle of July, 1536, and so ended Cartier's second voyage to 'the New found lands by him named New France.'[35]

[Footnote 35: End of the narrative of Cartier's second voyage in Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 285.]

[Sidenote: _Failure of Roberval's attempt at colonization._]

Between four and five years pa.s.sed, and then the Breton sailor set out again. This time a definite scheme of settlement was projected, the instructions were more elaborate than before, the preparations were on a larger scale. The money {23} was found by the crown, and the King was to receive one-third of the profits. A French n.o.bleman, De Roberval, was to go out as the King's lieutenant in the New World, and was given the t.i.tle of Lord of Norumbega,[36] while Cartier was appointed Captain-General. The objects of the expedition were to explore, to colonize, and to convert the heathen; and its leaders were, like Columbus, empowered to recruit colonists from the prisons at home. Cartier set out in advance of Roberval, in May, 1541. Again he sailed up the St. Lawrence, reached in his boats a point above Montreal, and, as before, wintered on the river; but this time at the mouth of the Cap Rouge, some way higher up than Quebec. His leader, Roberval, did not start till April, 1542; and, when in June he reached St. John's harbour in Newfoundland, he was met by Cartier, who had broken up his colony in disgust, and was on his way home to France. In spite of Roberval's remonstrances, Cartier left by night on his return voyage, and the Lord of Norumbega went on alone to the St. Lawrence. He planted his settlement at Cap Rouge, where Cartier had last sojourned, but it proved a miserable failure. The supplies were insufficient, the Governor turned out a savage despot, and after about a year the colony came to an end.

[Sidenote: _Norumbega._]

[Footnote 36: As to Norumbega, see Parkman's _Pioneers of France_, pp. 216 and 253, notes, and Justin Winsor, vol. iii, chap. vi, on 'Norumbega and its English explorers.' The writer of this latter chapter (p. 185) says the territory of Norumbega never included Baccalaos, 'though Baccalaos, an old name of Newfoundland, sometimes included New England.' Norumbega, an Indian name, covered the district now included in the state of Maine, and was sometimes extended to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the north, and part of New England on the south. Michael Loki's map (1582) makes Norumbega the whole district between the river and gulf of St. Lawrence and the Hudson. The river of Norumbega was the Pen.o.bscot, and on it a city of Norumbega was given a fabulous existence. Lescarbot (_Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, 1609, bk. i, chap. i) speaks of 'pais qu'on a appelle d'un nom Alleman Norumbega, lequel est par les quarante cinq degrez.']

With this disappointing and disastrous failure, the curtain fell on the prologue of the great drama of New France, and did not rise again for more than fifty years. For the French, {24} as for the English, the sixteenth century was a time of exploring, of training, of making experiments; and it was not till the seventeenth century dawned that permanent colonization began. Then in the Bourbons the French had rulers who, with all their faults, were abler and stronger than the princes of the house of Valois; and in Champlain they had a leader as daring as, and more statesmanlike than, Cartier. But it was by Cartier that the ground had been broken and the seed first sown. His voyages made Canada[37] in some sort familiar to Europeans. He opened the St. Lawrence to be the highway into North America,[38] and he gave to the hill above the native town of Hochelaga the name of the Royal Mount, which is still perpetuated in Montreal. He brought the French into Canada, and, though his settlement failed, the French connexion remained. Fishermen and fur-traders followed in his steps, and in fullness of time the New France, which his discoveries conceived, was brought to birth and grew to greatness.

[Footnote 37: For the meaning of the name 'Canada,' see Parkman's _Pioneers of France_, p. 202, note. It is of Indian origin, probably meaning 'town.' Cartier called the country about Quebec Canada, having Saguenay below and Hochelaga above. Donnaconna, the native chief at Quebec, was called Lord of Canada.]

[Footnote 38: On his second voyage Cartier sailed into a bay at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where he stayed from the eighth to the twelfth of August, and 'named the said gulf St. Lawrence his bay'

(Hakluyt, iii, 263), St. Lawrence's Day being the 10th of August.

Hence the river, which he called the river of Hochelaga or the great river of Canada, derived its name. See Parkman, p. 202.]

[Sidenote: _English exploration in North America in the sixteenth century._]

[Sidenote: _h.o.r.e's voyage._]

[Sidenote: _Acts of Parliament relating to the Newfoundland fisheries._]

A Bristol ship[39] having first discovered North America, it might have been expected that the years succeeding Cabot's voyages would have been fruitful in English adventure to the West; but, as far as records show, little was done by Englishmen during the first half of the sixteenth century to open up the New World; and even Cartier's bold exploits roused little or no spirit of rivalry in Great Britain.

Indeed, all through {25} this century no English voyager seems to have turned his mind to Canada and its river. The explorers went to the Arctic seas, the would-be colonizers to Newfoundland or Virginia.

Between 1500 and 1550 two voyages alone have been actually chronicled, though pa.s.sing reference is made to others. Of these two, the first was in 1527, when Albert de Prado, a canon of St. Paul's, sailed with two ships in search of the Indies, reaching Newfoundland and the North American coast. The second was in 1536, under a leader named h.o.r.e--a voyage of which a graphic account is given in Hakluyt.

On the coast of Newfoundland the adventurers suffered the last extremes of starvation, until at length even cannibalism began among them; and the survivors owed their safety to the coming of a French ship, which they seized and in which they returned home. It is clear, however, that before the middle of the century the Newfoundland fisheries had become a recognized branch of English trade, for the traffic was safeguarded by two Acts of Parliament, one pa.s.sed in 1540, in Henry VIII's reign, the other in 1548, in the reign of King Edward VI. The object of the second Act was to prohibit the exaction of any dues by way of licence from men engaged in the Iceland or Newfoundland fishing trade, and Hakluyt's note upon it is that 'by this Act it appeareth that the trade out of England to Newfoundland was common and frequented about the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, namely, in the year 1548.'[40]

[Footnote 39: For this pa.s.sage, see Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol. i, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 40: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 170.]

[Sidenote: _Return of Sebastian Cabot to England._]

About this date Sebastian Cabot again appears upon the scene. In 1512 he had entered the Spanish service; and, after a visit to England, had returned to Spain, where, from 1518 to 1547, he held the appointment of Pilot-Major to the King and Emperor Charles V.[41] At the end of 1547 or the beginning of 1548, he was induced in his old age to come back to the land, for and from which, more than half a century {26} before, his or his father's great discovery had been made; and King Edward VI rewarded his services by appointing him Grand Pilot in England. His mind was still set on finding a way to the Indies by the Northern Sea. He became governor of 'the mystery and company of the Merchant Adventurers for the discovery of regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown'; and in Hakluyt's pages[42]

may be found his instructions 'for the direction of the intended voyage for Cathay.'

[Footnote 41: See _The Dictionary of National Biography_, s. v.]

[Footnote 42: Vol. i, p. 251.]

[Sidenote: _The North-East Pa.s.sage and Sir Hugh Willoughby._]

[Sidenote: _The Muscovy Company._]

The company was not finally incorporated by royal charter till 1554-5, but in the preceding year, 1553, they sent out an expedition of three ships to try for a North-East Pa.s.sage. The leader of the expedition, Sir Hugh Willoughby, was, with the crews of two ships, frozen to death on the coast of Lapland; but Richard Chancellor, the captain of the third ship, reached the port on which the town of Archangel now stands, and made his way overland to Moscow. This was the beginning of British trade with Russia. The Merchant Adventurers became known as the Muscovy Company, and their efforts were directed to the overland traffic between Asia and Europe, which came by Bokhara, Astrakhan, and the Volga, to the meeting of the east and west at Novgorod.

[Sidenote: _Martin Frobisher._]

But, important as was this new development of trade, the British explorers, whose names have lived, still took their way for the most part over the Atlantic, making ever for the West. In June, 1576, Martin Frobisher sailed from Blackwall to the north-west 'for the search of the straight or pa.s.sage to China.'[43] He sighted Greenland; and, sailing west, came to the inlet in the American coast, north of the Hudson Straits, which, after him, was called Frobisher Bay. This arm of the sea he took to be a pa.s.sage between the two continents, the right-hand coast, as he went west, seeming to be Asia, the left-hand coast America. He came back {27} to Harwich in October, bringing with him a sample of black stone supposed to contain gold; and thus, to the vain hope of a short pa.s.sage to the Indies, he added the more dangerous attraction of possible mineral wealth in the Arctic regions. Men's hopes were raised; a company of Cathay was formed, with Michael Lok for governor; and, as their Captain-General, Frobisher sailed again in May, 1577, 'for the further discovering of the pa.s.sage to Cathay.'[44] Again he sighted Greenland. Again he reached the bay which had been the turning-point of his former voyage. He took possession of the barren northern land in his Queen's name; and, when he came back in September, 'Her Majesty named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a mark and bound utterly hitherto unknown.'[45] The voyage was fruitless, but the stones brought home were still thought to promise gold, and so, in the following May, Frobisher started once more on a third voyage to the north. Fifteen ships went with him from Harwich, bearing 'a strong fort or house of timber'[46] to be set up on arrival in the Arctic regions, and intended to shelter one hundred men through the coming winter. The hundred men included miners, goldfiners, gentlemen, artisans, 'and all necessary persons'[46]--as though this desolate region were to become the scene of a thriving colony. They set sail, reached the coast of Greenland, and claimed it in the Queen's name. They fell in with the Esquimaux; they crossed the channel now known as Davis Strait to the Meta Incognita; and they came back in the autumn with no result beyond the report of a new imaginary island. This was the end of Frobisher's enterprise, but in the next forty years other English sailors followed where he had gone before, and opened up to geographical knowledge fresh stretches of icebound coast and wintry sea. Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and others, gave their names to straits and bays, but it is impossible here to trace the record of their courage and endurance. {28} No quest has ever been so fruitful of daring, patient seamanship, none has ever been so barren of practical results, as that for the North-West Pa.s.sage. What Frobisher went to find in the sixteenth century, Franklin still sought in the nineteenth: and through all the ages of British exploration has run the ever receding hope of finding a short way through ice and snow to the sunny lands of the East.

[Footnote 43: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 52.]

[Footnote 44: Ibid. p. 56.]

[Footnote 45: Ibid. p. 104.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid. p. 105.]

[Sidenote: _Sir Humphrey Gilbert._]