A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 4

By the end of the seventeenth century the French had three spheres of influence and colonization in North America--the country of the St.

Lawrence, the seaboard between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the New England colonies, and Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi.

To join them and encircle the English colonies was the aim of French statesmanship. It was an impossible aim, inevitably frustrated by geographical conditions and by want of colonists; but the conception was a great one, large as the new continent in which it was framed, and able men tried to work it out, but tried in vain.

[Sidenote: _The French as colonizers._]

Much has been written of French methods of colonization; writers have been at pains to enumerate the shortcomings of the French, and have carefully explained whence those mistakes arose. But there is less to wonder at in the failures than in the great successes to be credited to France. Being {37} part of the continent of Europe, and ever embroiled in continental politics, when she competed with England as a colonizing power, she competed with one hand tied.[2] Changeable, it is said, were the French and their policy; their kings and courtiers may have been changeable, but the charge does not lie against the French nation.

[Footnote 2: This is pointed out in Professor Seeley's _Expansion of England_, course i, lecture 5.]

They were trading up the Senegal early in the seventeenth century, and there they are at the present day. From the dawn of their colonial enterprise they tried to obtain possession of Madagascar; they have their object now. Nearly four centuries ago they fished off the coasts of Newfoundland, and England has good cause to know that they fish there still. To the St. Lawrence went Cartier from St.

Malo, and by the same route generations of Frenchmen entered steadily into America, until Quebec had fallen and the St. Lawrence was theirs no more. The French were versatile in their colonial dealings; they were quickly moving and constantly moving; but they saw clearly and they followed tenaciously; they were strong and staunch, and they proved themselves to be a wonderful people.

Yet there must have been some element of weakness in the French character, in that they bred and obeyed bad rulers who did not live for France, but for whom France was sacrificed; who crushed liberty, political and religious, who drove out industry with the Huguenots, and squandered the heritage of the nation. Englishmen, comparatively early in their history, reckoned with priests first and with kings afterwards. They did most of their work at home before they made their colonial empire; they colonized new worlds as a reformed people; the French tried to colonize under absolutism and priestcraft. It might not have been so, it probably would not have been so, if the religious policy of the French Government had been other than it was. {38} The Huguenots, if not persecuted and eventually in great measure driven out, would have given France the one thing wanting to make her colonization successful, the spirit of private enterprise independent of court favour, the child and the parent of freedom, the determined foe of a deadening religious despotism.

[Sidenote: _Attempts at French colonization in Brazil and Florida._]

In the sixteenth century, after Cartier's voyages to the St.

Lawrence, we hear little of the French in North America. The Breton fishermen followed their calling, crossed the Atlantic year after year, and came back with cargoes of fish and with furs procured by barter with the Indians; but no French settlement was founded either in Canada or in Acadia. In France itself the last half of the century was a time of civil war; the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew took place, the house of Valois came to an end, and in 1589 Henry of Navarre became King of France. Before his accession to the Crown, two attempts at French colonization were made, in Brazil and in Florida.

The colonists were mainly Huguenots, and their enterprise was backed by the great Protestant leader Coligny. The earlier attempt, designed to plant a settlement on the harbour of Rio Janeiro, was short-lived, because ill led by a violent tyrannical man, Villegagnon. The first settlers arrived in 1555; by the end of 1558 they had all disappeared. Still more tragical was the outcome of the venture in Florida. In 1562 a band of would-be colonists sailed from Dieppe, under the command of Jean Ribault. They reached Florida in safety, and built a small fort towards the northern end of the peninsula, in which thirty men were left behind while Ribault returned to France.

In the following year, the survivors of the thirty came back to Europe, having abandoned the fort and experienced every extremity of thirst and hunger while crossing the Atlantic in a ship of their own making. Again in 1564, a Huguenot expedition, under Rene de Laudonniere, sailed for Florida, and the settlers planted themselves on the {39} St. John's river, then known as the river of May. In 1565 Ribault joined them with reinforcements and supplies. Well known from its surpa.s.sing horror is the story of the French settlement. A Spanish force under Menendez, a fanatic as treacherous and as savage as Philip II himself, took up a position to the south where the town of St. Augustine now stands, and overpowering the Frenchmen in detachments, butchered them with every accompaniment of cruelty and guile. The French fort pa.s.sed into Spanish hands, but within three years time an avenging freebooter came from France, Domenic de Gourgues; the Spaniards in their turn were shot and hung, and the banks of the St. John's river were left desolate.

Ill managed, badly supported were these French ventures to Brazil and Florida. Had they been well led and given some little encouragement and a.s.sistance, the result might have been far different. Protestants might have gained a firm foothold in Central and Southern America.

France might have won from Spain and Portugal a great domain. As it was, the attempts resulted in utter failure, and great opportunities were lost never to be regained.

[Sidenote: _La Roche's patent._]

As the sixteenth century drew to a close, a patent was issued by the French King to a Breton n.o.bleman, the Marquis de la Roche, to colonize in North America. The terms of the patent were preposterously wide, conferring sovereignty over Canada, together with a monopoly of trade. The results were proportionately small. La Roche set sail in 1598, in a single ship with a cargo of convicts. He landed them at Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, and sailed back to France, leaving them to their fate. Five years later, in 1603, eleven of the number, who had survived, were rescued and brought home again.

[Sidenote: _Chauvin and Pontgrave._]

[Sidenote: _De Chastes._]

About a year after La Roche's fruitless voyage, in 1599 or 1600, two other Frenchmen, Chauvin, a sea captain, and Pontgrave, a St. Malo merchant, also obtained a patent to {40} colonize in Canada. Their object was to monopolize the fur trade, and they attempted a settlement at Tadoussac, where the Saguenay river flows into the St.

Lawrence. During a whole winter a small party was left at the station, but no permanent colony was formed; and a second and third voyage had no lasting results. Chauvin died, and in 1602 or 1603 a new patent was granted to De Chastes, a man of rank and station, who a.s.sociated with himself Pontgrave, and secured the services of Samuel Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Samuel Champlain._]

In order of time, Champlain's name stands second in the list of the men to whom New France in America was due. It stands second in time to the name of Cartier; in order of merit it heads the list. Cartier was a great explorer, but his work ended with discovery; Champlain founded a colony. The history of Canada as a French possession has gained in attractiveness, in that it began and ended with a high-minded, chivalrous leader. It began with Champlain, it ended with Montcalm. Born on the sh.o.r.es of the Bay of Biscay, the adventurous son of a seafaring father, Champlain fought for the King in Brittany, and was given by him a retainer in the shape of a small pension. The war over, he travelled for two years in the Spanish Indies, and, visiting Panama, conceived the idea of a ship ca.n.a.l across the isthmus. After his return home, he took service under De Chastes' company, and in 1603 sailed with Pontgrave for the St.

Lawrence. The voyage was one of exploration only. Champlain ascended the river as far as Montreal, gathering geographical information from the Indians, but attempting no settlement; and when he returned to France in a few months' time, he found that his employer, De Chastes, was dead.

[Sidenote: _De Monts' patent._]

[Sidenote: _The first French settlement in Acadia._]

[Sidenote: _Port Royal._]

Yet another royal patent was granted, in 1603, to De Monts, a Huguenot gentleman of the French court, its object being the colonization of Acadia, and Acadia being defined as extending from the fortieth degree of north lat.i.tude, which runs {41} through[3]

Philadelphia, to the forty-sixth degree, which is north of Montreal.

De Monts took into partnership the members of De Chastes' company, and in 1604 two vessels sailed for America. They carried a mixed freight, Huguenots and Roman Catholics, gentlemen of fortune, and vagrants impressed under the King's commission. De Monts and Champlain were on board the first ship, Pontgrave followed in the second, with supplies for the future colony. They steered not for the St. Lawrence, but for the coast of Nova Scotia; and entering the Bay of Fundy they discovered Annapolis harbour, which was given the name of Port Royal. The first settlement, however, was made on an islet off the mouth of the St. Croix river, which now forms the boundary between New Brunswick and the state of Maine; and there through the winter De Monts and Champlain stayed with a scurvy-stricken company, numbering seventy-nine in all, of whom nearly half died. On the return of spring and the advent of relief from France, the leaders coasted south along the sh.o.r.es of Maine, and of what were in after years the New England states; and coming back to their station in August, they moved the settlement across the Bay of Fundy, and established themselves on the inlet of Annapolis harbour. De Monts then returned to France, leaving Pontgrave and Champlain to hold the post through the winter of 1605.

[Footnote 3: For De Monts' patent see the _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 4, entry 10, Nov. 8, 1603. It was a patent 'for inhabiting Acadia, Canada, and other places in New France,' and De Monts was appointed the French King's Lieutenant-General 'for to represent our person in the countries, territories, coasts, and confines of La Cadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree.']

[Sidenote: _Lescarbot._]

In the following summer, ships came back from France just in time to prevent the settlement at Port Royal from being broken up in despair.

They brought with them the advocate Lescarbot, the historian of New France. Again there was exploring down the American coast, and again Champlain and his a.s.sociates held their own through the winter. The {42} outlook of the little colony was promising. The season was mild, the natives were friendly, supplies were plentiful, gardens were laid out and corn was sown. But in the late spring of 1607 news came from home that the patent had been cancelled, and before the summer ended Port Royal was abandoned.

[Sidenote: _De Poutrincourt._]

[Sidenote: _Jesuit influence._]

For nearly three years the place was left desolate, and then, in 1610, one of De Monts' a.s.sociates came back again. It was the Baron de Poutrincourt, to whom the harbour, when first discovered, had been granted by De Monts. The Jesuits were at the time strong at the French court, stronger still after the a.s.sa.s.sination of King Henry IV in this same year. They, or the ladies of the court, who were their tools, bought shares in the venture, and Jesuit priests went out to Acadia, thwarting and quarrelling with Poutrincourt and his son. Both the two great dangers which always threatened and finally ruined the French power in North America came into being at this date, the exclusive influence of the Jesuits and English compet.i.tion.

[Sidenote: _Argall's raid from Virginia._]

[Sidenote: _Destruction of Port Royal._]

In 1606 the Virginia company was incorporated, and in the following year British colonization on the mainland of North America began with the founding of Jamestown. There are many miles of coast between Acadia and Virginia, between the Bay of Fundy and Chesapeake Bay, but French and English soon crossed each other's paths. In 1613 a ship sailed from France, sent out under Jesuit influence, with a view to founding a settlement on the North American coast. After touching at Port Royal, the party sailed southwards to the coast of Maine, and landed in the region of the Pen.o.bscot river. Hardly had their tents been set up on the sh.o.r.e, when an English ship came in sight, captured the French vessel, which was lying at anchor, uprooted the would-be colony, and took all the Frenchmen prisoners. The invaders hailed from Jamestown; they were commanded by Samuel Argall, an unscrupulous freebooter. {43} His pretext was that the Frenchmen were taking up ground within the limits of the patents granted by the English King to his subjects, but his act was little more than piracy. Some of the Frenchmen were set adrift in an open boat, and eventually reached France in safety; the rest were carried prisoners to Jamestown, whence Argall set sail again, commissioned by the governor of Virginia to attack Port Royal. He reached, plundered, and burnt the fort, its commander, Biencourt, with the rest of the settlers, being absent in the fields, for it was harvest time; but the colony was not finally blotted out, and the French still kept a foothold in Acadia.

[Sidenote: _Champlain on the St. Lawrence._]

Champlain's first voyage to North America in 1603 had taken him to the St. Lawrence. From 1604-7 Acadia had been the scene of his labours, until De Monts' patent had been revoked. In 1608 he returned to the river of Canada. On the line of the St. Lawrence he carried out the work of his life, and by its banks he died. In the course which French colonization in America and its first great leader took, may be traced the influence on history of geography and race.

[Sidenote: _Comparison of English and French colonization in North America._]

[Sidenote: _English colonial enterprise in the seventeenth century the result of private co-operation._]

In English colonial history, as writers on the subject have pointed out,[4] the age of adventure was distinct from the age of settlement.

Ralegh was the latest product of the times of romance, an his attempts at colonization were premature and unsuccessful. To some extent a similar distinction may be made in French colonial history: Cartier may be taken as a representative of the earlier age, Champlain of the later; but the line of demarcation is much fainter, much less real, in the case of the French than in that of the English. To English and French alike adventure had meant private enterprise, usually but not always countenanced by kings, generally carried out under cover of royal licences or patents, so vague as to be almost meaningless, granted one day, liable to be {44} cancelled the next. When the age of romance pa.s.sed away in England with the pa.s.sing of the sixteenth century, adventurers in the ordinary sense in great measure disappeared, with the exception of the Arctic explorers, who, like Hudson and Baffin, still sailed to the desolate North. Private enterprise, on the other hand, not only survived, but it grew stronger, more business-like, more independent of court favour. It was private enterprise still, but under new forms, the enterprise not of individual freebooters, or of knights errant, but of a.s.sociations of citizens, some of the a.s.sociations being chartered commercial companies, while others were bands of colonizers and colonists united by a common antagonism and a common creed. Their objects were not in the air, they did not live in dreamland, they went out or sent out others, not so much to discover new lands, as to occupy and appropriate lands which had already been found, to make new English homes on the other side of the Atlantic.

[Footnote 4: See e.g. Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol. i, chap. vi.]

[Sidenote: _The new patents of English colonization._]

[Sidenote: _Motives of English colonization in the seventeenth century._]

[Sidenote: _The English kept near to the sea._]

In theory the commercial companies were, like the individual patentees of the former generation, working under the authority of the Crown. Indeed that authority was far more strongly proclaimed than before, and for vague generalities were subst.i.tuted very definite restrictions; but this was only a sign of a new time. It indicated that a stage had been reached when more was known, when practical business was being taken in hand, and when, therefore, the slipshod patents, which had hitherto sufficed, would no longer avail.

Because private enterprise really meant more, therefore the Government said more, and the very defining of the work and circ.u.mscribing of its sphere made the results sounder, more lasting, and more substantial. It was not the l.u.s.t of conquest, it was not the glamour of adventure, it was not a wish to proselytize in religion or to add new provinces to the domain of a European kingdom which made the English colonize North America. There were two {45} main motives at work. One was the desire to find or to do something which would pay, the other was a longing to live under more independent conditions than existed in the mother country. The settlers went to lands where natives dwelt, and, therefore, dealings with the North American Indians in war and peace ensued; but the English did not go to the New World in the main to conquer or to convert the Indians, they went to live and to make their living pay. Instinct was at work in English colonization, the instinct of self-preservation, of extension, of always moving a little further and winning a little more; but there was no high scheme of universal dominion for the English King or the English creed. Against any such views the New England colonies were a living protest, and in Virginia, Maryland, or Carolina they found no place. All of these colonies were prosaic, unromantic communities: they were groups of Englishmen, living, grumbling, working and squabbling, with varieties of opinions and differences of outward forms, half protected, half worried by the home Government, building up unconsciously, illogically, amid much that was mean and small, what was to be in the end a mighty nation.

Instinct, too, kept the colonists for the most part near to the sea.

They fringed the Atlantic over which they had come, and ever renewed their strength as more emigrants came in; they strayed no doubt to some extent as years went on, taking up farms inland and clearing the backwoods; but, on the whole, there was continuity of colonization, a gradual widening of the belt of settlement, expansion on the part of the settlers themselves, as opposed to planting in the heart of the continent military outposts, or isolated mission stations.

[Sidenote: _The French colonized inland._]

[Sidenote: _Comparison of French colonization in Canada and Dutch colonization in South Africa._]

With the French in Canada the case was different. Except in Acadia and Cape Breton Island, and to a limited extent in Newfoundland, they had no hold on the sea coast: and Acadia had for many years little connexion with the {46} land of the St. Lawrence. Canada, as a sphere of colonization, began when the open sea had been left far behind. It was an inland territory with a great river and great lakes. No two parts of the world are more unlike than Canada and South Africa.

Canada has a river highway into it, excellent water communication by lake and stream, and, until the Rocky mountains are reached, no mountain barriers are interposed to cut off the interior from the coast regions or one district from another. South Africa is almost devoid of natural harbours, its rivers are valueless for purposes of navigation. Its ranges of hills or mountains rise one behind the other, barring the way from the coast to the interior, severing one section of the territory from another. Yet, curiously enough, somewhat similar results followed from diametrically opposite geographical conditions. No two races in the world were and are more unlike each other than the Dutch and the French, unlike in character, in tradition, in political and religious training. But the Dutch in South Africa and the French in Canada resembled each other in this, that they were and remained very few in number, planted in an unlimited area, and that men lived in either case under a rigid system. The restrictive rule of the Netherlands East India Company in South Africa led to trekking, to wandering in the wilderness, and the difficulties of communication increased the wandering tendency, because the wanderers, who wished no longer to be controlled by the government at Cape Town, could not easily be followed up. The French rule in Canada was restrictive too, restrictive in matters of politics, of commerce, and of religion. It was a despotism which allowed no vestige of freedom or self-government; but it was a far stronger and more active despotism than that of the Netherlands Company. The Dutch sought a trade monopoly, the French a territorial dominion. The Dutch were at pains to minimize their responsibilities.