Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 716
So Cartier passed on from the Saguenay, and as he moved up the St. Lawrence the shores of the great river narrowed in, and the scene about him changed from desolation to a land of enchantment. All about him was the blaze of the autumn woods of Canada, a thing unseen in Europe. The forest was festooned with hanging vines, here were islands where hazel-nuts hung from the trees, and another so heavy with clustered grapes that Cartier called it Bacchus Island. He presently thought better of this and gave the island a more reputable name as the Island of Orleans. But whether of Greek god or French prince, the island still keeps the charm that Cartier found.
Now when Cartier reached this point the Indians told him that here began the land and province (terre et prouvynce) of Canada. With that enters into history the perplexing mystery of the name of our country, and with it the lesser perplexities of the territories Saguenay, Canada and Hochelaga.
This first mystery remains unsolved. We still do not know where the word Canada comes from. All are familiar with the fantastic derivation that makes the word mean, ‘nothing here.’ The idea was that, before Cartier came, some Spaniard or Portuguee, angered at not finding gold, said in disgust, “Aca nada!” The polite natives picked up the word and repeated it to Cartier to mean “That’s us.” Equally silly is the gross slander involved in the derivation from the Sanskrit ‘Kanata’— “a small feeder.” Put beside this the derivation once current in Puritan New England to the effect that Canada is called after William Kane who Winsor, Vol. IV, went up there in 1621 — a patron saint lost to history. Much better is the claim that Canada is an old Portuguese word to mean the ‘narrows’ or ‘the channel,’ that is, the route leading on to the supposed Western Sea. It is true that such foreign words were now and then dropped on to our map without trace of origin; as witness the Spanish ‘Orillia’ that fell mercifully out of the sky as an improvement over Champlain’s ‘Cahiagué.’ But the simplest derivation and the best is that ‘Canada’ was not the name of any one place but was the Huron-Iroquois word for the collection of lodges (such as Stadacona, Hochelaga and Onondaga) which the explorers called a town. Indeed the narrative of Cartier’s second voyage has at the end of it a vocabulary of the language of the natives which says in exact terms, “Ils appellent une ville — Canada.” This might seem to settle it. So high S. E. Dawson, “The Saint Lawrence,” 1905 an authority as Dr. S. E. Dawson has said that we may save all waste of “learned labour” by “permitting the Huron-Iroquois to know their own language.” But unfortunately the narrative itself keeps using the word as the name of the territory, not the town, as when it says, in the text quoted, “Here begins (at eight leagues above Ile aux Coudres) the province and territory of Canada.” At this point of the story Cartier had not yet seen the town (Stadacona). Still, we have to remember that the narrative was written later; indeed, as will be seen, the text has certain suspicious peculiarities about it. Perhaps the word was used in a double sense, as ‘town’ is used to-day. People in England talk of London as ‘town’ and ‘go up to town’ from their own town, without getting muddled.
Cartier anchored his ships in the channel between the Island of Orleans and the north shore. The savages, hitherto seen only at intervals, as in canoes that danced in the foam of the Saguenay, or lurking in the woods, now appeared in numbers. Their first fright disappeared in tumultuous welcome when they recognized Text of Narrative H. P. Biggar, “Voyages of Jacques Cartier,” 1924 Cartier’s two Gaspé guides as long-lost kinsmen of their own. The good news spread. The day after their arrival the Lord of Canada— ‘Le seigneur’ Donnacona, appeared with twelve canoes and a great company of people. Cartier gave out presents. There were dances and long Indian harangues of welcome, a first experience of what Indian oratory has bequeathed to our continent. Cartier moved his ship up the stream till he saw the panorama of the “very beautiful and pleasant bay,” the basin of Quebec. Cartier decided to make his winter quarters here. He warped his two larger ships up the stream of the little River St. Charles which here falls into the St. Lawrence. The Indians would have had him stay but Cartier was all anxiety to go on while yet the season allowed it. All that he heard of Hochelaga and of Saguenay made him believe that the great Indian kingdoms and the opening to Asia were farther on. The town of ‘Stadacona’ was just an outpost. Cartier, so far as we know, heard nothing of ‘Quebec.’ The term begins with Champlain, and is Algonquin. Cartier’s Indians, as we recognize from his list of words, were Huron-Iroquois.
Finding persuasion, dances, and even oratory of no avail, the Indians tried to frighten Cartier with dressed-up devils and a spirit message, specially sent by the great god Cudragny of Hochelaga. But in spite of signs of treachery and ill-will, Cartier left for Hochelaga. His main company stayed with the ships. With Cartier went his gentlemen adventurers and fifty seamen. They had with them the Emérillon and two boats. Low water made it wise to leave the Emérillon (at the upper end of Lake St. Peter) and use only the boats.
This happy ascent of the river, bright with autumn colour, occupied thirteen days. Thus it was that towards the close of day of October 2, 1535, Cartier and his companions halted their boats where an island blocked the river and made a swift rapid. Here at the foot of St. Mary’s current they landed and a great concourse of Indians flocked joyously around them. This was Hochelaga. Here are the words of the Narrative that depicts one of the most notable scenes in our history:
“And on reaching Hochelaga, there came to meet us more than a thousand persons, both men, women and children, who gave us as good a welcome as ever father gave to his son, making great signs of joy; for the men danced in one ring, the women in another and the children also apart by themselves. After this they brought us quantities of fish, and of their bread which is made of Indian corn, throwing so much of it into our long-boats that it seemed to rain bread. Seeing this the Captain, accompanied by several of his men, went on shore; and no sooner had he landed than they all crowded about him and about the others, giving them a wonderful reception. And the women brought their babies in their arms to have the Captain and his companions touch them, while all held a merry-making which lasted more than half an hour. Seeing their generosity and friendliness, the Captain had the women all sit down in a row and gave them some tin beads and other trifles; and to some of the men he gave knives. Then he returned on board the long-boats to sup and pass the night, throughout which the Indians remained on the bank of the river, as near the long-boats as they could get, keeping many fires burning all night, and dancing and calling out every moment ‘aguyase’ which is their term of salutation and joy.”
Next morning at the break of day the Indians led Cartier and his men through woods “as beautiful as any forest in France,” to see the town of Hochelaga. On the way they had a rest beside a fire — a brisk October morning — and more Indian speech-making which, as the narrative sadly remarks, “is their way of showing joy and friendliness.” After their rest, their way led to the famous stockaded ‘town’ of Hochelaga, where they were received by a tumult of Indian welcome. The appearance of the place is chronicled in the narrative of the voyage.
“The village is circular and is completely enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid. The top one is built crosswise, the middle one perpendicular and the lowest one of strips of wood placed lengthwise. The whole is well joined and lashed after their manner, and is some two lances in height. There is only one gate and entrance to this village, and that can be barred up. Over this gate and in many places about the enclosure are species of galleries with ladders for mounting to them, which galleries are provided with rocks and stones for the defence and protection of the place. There are some fifty houses in this village, each about fifty or more paces in length, and twelve or fifteen in width, built completely of wood and covered in and bordered up with large pieces of the bark and rind of trees, as broad as a table, which are well and cunningly lashed after their manner. And inside these houses are many rooms and chambers; and in the middle is a large space without a floor, where they light their fire and live together in common. Afterwards the men retire to the above-mentioned quarters with their wives and children. And furthermore there are lofts in the upper part of their houses, where they store the corn of which they make their bread.”
The above description of the palisade of Hochelaga has been a standing puzzle for the ingenuity of interpretation for over three centuries. That it means some kind of tall stockade fence, is clear; but we must remember that it was made by people with no better tools than axes of stone and some few, perhaps, of native copper such as Champlain found later. Whatever the place was really like, we may be certain that it in no way resembled the famous old woodcut often reproduced, a product of artistic imagination — or of despair. But the picture is worth mention for the history that it carries. As has been already said, the narrative of Cartier’s first voyage was not printed. Cartier’s own script was lost but copies were made and one still survives. It is generally agreed that it was composed by Cartier. The language is “Relation Originale” Breton French, and the terms are those of the sea, the style the plain narrative of a pilot. There survive also several manuscript narratives of the second voyage of which this Hochelaga description is a part. But authorities agree that this was not composed by Cartier himself. It is prefaced with a florid and fulsome address to the king and with a denunciation of Lutherans, as people to be put to death. It bungles the sea terms. It strongly suggests, in its description of Hochelaga and later in its visions of the Kingdom of Saguenay, that the writer was trying, as advertising men would say, to ‘sell’ America to King Francis. This narrative of the second voyage was printed in 1545 but only “Bref Récit” one copy of the book survives, in the British Museum.
Now all copies of the manuscript narratives of the voyages were lost from sight for centuries. Meantime the story of Cartier was only known by a translation into Italian in the collection of Navigations and Voyages printed by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in 1556. One of the surviving copies of this book is in the possession G. B. Ramusio, “Navigationi e Viaggi,” 1556 of McGill University. It contains also an Italian translation of the Bref Récit of 1545, and this was translated back into French and printed in 1598. Richard Hakluyt, the famous clergyman of Queen Elizabeth’s time, who promoted seafaring by gathering Principal Navigations, Voyages, etc., had Ramusio’s text translated into English and put it into his volume of 1600. These were the narratives of Cartier’s voyages as known to the world till the fortunate discovery in Paris (1867) of a copy of the original manuscript of the narrative of the first voyage, and the reprint of surviving manuscripts of the second, gave us back the text. The woodcut of Hochelaga was made for Ramusio’s text and copied and recopied ever since — venerable in its ridiculous W. D. Lighthall, “The False Hochelaga,” Roy. Soc. Canada, 1932 inaccuracies. It shows carpenters working with sawn lumber; makes Hochelaga so large that it would reach from the mountain to the river, its houses utterly confused in number and shape, and Mount Royal dwarfed into a hillock.
Some years ago (1925) the writer of this book had the honour of unveiling the Hochelaga Stone that stands at the foot of the McGill grounds — unveiling, or dedicating, or whatever is done to a stone. He felt the same perplexity about the location and real size of the place as Ramusio’s artist himself. We have to remember that Hochelaga had apparently disappeared when Champlain came in 1603. All that has been found of it are buried remnants of fireplaces, the debris of kitchen middens, arrows and implements, pipes and human skulls. There are none of the half-burned timbers that might mark the site of such a structure. It seems possible that the ‘wigwams’ and the palisades of Hochelaga were lighter and more completely combustible than the text suggests. Such relics as have been found indicate for Hochelaga a site along the foot of the McGill grounds, extending down to Burnside (once its protecting river) and east and west from Metcalfe to near Victoria. The centre of Hochelaga was therefore (as in a sense it still is) in the lounge room of the present University Club.
The Indians who crowded about the French in the open square of Hochelaga — it was a stone’s throw either way — greeted them with every sign of welcome and devotion, as towards superior beings. They laid mats for them to sit on. They brought their sick and infirm to be touched. Cartier read to them aloud from the Gospel of St. John, the Indians lifting rapt eyes to heaven, in pious imitation. After the presentation of beads, hatchets and trinkets, Cartier and his people left the stockade with a grand flourish of trumpets.
From the stockade the Indians led Cartier and his companions, “Bref Récit” his attendant gentlemen and twenty sailors, to the top of the nearby mountain, which he named Mount Royal. From its points of vantage they could see some parts of the rapids later to be called Lachine, the broad expansion of the river above, the mountain background to the north, the valley where lies the Ottawa, and, far away in the other direction, the downward river, the broad flat forest and the cone-shaped mountains beside the Richelieu — a view in all of thirty leagues, they said.
The Ottawa Valley seized their interest. This must lead to the Kingdom of Saguenay. Their hopes were raised when the Indians, of their own accord, took hold of the silver chain of Cartier’s whistle, touched the yellow metal handle of a sailor’s dagger — and pointed up the Ottawa. The meaning of this was long obscure to historians. They thought it meant the silver of the river. The discovery of silver in the road-bed of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, over two and a half centuries later, makes the Indians’ meaning as clear as it seemed to Cartier.
The season was growing late. Cartier and his men left Hochelaga forthwith, regained their boats and the Emérillon, descended the river and rejoined their men beside Stadacona. In their absence the men had built a solid fort of log walls around the ships, defended with the ships’ cannon. It was to stand them in good stead. But at first the savages were friendly. They took Cartier with his gentlemen and fifty sailors to see their ‘town’ of Stadacona. This was a group of lodges and storehouses, far less of a place than Hochelaga. But there were the same dances of welcome, the same ‘after-dinner’ oratory. Here the French first saw tobacco-smoking. Their narrative reports that the Indians “fill their bodies full of smoke till it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils.” Here, too, the sight of human scalps drying on frames, revealed to them what the scalp-lock meant.
It was now in the middle of October. The winter set in and there followed at the fort a season of privation, of danger and anxiety, that deepened into horror. The Canadian cold struck with all its rigour. The ships, as early as mid-November, froze at their anchors, in ice that thickened to two fathoms. The demeanour of the savages changed. Cartier learned from secret sources that they intended to overwhelm and destroy the French. The fort was strengthened. Guards were set and trumpets sounded day and night at the change of watches.
Then came the onslaught of a hideous plague. Students of Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War” history who have shuddered at the account of the plague at Athens in the great civil war in ancient Greece, may read with interest the grim story of the pestilence of Cartier’s winter.
“Some lost all their strength,” runs the narrative. “Their legs became swollen and inflamed, while the sinews contracted and turned as black as coal. In other cases the legs were found blotched with purple-coloured blood. Then the disease would mount to the hips, thighs, shoulders, arms and neck. And all had their mouths so tainted, that the gums rotted away down to the roots of the teeth, which nearly all fell out.”
This was scurvy, the dread and horror of all long voyages till modern medicine and hygiene loosened its fatal grasp. Of Cartier’s company of 110 by February only ten, himself among them, remained in health; later not more than three. As best they could, they must man the ramparts, keeping the Indians away, misleading them by noise and clatter. Twenty-five died and lay frozen and hidden under snow; the ground, congealed to stone, forbidding burial. Then came a miracle. The Indians, little knowing the truth, were deceived into revealing a remedy. This was a decoction, brewed from some species of Canadian balsam, that worked a cure as sudden as it was complete.
The worst was past. But with the spring the Stadacona lodges began to fill with new and fiercer savages from the north, far different from the gentle people of Hochelaga. There was no doubt now of their purpose. Cartier determined to be gone. With the break-up of the ice, he hastened his preparations. But he April 15, 1536 believed himself to be in the very gateway of a land of gold and treasure and he determined to bring to King Francis the visible proof of it. The treacherous chief Donnacona, still intermittently friendly, had astonished Cartier with his talk of the Kingdom of Saguenay. He had spoken of “immense quantities of gold, rubies and other things,” of men “as white as in France.” He threw in, for good measure, tall stories of a race of men with no stomachs, who never ate, of a race with only one leg and “other marvels too long to tell.” As Cartier saw it, Donnacona was too good to lose. He must take him along to the king. The unhappy chief fell a victim to his own imagination. When Cartier’s ships were ready, he had his men seize Donnacona and four May 6, 1536 others. There was a rough scene. The chief’s Indian braves fled in panic. Donnacona and his fellows were taken on board the ships, round which the Indians howled all night like wolves. The next day, before sailing, Donnacona, appeased and flattered by the promise of the king’s favour, appeared on deck to wave goodbye to his tribe. He made, we are told, “several harangues” and sailed away, apparently still talking.
