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Title: The Dawn of Canadian History:
   A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada and
   the coming of the White Man
   [Vol. 1 of "The Chronicles of Canada"]
Author: Leacock Stephen Butler (1869-1944)
Illustrator: Jefferys, Charles William (1869-1951)
Illustrator: Morris, Edmund Montague (1871-1913)
Photographer: Bell, Robert (1841-1917)
Photographer: Low, Albert Peter (1861-1942)
Photographer: Teit, James Alexander (1864-1922)
Sculptor: Cassidy, John (1860-1939)
Date of first publication: 1914
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1914
Date first posted: 26 March 2009
Date last updated: 26 March 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #285

This ebook was produced by:
Iona Vaughan, woodie4, David Edwards
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries




CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES

THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED

Edited by GEORGE M. WRONG and H. H. LANGTON


CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES


PART I THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY
          By Stephen Leacock.

2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO
          By Stephen Leacock.


PART II THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE*
          By Charles W. Colby.

4. THE BLACKROBES*
          By J. Edgar Middleton.

5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA
          By W. Bennett Munro.

6. THE GREAT INTENDANT
          By Thomas Chapais.

7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR*
          By Charles W. Colby.


PART III THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS*
          By William Wood.

9. THE ACADIAN EXILES*
          By Arthur G. Doughty.

10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
          By William Wood.

11. THE WINNING OF CANADA
          By William Wood.


PART IV THE AMERICAN INVASIONS

12. THE INVASION OF 1775*
          By C. Frederick Hamilton.

13. BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812-14*
          By William Wood.


PART V THE RED MAN IN CANADA

14. PONTIAC: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS*
          By Thomas Guthrie Marquis.

15. BRANT: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS
          By Louis Aubrey Wood.

16. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE*
          By Ethel T. Raymond.


PART VI PATHFINDERS AND PIONEERS

17. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' ON HUDSON BAY
          By Agnes C. Laut.

18. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT PLAINS
          By Lawrence J. Burpee.

19. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST*
          By Agnes C. Laut.

20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH
          By Stephen Leacock.

21. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS
          By W. Stewart Wallace.

22. THE RED RIVER COLONY*
          By Louis Aubrey Wood.

23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL*
          By Agnes C. Laut.


PART VII POLITICAL FREEDOM AND NATIONALITY

24. THE 'FAMILY COMPACT'*
          By W. Stewart Wallace.

25. THE REBELLION IN LOWER CANADA*
          By A. D. DeCelles.

26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA*
          By William L. Grant.

27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT*
          By Archibald MacMechan.

28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION*
          By Sir Joseph Pope.

29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD*
          By Sir Joseph Pope.

30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRED LAURIER*
          By Oscar D. Skelton.


PART VIII NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. ALL AFLOAT
          By William Wood.

32. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS*
          By Oscar D. Skelton.

       *       *       *       *       *

TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY

Note: The volumes marked with an asterisk are in preparation. The others
are published.




THE DAWN OF
CANADIAN HISTORY

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

[Illustration: THE MYSTERY OF THE NEW LAND From a colour drawing by C.
W. Jefferys]




THE DAWN OF
CANADIAN HISTORY

A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada and
the coming of the White Man

BY

STEPHEN LEACOCK

[Illustration: Printer's Mark]



TORONTO
GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1914



_Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention_


CONTENTS



                                       Page

  I.  BEFORE THE DAWN                     1

 II.  MAN IN AMERICA                     11

III.  THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA           25

 IV.  THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN         45

  V.  THE BRISTOL VOYAGES                66

 VI.  FORERUNNERS OF JACQUES CARTIER     89

      BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE              107

      INDEX                             110



ILLUSTRATIONS


THE MYSTERY OF THE NEW LAND                          _Frontispiece_
  From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.

A GROUP OF ESKIMO CHILDREN                       _Facing page_  28
  From a photograph by Dr A. P. Low.

ESKIMO AT FORT CHURCHILL, HUDSON BAY                    "       30
  From a photograph by Dr Robert Bell.

A BLACKFOOT WAR CHIEF                                   "       36
  From a pastel by Edmund Montague Morris.

INDIANS OF THE INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA             "       42
  From photographs supplied by J. A. Teit.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS                                    "       66
  From a painting in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

THE DEATH OF COLUMBUS                                   "       68
  From an old engraving.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND HIS SONS,
DIEGO AND FERDINAND                                     "       70
  From an old Spanish picture.

JOHN CABOT AND HIS SON SEBASTIAN                         "      74
  From a model by John Cassidy.

HENRY VII                                                "      78
  From the painting in the National
     Portrait Gallery.

SEBASTIAN CABOT                                          "      80
  From a contemporary portrait.

FRANCIS I                                                "      98
  From a portrait in the Dominion Archives.

JUAN VERRAZANO                                           "     100
  From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.




CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE DAWN


WE always speak of Canada as a new country. In one sense, of course,
this is true. The settlement of Europeans on Canadian soil dates back
only three hundred years. Civilization in Canada is but a thing of
yesterday, and its written history, when placed beside the long
millenniums of the recorded annals of European and Eastern peoples,
seems but a little span.

But there is another sense in which the Dominion of Canada, or at least
part of it, is perhaps the oldest country in the world. According to the
Nebular Theory the whole of our planet was once a fiery molten mass
gradually cooling and hardening itself into the globe we know. On its
surface moved and swayed a liquid sea glowing with such a terrific heat
that we can form no real idea of its intensity. As the mass cooled, vast
layers of vapour, great beds of cloud, miles and miles in thickness,
were formed and hung over the face of the globe, obscuring from its
darkened surface the piercing beams of the sun. Slowly the earth cooled,
until great masses of solid matter, rock as we call it, still penetrated
with intense heat, rose to the surface of the boiling sea. Forces of
inconceivable magnitude moved through the mass. The outer surface of the
globe as it cooled ripped and shrivelled like a withering orange. Great
ridges, the mountain chains of to-day, were furrowed on its skin. Here
in the darkness of the prehistoric night there arose as the oldest part
of the surface of the earth the great rock bed that lies in a huge
crescent round the shores of Hudson Bay, from Labrador to the unknown
wilderness of the barren lands of the Coppermine basin touching the
Arctic sea. The wanderer who stands to-day in the desolate country of
James Bay or Ungava is among the oldest monuments of the world. The
rugged rock which here and there breaks through the thin soil of the
infertile north has lain on the spot from the very dawn of time.
Millions of years have probably elapsed since the cooling of the outer
crust of the globe produced the solid basis of our continents.

The ancient formation which thus marks the beginnings of the solid
surface of the globe is commonly called by geologists the Archan rock,
and the myriads of uncounted years during which it slowly took shape are
called the Archan age. But the word 'Archan' itself tells us nothing,
being merely a Greek term meaning 'very old.' This Archan or original
rock must necessarily have extended all over the surface of our sphere
as it cooled from its molten form and contracted into the earth on which
we live. But in most places this rock lies deep under the waters of the
oceans, or buried below the heaped up strata of the formations which the
hand of time piled thickly upon it. Only here and there can it still be
seen as surface rock or as rock that lies but a little distance below
the soil. In Canada, more than anywhere else in the world, is this
Archan formation seen. On a geological map it is marked as extending
all round the basin of Hudson Bay, from Labrador to the shores of the
Arctic. It covers the whole of the country which we call New Ontario,
and also the upper part of the province of Quebec. Outside of this
territory there was at the dawn of time no other 'land' where North
America now is, except a long island of rock that marks the backbone of
what are now the Selkirk Mountains and a long ridge that is now the
mountain chain of the Alleghanies beside the Atlantic slope.

Books on geology trace out for us the long successive periods during
which the earth's surface was formed. Even in the Archan age something
in the form of life may have appeared. Perhaps vast masses of dank
seaweed germinated as the earliest of plants in the steaming oceans. The
water warred against the land, tearing and breaking at its rock
formation and distributing it in new strata, each buried beneath the
next and holding fast within it the fossilized remains that form the
record of its history. Huge fern plants spread their giant fronds in the
dank sunless atmospheres, to be buried later in vast beds of decaying
vegetation that form the coal-fields of to-day.

Animal life began first, like the plants, in the bosom of the ocean.
From the slimy depths of the water life crawled hideous to the land.
Great reptiles dragged their sluggish length through the tangled
vegetation of the jungle of giant ferns.

Through countless thousands of years, perhaps, this gradual process went
on. Nature, shifting its huge scenery, depressed the ocean beds and
piled up the dry land of the continents. In place of the vast
'Continental Sea,' which once filled the interior of North America,
there arose the great plateau or elevated plain that now runs from the
Mackenzie basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of the rushing waters of
the inland sea, these waters have narrowed into great rivers--the
Mackenzie, the Saskatchewan, the Mississippi--that swept the face of the
plateau and wore down the surface of the rock and mountain slopes to
spread their powdered fragments on the broad level soil of the prairies
of the west. With each stage in the evolution of the land the forms of
life appear to have reached a higher development. In place of the
seaweed and the giant ferns of the dawn of time there arose the maples,
the beeches, and other waving trees that we now see in the Canadian
woods. The huge reptiles in the jungle of the Carboniferous era passed
out of existence. In place of them came the birds, the mammals,--the
varied types of animal life which we now know. Last in the scale of time
and highest in point of evolution, there appeared man.

We must not speak of the continents as having been made once and for all
in their present form. No doubt in the countless centuries of geological
evolution various parts of the earth were alternately raised and
depressed. Great forests grew, and by some convulsion were buried
beneath the ocean, covered deep as they lay there with a sediment of
earth and rock, and at length raised again as the waters retreated. The
coal-beds of Cape Breton are the remains of a forest buried beneath the
sea. Below the soil of Alberta is a vast jungle of vegetation, a dense
mass of giant fern trees. The Great Lakes were once part of a much
vaster body of water, far greater in extent than they now are. The
ancient shore-line of Lake Superior may be traced five hundred feet
above its present level.

In that early period the continents and islands which we now see wholly
separated were joined together at various points. The British islands
formed a connected part of Europe. The Thames and the Rhine were one and
the same river, flowing towards the Arctic ocean over a plain that is
now the shallow sunken bed of the North Sea. It is probable that during
the last great age, the Quaternary, as geologists call it, the upheaval
of what is now the region of Siberia and Alaska, made a continuous chain
of land from Asia to America. As the land was depressed again it left
behind it the islands in the Bering Sea, like stepping-stones from shore
to shore. In the same way, there was perhaps a solid causeway of land
from Canada to Europe reaching out across the Northern Atlantic. Baffin
Island and other islands of the Canadian North Sea, the great
sub-continent of Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the British
Isles, all formed part of this continuous chain.

As the last of the great changes, there came the Ice Age, which
profoundly affected the climate and soil of Canada, and, when the ice
retreated, left its surface much as we see it now. During this period
the whole of Canada from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains lay buried
under a vast sheet of ice. Heaped up in immense masses over the frozen
surface of the Hudson Bay country, the ice, from its own dead weight,
slid sidewise to the south. As it went it ground down the surface of the
land into deep furrows and channels; it cut into the solid rock like a
moving plough, and carried with it enormous masses of loose stone and
boulders which it threw broadcast over the face of the country. These
stones and boulders were thus carried forty and fifty, and in some cases
many hundred miles before they were finally loosed and dropped from the
sheet of moving ice. In Ontario and Quebec and New England great stones
of the glacial drift are found which weigh from one thousand to seven
thousand tons. They are deposited in some cases on what is now the
summit of hills and mountains, showing how deep the sheet of ice must
have been that could thus cover the entire surface of the country,
burying alike the valleys and the hills. The mass of ice that moved
slowly, century by century, across the face of Southern Canada to New
England is estimated to have been in places a mile thick. The limit to
which it was carried went far south of the boundaries of Canada. The
path of the glacial drift is traced by geologists as far down the
Atlantic coast as the present site of New York, and in the central plain
of the continent it extended to what is now the state of Missouri.

Facts seem to support the theory that before the Great Ice Age the
climate of the northern part of Canada was very different from what it
is now. It is very probable that a warm if not a torrid climate extended
for hundreds of miles northward of the now habitable limits of the
Dominion. The frozen islands of the Arctic seas were once the seat of
luxurious vegetation and teemed with life. On Bathurst Island, which
lies in the latitude of 76, and is thus six hundred miles north of the
Arctic Circle, there have been found the bones of huge lizards that
could only have lived in the jungles of an almost tropical climate.

We cannot tell with any certainty just how and why these great changes
came about. But geologists have connected them with the alternating rise
and fall of the surface of the northern continent and its altitude at
various times above the level of the sea. Thus it seems probable that
the glacial period with the ice sheet of which we have spoken was
brought about by a great elevation of the land, accompanied by a change
to intense cold. This led to the formation of enormous masses of ice
heaped up so high that they presently collapsed and moved of their own
weight from the elevated land of the north where they had been formed.
Later on, the northern continent subsided again and the ice sheet
disappeared, but left behind it an entirely different level and a
different climate from those of the earlier ages. The evidence of the
later movements of the land surface, and its rise and fall after the
close of the glacial epoch, may still easily be traced. At a certain
time after the Ice Age, the surface sank so low that land which has
since been lifted up again to a considerable height was once the beach
of the ancient ocean. These beaches are readily distinguished by the
great quantities of sea shells that lie about, often far distant from
the present sea. Thus at Nachvak in Labrador there is a beach fifteen
hundred feet above the ocean. Probably in this period after the Ice Age
the shores of Eastern Canada had sunk so low that the St Lawrence was
not a river at all, but a great gulf or arm of the sea. The ancient
shore can still be traced beside the mountain at Montreal and on the
hillsides round Lake Ontario. Later on again the land rose, the ocean
retreated, and the rushing waters from the shrunken lakes made their own
path to the sea. In their foaming course to the lower level they tore
out the great gorge of Niagara, and tossed and buffeted themselves over
the unyielding ledges of Lachine.

Mighty forces such as these made and fashioned the continent on which we
live.




CHAPTER II

MAN IN AMERICA


IT was necessary to form some idea, if only in outline, of the magnitude
and extent of the great geological changes of which we have just spoken,
in order to judge properly the question of the antiquity and origin of
man in America.

When the Europeans came to this continent at the end of the fifteenth
century they found it already inhabited by races of men very different
from themselves. These people, whom they took to calling 'Indians,' were
spread out, though very thinly, from one end of the continent to the
other. Who were these nations, and how was their presence to be
accounted for?

To the first discoverers of America, or rather to the discoverers of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Columbus and his successors), the
origin of the Indians presented no difficulty. To them America was
supposed to be simply an outlying part of Eastern Asia, which had been
known by repute and by tradition for centuries past. Finding, therefore,
the tropical islands of the Caribbean sea with a climate and plants and
animals such as they imagined those of Asia and the Indian ocean to be,
and inhabited by men of dusky colour and strange speech, they naturally
thought the place to be part of Asia, or the Indies. The name 'Indians,'
given to the aborigines of North America, records for us this historical
misunderstanding.

But a new view became necessary after Balboa had crossed the isthmus of
Panama and looked out upon the endless waters of the Pacific, and after
Magellan and his Spanish comrades had sailed round the foot of the
continent, and then pressed on across the Pacific to the real Indies. It
was now clear that America was a different region from Asia. Even then
the old error died hard. Long after the Europeans realized that, at the
south, America and Asia were separated by a great sea, they imagined
that these continents were joined together at the north. The European
ideas of distance and of the form of the globe were still confused and
inexact. A party of early explorers in Virginia carried a letter of
introduction with them from the King of England to the Khan of Tartary:
they expected to find him at the head waters of the Chickahominy.
Jacques Cartier, nearly half a century after Columbus, was expecting
that the Gulf of St Lawrence would open out into a passage leading to
China. But after the discovery of the North Pacific ocean and Bering
Strait the idea that America was part of Asia, that the natives were
'Indians' in the old sense, was seen to be absurd. It was clear that
America was, in a large sense, an island, an island cut off from every
other continent. It then became necessary to find some explanation for
the seemingly isolated position of a portion of mankind separated from
their fellows by boundless oceans.

The earlier theories were certainly nave enough. Since no known human
agency could have transported the Indians across the Atlantic or the
Pacific, their presence in America was accounted for by certain of the
old writers as a particular work of the devil. Thus Cotton Mather, the
famous Puritan clergyman of early New England, maintained in all
seriousness that the devil had inveigled the Indians to America to get
them 'beyond the tinkle of the gospel bells.' Others thought that they
were a washed-up remnant of the great flood. Roger Williams, the founder
of Rhode Island, wrote: 'From Adam and Noah that they spring, it is
granted on all hands.' Even more fantastic views were advanced. As late
as in 1828 a London clergyman wrote a book which he called _A View of
the American Indians_, which was intended to 'show them to be the
descendants of the ten tribes of Israel.'

Even when such ideas as these were set aside, historians endeavoured to
find evidence, or at least probability, of a migration of the Indians
from the known continents across one or the other of the oceans. It must
be admitted that, even if we supposed the form and extent of the
continents to have been always the same as they are now, such a
migration would have been entirely possible. It is quite likely that
under the influence of exceptional weather--winds blowing week after
week from the same point of the compass--even a primitive craft of
prehistoric times might have been driven across the Atlantic or the
Pacific, and might have landed its occupants still alive and well on the
shores of America. To prove this we need only remember that history
records many such voyages. It has often happened that Japanese junks
have been blown clear across the Pacific. In 1833 a ship of this sort
was driven in a great storm from Japan to the shores of the Queen
Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia. In the same way a
fishing smack from Formosa, which lies off the east coast of China, was
once carried in safety across the ocean to the Sandwich Islands. Similar
long voyages have been made by the natives of the South Seas against
their will, under the influence of strong and continuous winds, and in
craft no better than their open canoes. Captain Beechey of the Royal
Navy relates that in one of his voyages in the Pacific he picked up a
canoe filled with natives from Tahiti who had been driven by a gale of
westerly wind six hundred miles from their own island. It has happened,
too, from time to time, since the discovery of America, that ships have
been forcibly carried all the way across the Atlantic. A glance at the
map of the world shows us that the eastern coast of Brazil juts out into
the South Atlantic so far that it is only fifteen hundred miles distant
from the similar projection of Africa towards the west. The direction of
the trade winds in the South Atlantic is such that it has often been the
practice of sailing vessels bound from England to South Africa to run
clear across the ocean on a long stretch till within sight of the coast
of Brazil before turning towards the Cape of Good Hope. All, however,
that we can deduce from accidental voyages, like that of the Spaniard,
Alvarez de Cabral, across the ocean is that even if there had been no
other way for mankind to reach America they could have landed there by
ship from the Old World. In such a case, of course, the coming of man to
the American continent would have been an extremely recent event in the
long history of the world. It could not have occurred until mankind had
progressed far enough to make vessels, or at least boats of a simple
kind.

But there is evidence that man had appeared on the earth long before the
shaping of the continents had taken place. Both in Europe and America
the buried traces of primitive man are vast in antiquity, and carry us
much further back in time than the final changes of earth and ocean
which made the continents as they are; and, when we remember this, it is
easy to see how mankind could have passed from Asia or Europe to
America. The connection of the land surface of the globe was different
in early times from what it is to-day. Even still, Siberia and Alaska
are separated only by the narrow Bering Strait. From the shore of Asia
the continent of North America is plainly visible; the islands which lie
in and below the strait still look like stepping-stones from continent
to continent. And, apart from this, it may well have been that farther
south, where now is the Pacific ocean, there was formerly direct land
connection between Southern Asia and South America. The continuous chain
of islands that runs from the New Hebrides across the South Pacific to
within two thousand four hundred miles of the coast of Chili is perhaps
the remains of a sunken continent. In the most easterly of these, Easter
Island, have been found ruined temples and remains of great earthworks
on a scale so vast that to believe them the work of a small community of
islanders is difficult. The fact that they bear some resemblance to the
buildings and works of the ancient inhabitants of Chili and Peru has
suggested that perhaps South America was once merely a part of a great
Pacific continent. Or again, turning to the other side of the continent,
it may be argued with some show of evidence that America and Africa were
once connected by land, and that a sunken continent is to be traced
between Brazil and the Guinea coast.

Nevertheless, it appears to be impossible to say whether or not an early
branch of the human race ever 'migrated' to America. Conceivably the
race may have originated there. Some authorities suppose that the
evolution of mankind occurred at the same time and in the same fashion
in two or more distinct quarters of the globe. Others again think that
mankind evolved and spread over the surface of the world just as did the
various kinds of plants and animals. Of course, the higher endowment of
men enabled them to move with greater ease from place to place than
could beings of lesser faculties. Most writers of to-day, however,
consider this unlikely, and think it more probable that man originated
first in some one region, and spread from it throughout the earth. But
where this region was, they cannot tell. We always think of the races of
Europe as having come westward from some original home in Asia. This is,
of course, perfectly true, since nearly all the peoples of Europe can be
traced by descent from the original stock of the Aryan family, which
certainly made such a migration. But we know also that races of men were
dwelling in Europe ages before the Aryan migration. What particular part
of the globe was the first home of mankind is a question on which we
can only speculate.

Of one thing we may be certain. If there was a migration, there must
have been long ages of separation between mankind in America and mankind
in the Old World; otherwise we should still find some trace of kinship
in language which would join the natives of America to the great racial
families of Europe, Asia, and Africa. But not the slightest vestige of
such kinship has yet been found. Everybody knows in a general way how
the prehistoric relationships among the peoples of Europe and Asia are
still to be seen in the languages of to-day. The French and Italian
languages are so alike that, if we did not know it already, we could
easily guess for them a common origin. We speak of these languages,
along with others, as Romance languages, to show that they are derived
from Latin, in contrast with the closely related tongues of the English,
Dutch, and German peoples, which came from another common stock, the
Teutonic. But even the Teutonic and the Romance languages are not
entirely different. The similarity in both groups of old root words,
like the numbers from one to ten, point again to a common origin still
more remote. In this way we may trace a whole family of languages, and
with it a kinship of descent, from Hindustan to Ireland. Similarly,
another great group of tongues--Arabic, Hebrew, etc.--shows a branch of
the human family spread out from Palestine and Egypt to Morocco.

Now when we come to inquire into the languages of the American Indians
for evidence of their relationship to other peoples we are struck with
this fact: we cannot connect the languages of America with those of any
other part of the world. This is a very notable circumstance. The
languages of Europe and Asia are, as it were, dovetailed together, and
run far and wide into Africa. From Asia eastward, through the Malay
tongues, a connection may be traced even with the speech of the Maori of
New Zealand, and with that of the remotest islanders of the Pacific. But
similar attempts to connect American languages with the outside world
break down. There are found in North America, from the Arctic to Mexico,
some fifty-five groups of languages still existing or recently extinct.
Throughout these we may trace the same affinities and relationships that
run through the languages of Europe and Asia. We can also easily connect
the speech of the natives of North America with that of natives of
Central and of South America. Even if we had not the similarities of
physical appearance, of tribal customs, and of general manners to argue
from, we should be able to say with certainty that the various families
of American Indians all belonged to one race. The Eskimos of Northern
Canada are not Indians, and are perhaps an exception; it is possible
that a connection may be traced between them and the prehistoric
cave-men of Northern Europe. But the Indians belong to one great race,
and show no connection in language or customs with the outside world.
They belong to the American continent, it has been said, as strictly as
its opossums and its armadillos, its maize and its golden rod, or any
other of its aboriginal animals and plants.

But, here again, we must not conclude too much from the fact that the
languages of America have no relation to those of Europe and Asia. This
does not show that men originated separately on this continent. For even
in Europe and Asia, where no one supposes that different races sprung
from wholly separate beginnings, we find languages isolated in the same
way. The speech of the Basques in the Pyrenees has nothing in common
with the European families of languages.

We may, however, regard the natives of America as an aboriginal race, if
any portion of mankind can be viewed as such. So far as we know, they
are not an offshoot, or a migration, from any people of what is called
the Old World, although they are, like the people of the other
continents, the descendants of a primitive human stock.

We may turn to geology to find how long mankind has lived on this
continent. In a number of places in North and South America are found
traces of human beings and their work so old that in comparison the
beginning of the world's written history becomes a thing of yesterday.
Perhaps there were men in Canada long before the shores of its lakes had
assumed their present form; long before nature had begun to hollow out
the great gorge of the Niagara river or to lay down the outline of the
present Lake Ontario. Let us look at some of the notable evidence in
respect to the age of man in America. In Nicaragua, in Central America,
the imprints of human feet have been found, deeply buried over twenty
feet below the present surface of the soil, under repeated deposits of
volcanic rock. These impressions must have been made in soft muddy soil
which was then covered by some geological convulsion occurring long
ages ago. Even more striking discoveries have been made along the
Pacific coast of South America. Near the mouth of the Esmeraldas river
in Ecuador, over a stretch of some sixty miles, the surface soil of the
coast covers a bed of marine clay. This clay is about eight feet thick.
Underneath it is a stratum of sand and loam such as might once have
itself been surface soil. In this lower bed there are found rude
implements of stone, ornaments made of gold, and bits of broken pottery.
Again, if we turn to the northern part of the continent we find remains
of the same kind, chipped implements of stone and broken fragments of
quartz buried in the drift of the Mississippi and Missouri valleys.
These have sometimes been found lying beside or under the bones of
elephants and animals unknown in North America since the period of the
Great Ice. Not many years ago, some men engaged in digging a well on a
hillside that was once part of the beach of Lake Ontario, came across
the remains of a primitive hearth buried under the accumulated soil.
From its situation we can only conclude that the men who set together
the stones of the hearth, and lighted on it their fires, did so when the
vast wall of the northern glacier was only beginning to retreat, and
long before the gorge of Niagara had begun to be furrowed out of the
rock.

Many things point to the conclusion that there were men in North and
South America during the remote changes of the Great Ice Age. But how
far the antiquity of man on this continent reaches back into the
preceding ages we cannot say.




CHAPTER III

THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA


OF the uncounted centuries of the history of the red man in America
before the coming of the Europeans we know very little indeed. Very few
of the tribes possessed even a primitive art of writing. It is true that
the Aztecs of Mexico, and the ancient Toltecs who preceded them,
understood how to write in pictures, and that, by this means, they
preserved some record of their rulers and of the great events of their
past. The same is true of the Mayas of Central America, whose ruined
temples are still to be traced in the tangled forests of Yucatan and
Guatemala. The ancient Peruvians also had a system, not exactly of
writing, but of _record_ by means of _quipus_ or twisted woollen cords
of different colours: it is through such records that we have some
knowledge of Peruvian history during about a hundred years before the
coming of the Spaniards, and some traditions reaching still further
back. But nowhere was the art of writing sufficiently developed in
America to give us a real history of the thoughts and deeds of its
people before the arrival of Columbus.

This is especially true of those families of the great red race which
inhabited what is now Canada. They spent a primitive existence, living
thinly scattered along the sea-coast, and in the forests and open glades
of the district of the Great Lakes, or wandering over the prairies of
the west. In hardly any case had they any settled abode or fixed
dwelling-places. The Iroquois and some Algonquins built Long Houses of
wood and made stockade forts of heavy timber. But not even these tribes,
who represented the furthest advance towards civilization among the
savages of North America, made settlements in the real sense. They knew
nothing of the use of the metals. Such poor weapons and tools as they
had were made of stone, of wood, and of bone. It is true that ages ago
prehistoric men had dug out copper from the mines that lie beside Lake
Superior, for the traces of their operations there are still found. But
the art of working metals probably progressed but a little way and then
was lost,--overwhelmed perhaps in some ancient savage conquest. The
Indians found by Cartier and Champlain knew nothing of the melting of
metals for the manufacture of tools. Nor had they anything but the most
elementary form of agriculture. They planted corn in the openings of the
forest, but they did not fell trees to make a clearing or plough the
ground. The harvest provided by nature and the products of the chase
were their sole sources of supply, and in their search for this food so
casually offered they moved to and fro in the depths of the forest or
roved endlessly upon the plains. One great advance, and only one, they
had been led to make. The waterways of North America are nature's
highway through the forest. The bark canoe in which the Indians floated
over the surface of the Canadian lakes and rivers is a marvel of
construction and wonderfully adapted to its purpose. This was their
great invention. In nearly all other respects the Indians of Canada had
not emerged even from savagery to that stage half way to civilization
which is called barbarism.

These Canadian aborigines seem to have been few in number. It is
probable that, when the continent was discovered, Canada, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, contained about 220,000 natives--about half as
many people as are now found in Toronto. They were divided into tribes
or clans, among which we may distinguish certain family groups spread
out over great areas.

Most northerly of all was the great tribe of the Eskimos, who were found
all the way from Greenland to Northern Siberia. The name Eskimo was not
given by these people to themselves. It was used by the Abnaki Indians
in describing to the whites the dwellers of the far north, and it means
'the people who eat raw meat.' The Eskimo called and still call
themselves the Innuit, which means 'the people.'

The exact relation of the Eskimo to the other races of the continent is
hard to define. From the fact that the race was found on both sides of
the Bering Sea, and that its members have dark hair and dark eyes, it
was often argued that they were akin to the Mongolians of China. This
theory, however, is now abandoned. The resemblance in height and colour
is only superficial, and a more careful view of the physical make-up of
the Eskimo shows him to resemble the other races of America far more
closely than he resembles those of Asia. A distinguished American
historian, John Fiske, believed that the Eskimos are the last remnants
of the ancient cave-men who in the Stone Age inhabited all the
northern parts of Europe. Fiske's theory is that at this remote period
continuous land stretched by way of Iceland and Greenland from Europe to
America, and that by this means the race of cave-men was able to extend
itself all the way from Norway and Sweden to the northern coasts of
America. In support of this view he points to the strangely ingenious
and artistic drawings of the Eskimos. These drawings are made on ivory
and bone, and are so like the ancient bone-pictures found among the
relics of the cave-men of Europe that they can scarcely be
distinguished.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF ESKIMO CHILDREN From a photograph by Dr. A. P.
Low]

The theory is only a conjecture. It is certain that at one time the
Eskimo race extended much farther south than it did when the white men
came to America; in earlier days there were Eskimos far south of Hudson
Bay, and perhaps even south of the Great Lakes.

As a result of their situation the Eskimos led a very different life
from that of the Indians to the south. They must rely on fishing and
hunting for food. In that almost treeless north they had no wood to
build boats or houses, and no vegetables or plants to supply them either
with food or with the materials of industry. But the very rigour of
their surroundings called forth in them a marvellous ingenuity. They
made boats of seal skins stretched tight over walrus bones, and clothes
of furs and of the skins and feathers of birds. They built winter houses
with great blocks of snow put together in the form of a bowl turned
upside down. They heated their houses by burning blubber or fat in
dish-like lamps chipped out of stones. They had, of course, no written
literature. They were, however, not devoid of art. They had legends and
folk-songs, handed down from generation to generation with the utmost
accuracy. In the long night of the Arctic winter they gathered in their
huts to hear strange monotonous singing by their bards: a kind of low
chanting, very strange to European ears, and intended to imitate the
sounds of nature, the murmur of running waters and the sobbing of the
sea. The Eskimos believed in spirits and monsters whom they must appease
with gifts and incantations. They thought that after death the soul
either goes below the earth to a place always warm and comfortable, or
that it is taken up into the cold forbidding brightness of the polar
sky. When the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, streamed across the
heavens, the Eskimos thought it the gleam of the souls of the dead
visible in their new home.

[Illustration: ESKIMO AT FORT CHURCHILL, HUDSON BAY From a photograph by
Dr. Robert Bell]

Farthest east of all the British North American Indians were the
Beothuks. Their abode was chiefly Newfoundland, though they wandered
also in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Belle Isle and along the
north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. They were in the lowest stage of
human existence and lived entirely by hunting and fishing. Unlike the
Eskimos they had no dogs, and so stern were the conditions of their life
that they maintained with difficulty the fight against the rigour of
nature. The early explorers found them on the rocky coasts of Belle
Isle, wild and half clad. They smeared their bodies with red ochre,
bright in colour, and this earned for them the name of Red Indians. From
the first, they had no friendly relations with the Europeans who came to
their shores, but lived in a state of perpetual war with them. The
Newfoundland fishermen and settlers hunted down the Red Indians as if
they were wild beasts, and killed them at sight. Now and again, a few
members of this unhappy race were carried home to England to be
exhibited at country fairs before a crowd of grinning yokels who paid a
penny apiece to look at the 'wild men.'

Living on the mainland, next to the red men of Newfoundland lay the
great race of the Algonquins, spread over a huge tract of country, from
the Atlantic coast to the head of the Great Lakes, and even farther
west. The Algonquins were divided into a great many tribes, some of
whose names are still familiar among the Indians of to-day. The Micmacs
of Nova Scotia, the Malecite of New Brunswick, the Naskapi of Quebec,
the Chippewa of Ontario, and the Crees of the prairie, are of this
stock. It is even held that the Algonquins are to be considered typical
specimens of the American race. They were of fine stature, and in
strength and muscular development were quite on a par with the races of
the Old World. Their skin was copper-coloured, their lips and noses were
thin, and their hair in nearly all cases was straight and black. When
the Europeans first saw the Algonquins they had already made some
advance towards industrial civilization. They built huts of woven
boughs, and for defence sometimes surrounded a group of huts with a
palisade of stakes set up on end. They had no agriculture in the true
sense, but they cultivated Indian corn and pumpkins in the openings of
the forests, and also the tobacco plant, with the virtues of which they
were well acquainted. They made for themselves heavy and clumsy pottery
and utensils of wood, they wove mats out of rushes for their houses,
and they made clothes from the skin of the deer, and head-dresses from
the bright feathers of birds. Of the metals they knew, at the time of
the discovery of America, hardly anything. They made some use of copper,
which they chipped and hammered into rude tools and weapons. But they
knew nothing of melting the metals, and their arrow-heads and
spear-points were made, for the most part, not of metals, but of stone.
Like other Indians, they showed great ingenuity in fashioning bark
canoes of wonderful lightness.

We must remember, however, that with nearly all the aborigines of
America, at least north of Mexico, the attempt to utilize the materials
and forces supplied by nature had made only slight and painful progress.
We are apt to think that it was the mere laziness of the Indians which
prevented more rapid advance. It may be that we do not realize their
difficulties. When the white men first came these rude peoples were so
backward and so little trained in using their faculties that any advance
towards art and industry was inevitably slow and difficult. This was
also true, no doubt, of the peoples who, long centuries before, had been
in the same degree of development in Europe, and had begun the
intricate tasks which a growth towards civilization involved. The
historian Robertson describes in a vivid passage the backward state of
the savage tribes of America. 'The most simple operation,' he says, 'was
to them an undertaking of immense difficulty and labour. To fell a tree
with no other implements than hatchets of stone was employment for a
month.... Their operations in agriculture were equally slow and
defective. In a country covered with woods of the hardest timber, the
clearing of a small field destined for culture required the united
efforts of a tribe, and was a work of much time and great toil.'

The religion of the Algonquin Indians seems to have been a rude nature
worship. The Sun, as the great giver of warmth and light, was the object
of their adoration; to a lesser degree, they looked upon fire as a
superhuman thing, worthy of worship. The four winds of heaven, bringing
storm and rain from the unknown boundaries of the world, were regarded
as spirits. Each Indian clan or section of a tribe chose for its special
devotion an animal, the name of which became the distinctive symbol of
the clan. This is what is meant by the 'totems' of the different
branches of a tribe.

The Algonquins knew nothing of the art of writing, beyond rude pictures
scratched or painted on wood. The Algonquin tribes, as we have seen,
roamed far to the west. One branch frequented the upper Saskatchewan
river. Here the ashes of the prairie fires discoloured their moccasins
and turned them black, and, in consequence, they were called the
Blackfeet Indians. Even when they moved to other parts of the country,
the name was still applied to them.

Occupying the stretch of country to the south of the Algonquins was the
famous race known as the Iroquoian Family. We generally read of the
Hurons and the Iroquois as separate tribes. They really belonged,
however, to one family, though during the period of Canadian history in
which they were prominent they had become deadly enemies. When Cartier
discovered the St Lawrence and made his way to the island of Montreal,
Huron Indians inhabited all that part of the country. When Champlain
came, two generations later, they had vanished from that region, but
they still occupied a part of Ontario around Lake Simcoe and south and
east of Georgian Bay. We always connect the name Iroquois with that part
of the stock which included the allied Five Nations--the Mohawks,
Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas, and Cayugas,--and which occupied the
country between the Hudson river and Lake Ontario. This proved to be the
strongest strategical position in North America. It lies in the gap or
break of the Alleghany ridge, the one place south of the St Lawrence
where an easy and ready access is afforded from the sea-coast to the
interior of the continent. Any one who casts a glance at the map of the
present Eastern states will realize this, and will see why it is that
New York, at the mouth of the Hudson, has become the greatest city of
North America. Now, the same reason which has created New York gave to
the position of the Five Nations its great importance in Canadian
history. But in reality the racial stock of the Iroquois extended much
farther than this, both west and south. It took in the well-known tribe
of the Eries, and also the Indians of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac. It
included even the Tuscaroras of the Roanoke in North Carolina, who
afterwards moved north and changed the five nations into six.

[Illustration: A BLACKFOOT WAR CHIEF From a pastel by Edmund Montague Morris]

The Iroquois were originally natives of the plain, connected very
probably with the Dakotas of the west. But they moved eastwards from
the Mississippi valley towards Niagara, conquering as they went. No
other tribe could compare with them in either bravery or ferocity. They
possessed in a high degree both the virtues and the vices of Indian
character--the unflinching courage and the diabolical cruelty which have
made the Indian an object of mingled admiration and contempt. In bodily
strength and physical endurance they were unsurpassed. Even in modern
days the enervating influence of civilization has not entirely removed
the original vigour of the strain. During the American Civil War of
fifty years ago the five companies of Iroquois Indians recruited in
Canada and in the state of New York were superior in height and
measurement to any other body of five hundred men in the northern
armies.

When the Iroquoian Family migrated, the Hurons settled in the western
peninsula of Ontario. The name of Lake Huron still recalls their abode.
But a part of the race kept moving eastward. Before the coming of the
whites, they had fought their way almost to the sea. But they were able
to hold their new settlements only by hard fighting. The great stockade
which Cartier saw at Hochelaga, with its palisades and fighting
platforms, bore witness to the ferocity of the struggle. At that place
Cartier and his companions were entertained with gruesome tales of
Indian fighting and of wholesale massacres. Seventy years later, in
Champlain's time, the Hochelaga stockade had vanished, and the Hurons
had been driven back into the interior. But for nearly two centuries
after Champlain the Iroquois retained their hold on the territory from
Lake Ontario to the Hudson. The conquests and wars of extermination of
these savages, and the terror which they inspired, have been summed up
by General Francis Walker in the saying: 'They were the scourge of God
upon the aborigines of the continent.'

The Iroquois were in some respects superior to most of the Indians of
the continent. Though they had a limited agriculture, and though they
made hardly any use of metals, they had advanced further in other
directions than most savages. They built of logs, houses long enough to
be divided into several compartments, with a family in each compartment.
By setting a group of houses together, and surrounding them with a
palisade of stakes and trees set on end, the settlement was turned into
a kind of fort, and could bid defiance to the limited means of attack
possessed by their enemies. Inside their houses they kept a good store
of corn, pumpkins and dried meat, which belonged not to each man singly
but to the whole group in common. This was the type of settlement seen
at Quebec and at Hochelaga, and, later on, among the Five Nations.
Indeed, the Five Nations gave to themselves the picturesque name of the
Long House, for their confederation resembled, as it were, the long
wooden houses that held the families together.

All this shows that the superiority of the Iroquois over their enemies
lay in organization. In this they were superior even to their kinsmen
the Hurons. All Indian tribes kept women in a condition which we should
think degrading. The Indian women were drudges; they carried the
burdens, and did the rude manual toil of the tribe. Among the Iroquois,
however, women were not wholly despised; sometimes, if of forceful
character, they had great influence in the councils of the tribe. Among
the Hurons, on the other hand, women were treated with contempt or
brutal indifference. The Huron woman, worn out with arduous toil,
rapidly lost the brightness of her youth. At an age when the women of a
higher culture are still at the height of their charm and
attractiveness the woman of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled
hag, horrible to the eye and often despicable in character. The inborn
gentleness of womanhood had been driven from her breast by
ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of the warriors surpassed the
unhallowed fiendishness of the withered squaw in preparing the torments
of the stake and in shrieking her toothless exultation beside the
torture fire.

Where women are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the
community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the
Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves
when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft
flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in
fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them
to admire.

North and west from the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois were the family of
tribes belonging to the Athapascan stock. The general names of Chipewyan
and Tinne are also applied to the same great branch of the Indian race.
In a variety of groups and tribes, the Athapascans spread out from the
Arctic to Mexico. Their name has since become connected with the
geography of Canada alone, but in reality a number of the tribes of the
plains, like the well-known Apaches, as well as the Hupas of California
and the Navahos, belong to the Athapascans. In Canada, the Athapascans
roamed over the country that lay between Hudson Bay and the Rocky
Mountains. They were found in the basin of the Mackenzie river towards
the Arctic sea, and along the valley of the Fraser to the valley of the
Chilcotin. Their language was broken into a great number of dialects
which differed so widely that only the kindred groups could understand
one another's speech. But the same general resemblance ran through the
various branches of the Athapascans. They were a tall, strong race,
great in endurance, during their prime, though they had little of the
peculiar stamina that makes for long life and vigorous old age. Their
descendants of to-day still show the same facial characteristics--the
low forehead with prominent ridge bones, and the eyes set somewhat
obliquely so as to suggest, though probably without reason, a kinship
with Oriental peoples.

The Athapascans stood low in the scale of civilization. Most of them
lived in a prairie country where a luxuriant soil, not encumbered with
trees, would have responded to the slightest labour. But the
Athapascans, in Canada at least, knew nothing of agriculture. With
alternations of starvation and rude plenty, they lived upon the unaided
bounty of nature and upon the fruits of the chase. The tribes of the far
north, degraded by want and indolence, were often addicted to
cannibalism.

The Indians beyond the mountains, between the Rockies and the sea, were
for the most part quite distinct from those of the plains. Some tribes
of the Athapascans, as we have seen, penetrated into British Columbia,
but the greater part of the natives in that region were of wholly
different races. Of course, we know hardly anything of these Indians
during the first two centuries of European settlement in America. Not
until the eighteenth century, when Russian traders began to frequent the
Pacific coast and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into the
North Pacific, do we learn anything of the aborigines of British
Columbia. There were various tribes--the Tlingit of the far north, the
Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai. It is thought,
however, that nearly all the Pacific Indians belong to one kindred
stock. There are, it is true, many distinct languages between
California and Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics
of the natives show a similarity throughout.

[Illustration: INDIANS OF THE INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA From
photographs made by the Geological Survey of Canada, supplied by J. A.
Teit]

The total number of the original Indian population of the continent can
be a matter of conjecture only. There is every reason, however, to think
that it was far less than the absurdly exaggerated figures given by
early European writers. Whenever the first explorers found a
considerable body of savages they concluded that the people they saw
were only a fraction of some large nation. The result was that the
Spaniards estimated the inhabitants of Peru at thirty millions. Las
Casas, the Spanish historian, said that Hispaniola, the present Hayti,
had a population of three millions; a more exact estimate, made about
twenty years after the discovery of the island, brought the population
down to fourteen thousand! In the same way Montezuma was said to have
commanded three million Mexican warriors--an obvious absurdity. The
early Jesuits reckoned the numbers of the Iroquois at about a hundred
thousand; in reality there seem to have been, in the days of Wolfe and
Montcalm, about twelve thousand. At the opening of the twentieth century
there were in America north of Mexico about 403,000 Indians, of whom
108,000 were in Canada. Some writers go so far as to say that the
numbers of the natives were probably never much greater than they are
to-day. But even if we accept the more general opinion that the Indian
population has declined, there is no evidence to show that the
population was ever more than a thin scattering of wanderers over the
face of a vast country. Mooney estimates that at the coming of the white
man there were only about 846,000 aborigines in the United States,
220,000 in British America, 72,000 in Alaska, and 10,000 in Greenland, a
total native population of 1,148,000 from the Mississippi to the
Atlantic.

The limited means of support possessed by the natives, their primitive
agriculture, their habitual disinclination to settled life and industry,
their constant wars and the epidemic diseases which, even as early as
the time of Jacques Cartier, worked havoc among them, must always have
prevented the growth of a numerous population. The explorer might wander
for days in the depths of the American forest without encountering any
trace of human life. The continent was, in truth, one vast silence,
broken only by the roar of the waterfall or the cry of the beasts and
birds of the forest.




CHAPTER IV

THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN


THERE are many stories of the coming of white men to the coasts of
America and of their settlements in America long before the voyage of
Christopher Columbus. Even in the time of the Greeks and Romans there
were traditions and legends of sailors who had gone out into the 'Sea of
Darkness' beyond the Pillars of Hercules--the ancient name for the
Strait of Gibraltar--and far to the west had found inhabited lands.
Aristotle thought that there must be land out beyond the Atlantic, and
Plato tells us that once upon a time a vast island lay off the coasts of
Africa; he calls it Atlantis, and it was, he says, sunk below the sea by
an earthquake. The Phoenicians were wonderful sailors; their ships had
gone out of the Mediterranean into the other sea, and had reached the
British Isles, and in all probability they sailed as far west as the
Canaries. We find, indeed, in classical literature many references to
supposed islands and countries out beyond the Atlantic. The ancients
called these places the Islands of the Blessed and the Fortunate Isles.
It is, perhaps, not unnatural that in the earlier writers the existence
of these remote and mysterious regions should be linked with the ideas
of the Elysian Fields and of the abodes of the dead. But the later
writers, such as Pliny, and Strabo, the geographer, talked of them as
actual places, and tried to estimate how many Roman miles they must be
distant from the coast of Spain.

There were similar legends among the Irish, legends preserved in written
form at least five hundred years before Columbus. They recount wonderful
voyages out into the Atlantic and the discovery of new land. But all
these tales are mixed up with obvious fable, with accounts of places
where there was never any illness or infirmity, and people lived for
ever, and drank delicious wine and laughed all day, and we cannot
certify to an atom of historic truth in them.

Still more interesting, if only for curiosity's sake, are weird stories
that have been unearthed among the early records of the Chinese. These
are older than the Irish legends, and date back to about the sixth
century. According to the Chinese story, a certain Hoei-Sin sailed out
into the Pacific until he was four thousand miles east of Japan. There
he found a new continent, which the Chinese records called Fusang,
because of a certain tree--the fusang tree,--out of the fibres of which
the inhabitants made, not only clothes, but paper, and even food. Here
was truly a land of wonders. There were strange animals with branching
horns on their heads, there were men who could not speak Chinese but
barked like dogs, and other men with bodies painted in strange colours.
Some people have endeavoured to prove by these legends that the Chinese
must have landed in British Columbia, or have seen moose or reindeer,
since extinct, in the country far to the north. But the whole account is
so mixed up with the miraculous, and with descriptions of things which
certainly never existed on the Pacific coast of America, that we can
place no reliance whatever upon it.

The only importance that we can attach to such traditions of the
discovery of unknown lands and peoples on a new continent is their
bearing as a whole, their accumulated effect, on the likelihood of such
discovery before the time of Columbus. They at least make us ready to
attach due weight to the circumstantial and credible records of the
voyages of the Norsemen. These stand upon ground altogether different
from that of the dim and confused traditions of the classical writers
and of the Irish and Chinese legends. In fact, many scholars are now
convinced that the eastern coast of Canada was known and visited by the
Norsemen five hundred years before Columbus.

From time immemorial the Norsemen were among the most daring and skilful
mariners ever known. They built great wooden boats with tall, sweeping
bows and sterns. These ships, though open and without decks, were yet
stout and seaworthy. Their remains have been found, at times lying
deeply buried under the sand and preserved almost intact. One such
vessel, discovered on the shore of Denmark, measured 72 feet in length.
Another Viking ship, which was dug up in Norway, and which is preserved
in the museum at Christiania, was 78 feet long and 17 feet wide. One of
the old Norse sagas, or stories, tells how King Olaf Tryggvesson built a
ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass, was 74 ells long; in
modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942 tons burden. Even if
we make allowance for the exaggeration or ignorance of the writer of the
saga, there is still a vast contrast between this vessel and the little
ship _Centurion_ in which Anson sailed round the world.

It is needless, however, to prove that the Norsemen could have reached
America in their ships. The voyages from Iceland to Greenland which we
know they made continually for four hundred years were just as arduous
as a further voyage from Greenland to the coast of Canada.

The story of the Norsemen runs thus. Towards the end of the ninth
century, or nearly two hundred years before the Norman conquest, there
was a great exodus or outswarming of the Norsemen from their original
home in Norway. A certain King Harold had succeeded in making himself
supreme in Norway, and great numbers of the lesser chiefs or jarls
preferred to seek new homes across the seas rather than submit to his
rule. So they embarked with their seafaring followers--Vikings, as we
still call them--often, indeed, with their wives and families, in great
open ships, and sailed away, some to the coast of England, others to
France, and others even to the Mediterranean, where they took service
under the Byzantine emperors. But still others, loving the cold rough
seas of the north, struck westward across the North Sea and beyond the
coasts of Scotland till they reached Iceland. This was in the year 874.
Here they made a settlement that presently grew to a population of fifty
thousand people, having flocks and herds, solid houses of stone, and a
fine trade in fish and oil with the countries of Northern Europe. These
settlers in Iceland attained to a high standard of civilization. They
had many books, and were fond of tales and stories, as are all these
northern peoples who spend long winter evenings round the fireside. Some
of the sagas, or stories, which they told were true accounts of the
voyages and adventures of their forefathers; others were fanciful
stories, like our modern romances, created by the imagination; others,
again, were a mixture of the two. Thus it is sometimes hard to
distinguish fact and fancy in these early tales of the Norsemen. We
have, however, means of testing the stories. Among the books written in
Iceland there was one called the _National Name-Book_, in which all the
names of the people were written down, with an account of their
forefathers and of any notable things which they had done.

It is from this book and from the old sagas that we learn how the
Norsemen came to the coast of America. It seems that about 900 a certain
man called Gunnbjorn was driven westward in a great storm and thrown on
the rocky shore of an ice-bound country, where he spent the winter.
Gunnbjorn reached home safely, and never tried again to find this new
land; but, long after his death, the story that there was land farther
west still lingered among the settlers in Iceland and the Orkneys, and
in other homes of the Norsemen. Some time after Gunnbjorn's voyage it
happened that a very bold and determined man called Eric the Red, who
lived in the Orkneys, was made an outlaw for having killed several men
in a quarrel. Eric fled westward over the seas about the year 980, and
he came to a new country with great rocky bays and fjords as in Norway.
There were no trees, but the slopes of the hillsides were bright with
grass, so he called the country Greenland, as it is called to this day.
Eric and his men lived in Greenland for three years, and the ruins of
their rough stone houses are still to be seen, hard by one of the little
Danish settlements of to-day. When Eric and his followers went back to
Iceland they told of what they had seen, and soon he led a new
expedition to Greenland. The adventurers went in twenty-five ships; more
than half were lost on the way, but eleven ships landed safely and
founded a colony in Greenland. Other settlers came, and this Greenland
colony had at one time a population of about two thousand people. Its
inhabitants embraced Christianity when their kinsfolk in other places
did so, and the ruins of their stone churches still exist. The settlers
raised cattle and sheep, and sent ox hides and seal skins and walrus
ivory to Europe in trade for supplies. But as there was no timber in
Greenland they could not build ships, and thus their communication with
the outside world was more or less precarious. In spite of this, the
colony lasted for about four hundred years. It seems to have come to an
end at about the beginning of the fifteenth century. The scanty records
of its history can be traced no later than the year 1409. What happened
to terminate its existence is not known. Some writers, misled by the
name 'Greenland,' have thought that there must have been a change of
climate by which the country lost its original warmth and verdure and
turned into an arctic region. There is no ground for this belief. The
name 'Greenland' did not imply a country of trees and luxuriant
vegetation, but only referred to the bright carpet of grass still seen
in the short Greenland summer in the warmer hollows of the hillsides. It
may have been that the settlement, never strong in numbers, was
overwhelmed by the Eskimos, who are known to have often attacked the
colony: very likely, too, it suffered from the great plague, the Black
Death, that swept over all Europe in the fourteenth century. Whatever
the cause, the colony came to an end, and centuries elapsed before
Greenland was again known to Europe.

This whole story of the Greenland settlement is historical fact which
cannot be doubted. Partly by accident and partly by design, the Norsemen
had been carried from Norway to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and
Iceland, and from there to Greenland. This having happened, it was
natural that their ships should go beyond Greenland itself. During the
four hundred years in which the Norse ships went from Europe to
Greenland, their navigators had neither chart nor compass, and they
sailed huge open boats, carrying only a great square sail. It is evident
that in stress of weather and in fog they must again and again have been
driven past the foot of Greenland, and must have landed somewhere in
what is now Labrador. It would be inconceivable that in four centuries
of voyages this never happened. In most cases, no doubt, the
storm-tossed and battered ships, like the fourteen vessels that Eric
lost, were never heard of again. But in other cases survivors must have
returned to Greenland or Iceland to tell of what they had seen.

This is exactly what happened to a bold sailor called Bjarne, the son of
Herjulf, a few years after the Greenland colony was founded. In 986 he
put out from Iceland to join his father, who was in Greenland, the
purpose being that, after the good old Norse custom, they might drink
their Christmas ale together. Neither Bjarne nor his men had ever sailed
the Greenland sea before, but, like bold mariners, they relied upon
their seafaring instinct to guide them to its coast. As Bjarne's ship
was driven westward, great mists fell upon the face of the waters. There
was neither sun nor stars, but day after day only the thick wet fog that
clung to the cold surface of the heaving sea. To-day travellers even on
a palatial steamship, who spend a few hours shuddering in the chill grey
fog of the North Atlantic, chafing at delay, may form some idea of
voyages such as that of Bjarne Herjulf and his men. These Vikings went
on undaunted towards the west. At last, after many days, they saw land,
but when they drew near they saw that it was not a rugged treeless
region, such as they knew Greenland to be, but a country covered with
forests, a country of low coasts rising inland to small hills, and with
no mountains in sight. Accordingly, Bjarne said that this was not
Greenland, and he would not stop, but turned the vessel to the north.
After two days they sighted land again, still on the left side, and
again it was flat and thick with trees. The sea had fallen calm, and
Bjarne's men desired to land and see this new country, and take wood and
water into the ship. But Bjarne would not. So they held on their course,
and presently a wind from the south-west carried them onward for three
days and three nights. Then again they saw land, but this time it was
high and mountainous, with great shining caps of snow. And again Bjarne
said, 'This is not the land I seek.' They did not go ashore, but sailing
close to the coast they presently found that the land was an island.
When they stood out to sea again, the south wind rose to a gale that
swept them towards the north, with sail reefed down and with their ship
leaping through the foaming surges. Three days and nights they ran
before the gale. On the fourth day land rose before them, and this time
it was Greenland. There Bjarne found his father, and there, when not at
sea, he settled for the rest of his days.

Such is the story of Bjarne Herjulf, as the Norsemen have it. To the
unprejudiced mind there is every reason to believe that his voyage had
carried him to America, to the coast of the Maritime Provinces, or of
Newfoundland or Labrador. More than this one cannot say. True, it is
hard to fit the 'two days' and the 'three days' of Bjarne's narrative
into the sailing distances. But every one who has read any primitive
literature, or even the Homeric poems, will remember how easily times
and distances and numbers that are not exactly known are expressed in
loose phrases not to be taken as literal.

The news of Bjarne's voyage and of his discovery of land seems to have
been carried presently to the Norsemen in Iceland and in Europe. In
fact, Bjarne himself made a voyage to Norway, and, on account of what he
had done, figured there as a person of some importance. But people
blamed Bjarne because he had not landed on the new coasts, and had taken
so little pains to find out more about the region of hills and forests
which lay to the south and west of Greenland. Naturally others were
tempted to follow the matter further. Among these was Leif, son of Eric
the Red. Leif went to Greenland, found Bjarne, bought his ship, and
manned it with a crew of thirty-five. Leif's father, Eric, now lived in
Greenland, and Leif asked him to take command of the expedition. He
thought, the saga says, that, since Eric had found Greenland, he would
bring good luck to the new venture. For the time, Eric consented, but
when all was ready, and he was riding down to the shore to embark, his
horse stumbled and he fell from the saddle and hurt his foot. Eric took
this as an omen of evil, and would not go; but Leif and his crew of
thirty-five set sail towards the south-west. This was in the year 1000
A.D., or four hundred and ninety-two years before Columbus landed in the
West Indies.

Leif and his men sailed on, the saga tells us, till they came to the
last land which Bjarne had discovered. Here they cast anchor, lowered a
boat, and rowed ashore. They found no grass, but only a great field of
snow stretching from the sea to the mountains farther inland; and these
mountains, too, glistened with snow. It seemed to the Norsemen a
forbidding place, and Leif christened it Helluland, or the country of
slate or flat stones. They did not linger, but sailed away at once. The
description of the snow-covered hills, the great slabs of stone, and the
desolate aspect of the coast conveys at least a very strong probability
that the land was Labrador.

Leif and his men sailed away, and soon they discovered another land. The
chronicle does not say how many days they were at sea, so that we cannot
judge of the distance of this new country from the Land of Stones. But
evidently it was entirely different in aspect, and was situated in a
warmer climate. The coast was low, there were broad beaches of white
sand, and behind the beaches rose thick forests spreading over the
country. Again the Norsemen landed. Because of the trees, they gave to
this place the name of Markland, or the Country of Forests. Some writers
have thought that Markland must have been Newfoundland, but the
description also suggests Cape Breton or Nova Scotia. The coast of
Newfoundland is, indeed, for the most part, bold, rugged, and
inhospitable.

Leif put to sea once more. For two days the wind was from the
north-east. Then again they reached land. This new region was the famous
country which the Norsemen called Vineland, and of which every schoolboy
has read. There has been so much dispute as to whether Vineland--this
warm country where grapes grew wild--was Nova Scotia or New England, or
some other region, that it is worth while to read the account of the
Norse saga, literally translated:

     They came to an island, which lay on the north side of the land,
     where they disembarked to wait for good weather. There was dew upon
     the grass; and having accidentally got some of the dew upon their
     hands and put it to their mouths, they thought that they had never
     tasted anything so sweet. Then they went on board and sailed into a
     sound that was between the island and a point that went out
     northwards from the land, and sailed westward past the point. There
     was very shallow water and ebb tide, so that their ship lay dry;
     and there was a long way between their ship and the water. They
     were so desirous to get to the land that they would not wait till
     their ship floated, but ran to the land, to a place where a river
     comes out of a lake. As soon as their ship was afloat they took the
     boats, rowed to the ship, towed her up the river, and from thence
     into the lake, where they cast anchor, carried their beds out of
     the ship, and set up their tents.

     They resolved to put things in order for wintering there, and they
     erected a large house. They did not want for salmon, in both the
     river and the lake; and they thought the salmon larger than any
     they had ever seen before. The country appeared to them to be of so
     good a kind that it would not be necessary to gather fodder for the
     cattle for winter. There was no frost in winter, and the grass was
     not much withered. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland
     and Iceland.

The chronicle goes on to tell how Leif and his men spent the winter in
this place. They explored the country round their encampment. They found
beautiful trees, trees big enough for use in building houses, something
vastly important to men from Greenland, where no trees grow. Delighted
with this, Leif and his men cut down some trees and loaded their ship
with the timber. One day a sailor, whose home had been in a 'south
country,' where he had seen wine made from grapes, and who was nicknamed
the 'Turk,' found on the coast vines with grapes, growing wild. He
brought his companions to the spot, and they gathered grapes sufficient
to fill their ship's boat. It was on this account that Leif called the
country 'Vineland.' They found patches of supposed corn which grew wild
like the grapes and reseeded itself from year to year. It is striking
that the Norse chronicle should name these simple things. Had it been a
work of fancy, probably we should have heard, as in the Chinese legends,
of strange demons and other amazing creatures. But we hear instead of
the beautiful forest extending to the shore, the mountains in the
background, the tangled vines, and the bright patches of wild grain of
some kind ripening in the open glades--the very things which caught the
eye of Cartier when, five centuries later, he first ascended the St
Lawrence.

Where Vineland was we cannot tell. If the men really found wild grapes,
and not some kind of cranberry, Vineland must have been in the region
where grapes will grow. The vine grows as far north as Prince Edward
Island and Cape Breton, and, of course, is found in plenty on the coasts
of Nova Scotia and New England. The chronicle says that the winter days
were longer in Vineland than in Greenland, and names the exact length of
the shortest day. Unfortunately, however, the Norsemen had no accurate
system for measuring time; otherwise the length of the shortest winter
day would enable us to know at what exact spot Leif's settlement was
made.

Leif and his men stayed in Vineland all winter, and sailed home to
Greenland in the spring (1001 A.D.). As they brought timber, much prized
in the Greenland settlement, their voyage caused a great deal of talk.
Naturally others wished to rival Leif. In the next few years several
voyages to Vineland are briefly chronicled in the sagas.

First of all, Thorwald, Leif's brother, borrowed his ship, sailed away
to Vineland with thirty men, and spent two winters there. During his
first summer in Vineland, Thorwald sent some men in a boat westward
along the coast. They found a beautiful country with thick woods
reaching to the shore, and great stretches of white sand. They found a
kind of barn made of wood, and were startled by this first indication of
the presence of man. Thorwald had, indeed, startling adventures. In a
great storm his ship was wrecked on the coast, and he and his men had to
rebuild it. He selected for a settlement a point of land thickly covered
with forest. Before the men had built their houses they fell in with
some savages, whom they made prisoners. These savages had bows and
arrows, and used what the Norsemen called 'skin boats.' One of the
savages escaped and roused his tribe, and presently a great flock of
canoes came out of a large bay, surrounded the Viking ship, and
discharged a cloud of arrows. The Norsemen beat off the savages, but in
the fight Thorwald received a mortal wound. As he lay dying he told his
men to bury him there in Vineland, on the point where he had meant to
build his home. This was done. Thorwald's men remained there for the
winter. In the spring they returned to Greenland, with the sad news for
Leif of his brother's death.

Other voyages followed. A certain Thorfinn Karlsevne even tried to found
a permanent colony in Vineland. In the spring of 1007, he took there a
hundred and sixty men, some women, and many cattle. He and his people
remained in Vineland for nearly four years. They traded with the
savages, giving them cloth and trinkets for furs. Karlsevne's wife gave
birth there to a son, who was christened Snorre, and who was perhaps the
first white child born in America. The Vineland colony seems to have
prospered well enough, but unfortunately quarrels broke out between the
Norsemen and the savages, and so many of Karlsevne's people were killed
that the remainder were glad to sail back to Greenland.

The Norse chronicles contain a further story of how one of Karlsevne's
companions, Thorward, and his wife Freydis, who was a daughter of Eric
the Red, made a voyage to Vineland. This expedition ended in tragedy.
One night the Norsemen quarrelled in their winter quarters, there was a
tumult and a massacre. Freydis herself killed five women with an axe,
and the little colony was drenched in blood. The survivors returned to
Greenland, but were shunned by all from that hour.

After this story we have no detailed accounts of voyages to Vineland.
There are, however, references to it in Icelandic literature. There does
not seem any ground to believe that the Norsemen succeeded in planting a
lasting colony in Vineland. Some people have tried to claim that certain
ancient ruins on the New England coast--an old stone mill at Newport,
and so on--are evidences of such a settlement. But the claim has no
sufficient proof behind it.

On the whole, however, there seems every ground to conclude that again
and again the Norsemen landed on the Atlantic coast of America. We do
not know where they made their winter quarters, nor does this matter.
Very likely there were temporary settlements in both 'Markland,' with
its thick woods bordering on the sea, and in other less promising
regions. It should be added that some writers of authority refuse even
to admit that the Norsemen reached America. The sagas, they say, are
merely a sort of folklore, with accounts of voyages and adventures like
those found in the primitive literature of all nations. Such is the
opinion of Dr Nansen, the famous Arctic explorer. On the other hand,
John Fiske, the American historian, who devoted much patient study to
the question, was convinced that what is now the Canadian coast, with,
probably, part of New England too, was discovered, visited, and
thoroughly well known by the Norse inhabitants of Greenland. For several
centuries they appear to have made summer voyages to and from this
'Vineland the Good,' as they called it, and to have brought back timber
and supplies not found in their own inhospitable country. It is quite
possible that further investigation may throw new light on the Norse
discoveries, and even that undeniable traces of the buildings or
implements of the settlers in Vineland may be found. Meanwhile the
subject, interesting though it is, remains shrouded in mystery.




CHAPTER V

THE BRISTOL VOYAGES


THE discoveries of the Norsemen did not lead to the opening of America
to the nations of Europe. For this the time was not yet ripe. As yet
European nations were backward, not only in navigation, but in the
industries and commerce which supply the real motive for occupying new
lands. In the days of Eric the Red Europe was only beginning to emerge
from a dark period. The might and splendour of the Roman Empire had
vanished, and the great kingdoms which we know were still to rise.

All this changed in the five hundred years between the foundation of the
Greenland colony and the voyage of Christopher Columbus. The discovery
of America took place as a direct result of the advancing civilization
and growing power of Europe. The event itself was, in a sense, due to
pure accident. Columbus was seeking Asia when he found himself among
the tropical islands of the West Indies. In another sense, however, the
discovery marks in world history a necessary stage, for which the
preceding centuries had already made the preparation. The story of the
voyages of Columbus forms no part of our present narrative. But we
cannot understand the background that lies behind the history of Canada
without knowing why such men as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama
and the Cabots began the work of discovery.

[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS From a painting in the Uffizi
Gallery, Florence]

First, we have to realize the peculiar relations between Europe, ancient
and mediaeval, and the great empires of Eastern Asia. The two
civilizations had never been in direct contact. Yet in a sense they were
always connected. The Greeks and the Romans had at least vague reports
of peoples who lived on the far eastern confines of the world, beyond
even the conquests of Alexander the Great in Hindustan. It is certain,
too, that Europe and Asia had always traded with one another in a
strange and unconscious fashion. The spices and silks of the unknown
East passed westward from trader to trader, from caravan to caravan,
until they reached the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and, at last, the
Mediterranean. The journey was so slow, so tedious, the goods passed
from hand to hand so often, that when the Phoenician, Greek, or Roman
merchants bought them their origin had been forgotten. For century after
century this trade continued. When Rome fell, other peoples of the
Mediterranean continued the Eastern trade. Genoa and Venice rose to
greatness by this trade. As wealth and culture revived after the Gothic
conquest which overthrew Rome, the beautiful silks and the rare spices
of the East were more and more prized in a world of increasing luxury.
The Crusades rediscovered Egypt, Syria, and the East for Europe. Gold
and jewels, diamond-hilted swords of Damascus steel, carved ivory, and
priceless gems,--all the treasures which the warriors of the Cross
brought home, helped to impress on the mind of Europe the surpassing
riches of the East.

Gradually a new interest was added. As time went on doubts increased
regarding the true shape of the earth. Early peoples had thought it a
great flat expanse, with the blue sky propped over it like a dome or
cover. This conception was giving way. The wise men who watched the sky
at night, who saw the sweeping circles of the fixed stars and the
wandering path of the strange luminous bodies called planets, began to
suspect a mighty secret,--that the observing eye saw only half the
heavens, and that the course of the stars and the earth itself rounded
out was below the darkness of the horizon. From this theory that the
earth was a great sphere floating in space followed the most enthralling
conclusions. If the earth was really a globe, it might be possible to go
round it and to reappear on the farther side of the horizon. Then the
East might be reached, not only across the deserts of Persia and
Tartary, but also by striking out into the boundless ocean that lay
beyond the Pillars of Hercules. For such an attempt an almost superhuman
courage was required. No man might say what awful seas, what engulfing
gloom, might lie across the familiar waters which washed the shores of
Europe. The most fearless who, at evening, upon the cliffs of Spain or
Portugal, watched black night settle upon the far-spreading waters of
the Atlantic, might well turn shuddering from any attempt to sail into
those unknown wastes.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF COLUMBUS From an old engraving]

It was the stern logic of events which compelled the enterprise.
Barbarous Turks swept westward. Arabia, Syria, the Isles of Greece, and,
at last, in 1453, Constantinople itself, fell into their hands. The
Eastern Empire, the last survival of the Empire of the Romans, perished
beneath the sword of Mahomet. Then the pathway by land to Asia, to the
fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, was blocked by the Turkish
conquest. Commerce, however, remained alert and enterprising, and men's
minds soon turned to the hopes of a western passage which should provide
a new route to the Indies.

All the world knows the story of Christopher Columbus, his long years of
hardship and discouragement; the supreme conviction which sustained him
in his adversity; the final triumph which crowned his efforts. It is no
detraction from the glory of Columbus to say that he was only one of
many eager spirits occupied with new problems of discovery across the
sea. Not the least of these were John and Sebastian Cabot, father and
son. John Cabot, like Columbus, was a Genoese by birth; a long residence
in Venice, however, earned for him in 1476 the citizenship of that
republic. Like many in his time, he seems to have been both a scientific
geographer and a practical sea-captain. At one time he made charts and
maps for his livelihood. Seized with the fever for discovery, he is said
to have begged in vain from the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal for
help in a voyage to the West. About the time of the great discovery of
Columbus in 1492, John Cabot arrived in Bristol. It may be that he took
part in some of the voyages of the Bristol merchants, before the
achievements of Columbus began to startle the world.

[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND HIS SONS DIEGO AND FERDINAND
From an old Spanish picture]

At the close of the fifteenth century the town of Bristol enjoyed a
pre-eminence which it has since lost. It stood second only to London as
a British port. A group of wealthy merchants carried on from Bristol a
lively trade with Iceland and the northern ports of Europe. The town was
the chief centre for an important trade in codfish. Days of fasting were
generally observed at that time; on these the eating of meat was
forbidden by the church, and fish was consequently in great demand. The
merchants of Bristol were keen traders, and were always seeking the
further extension of their trade. Christopher Columbus himself is said
to have made a voyage for the Bristol merchants to Iceland in 1477.
There is even a tale that, before Columbus was known to fame, an
expedition was equipped there in 1480 to seek the 'fabulous islands' of
the Western Sea. Certain it is that the Spanish ambassador in England,
whose business it was to keep his royal master informed of all that was
being done by his rivals, wrote home in 1498: 'It is seven years since
those of Bristol used to send out, every year, a fleet of two, three, or
four caravels to go and search for the Isle of Brazil and the Seven
Cities, according to the fancy of the Genoese.'

We can therefore realize that when Master John Cabot came among the
merchants of this busy town with his plans he found a ready hearing.
Cabot was soon brought to the notice of his august majesty Henry VII of
England. The king had been shortsighted enough to reject overtures made
to him by Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher, and no doubt he
regretted his mistake. Now he was eager enough to act as the patron of a
new voyage. Accordingly, on March 5, 1496, he granted a royal licence in
the form of what was called Letters Patent, authorizing John Cabot and
his sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sancius to make a voyage of discovery in
the name of the king of England. The Cabots were to sail 'with five
ships or vessels of whatever burden or quality soever they be, and with
as many marines or men as they will have with them in the said ships
upon their own proper costs and charges.' It will be seen that Henry
VII, the most parsimonious of kings, had no mind to pay the expense of
the voyage. The expedition was 'to seek out, discover and find
whatsoever islands, countries, regions and provinces of the heathens or
infidels, in whatever part of the world they be, which before this time
have been unknown to all Christians.' It was to sail only 'to the seas
of the east and west and north,' for the king did not wish to lay any
claim to the lands discovered by the Spaniards and Portuguese. The
discoverers, however, were to raise the English flag over any new lands
that they found, to conquer and possess them, and to acquire 'for us
dominion, title, and jurisdiction over those towns, castles, islands,
and mainlands so discovered.' One-fifth of the profits from the
anticipated voyages to the new land was to fall to the king, but the
Cabots were to have a monopoly of trade, and Bristol was to enjoy the
right of being the sole port of entry for the ships engaged in this
trade.

Not until the next year, 1497, did John Cabot set out. Then he embarked
from Bristol with a single ship, called in an old history the _Matthew_,
and a crew of eighteen men. First, he sailed round the south of Ireland,
and from there struck out westward into the unknown sea. The appliances
of navigation were then very imperfect. Sailors could reckon the
latitude by looking up at the North Star, and noting how high it was
above the horizon. Since the North Star stands in the sky due north, and
the axis on which the earth spins points always towards it, it will
appear to an observer in the northern hemisphere to be as many degrees
above the horizon as he himself is distant from the pole or top of the
earth. The old navigators, therefore, could always tell how far north or
south they were. Moreover, as long as the weather was clear they could,
by this means, strike, at night at least, a course due east or west. But
when the weather was not favourable for observations they had to rely on
the compass alone. Now the compass in actual fact does not always and
everywhere point due north. It is subject to variation, and in different
times and places points either considerably east of north or west of it.
In the path where Cabot sailed, the compass pointed west of north; and
hence, though he thought he was sailing straight west from Ireland, he
was really pursuing a curved path bent round a little towards the south.
This fact will become of importance when we consider where it was that
Cabot landed. For finding distance east and west the navigators of the
fifteenth century had no such appliances as our modern chronometer and
instruments of observation. They could tell how far they had sailed only
by 'dead reckoning'; this means that if their ship was going at such and
such a speed, it was supposed to have made such and such a distance in a
given time. But when ships were being driven to and fro, and buffeted by
adverse winds, this reckoning became extremely uncertain.

[Illustration: JOHN CABOT AND HIS SON SEBASTIAN From a model by John
Cassidy]

John Cabot and his men were tossed about considerably in their little
ship. Though they seem to have set out early in May of 1497, it was not
until June 24 that they sighted land. What the land was like, and what
they thought of it, we know from letters written in England by various
persons after their return. Thus we learn that it was a 'very good and
temperate country,' and that 'Brazil wood and silks grow there.' 'The
sea,' they reported, 'is covered with fishes, which are caught not only
with the net, but with baskets, a stone being tied to them in order that
the baskets may sink in the water.' Henceforth, it was said, England
would have no more need to buy fish from Iceland, for the waters of the
new land abounded in fish. Cabot and his men saw no savages, but they
found proof that the land was inhabited. Here and there in the forest
they saw trees which had been felled, and also snares of a rude kind set
to catch game. They were enthusiastic over their success. They reported
that the new land must certainly be connected with Cipango, from which
all the spices and precious stones of the world originated. Only a
scanty stock of provisions, they declared, prevented them from sailing
along the coast as far as Cathay and Cipango. As it was they planted on
the land a great cross with the flag of England and also the banner of
St Mark, the patron saint of Cabot's city of Venice.

The older histories used always to speak as if John Cabot had landed
somewhere on the coast of Labrador, and had at best gone no farther
south than Newfoundland. Even if this were the whole truth about the
voyage, to Cabot and his men would belong the signal honour of having
been the first Europeans, since the Norsemen, to set foot on the
mainland of North America. Without doubt they were the first to unfurl
the flag of England, and to erect the cross upon soil which afterwards
became part of British North America. But this is not all. It is likely
that Cabot reached a point far south of Labrador. His supposed sailing
westward carried him in reality south of the latitude of Ireland. He
makes no mention of the icebergs which any voyager must meet on the
Labrador coast from June to August. His account of a temperate climate
suitable for growing dye-wood, of forest trees, and of a country so fair
that it seemed the gateway of the enchanted lands of the East, is quite
unsuited to the bare and forbidding aspect of Labrador. Cape Breton
island was probably the place of Cabot's landing. Its balmy summer
climate, the abundant fish of its waters, fit in with Cabot's
experiences. The evidence from maps, one of which was made by Cabot's
son Sebastian, points also to Cape Breton as the first landing-place of
English sailors in America.

There is no doubt of the stir made by Cabot's discovery on his safe
return to England. He was in London by August of 1497, and he became at
once the object of eager curiosity and interest. 'He is styled the Great
Admiral,' wrote a Venetian resident in London, 'and vast honour is paid
to him. He dresses in silk, and the English run after him like mad
people.' The sunlight of royal favour broke over him in a flood: even
Henry VII proved generous. The royal accounts show that, on August 10,
1497, the king gave ten pounds 'to him that found the new isle.' A few
months later the king granted to his 'well-beloved John Cabot, of the
parts of Venice, an annuity of twenty pounds sterling,' to be paid out
of the customs of the port of Bristol. The king, too, was lavish in his
promises of help for a new expedition. Henry's imagination had evidently
been fired with the idea of an Oriental empire. A contemporary writer
tells us that Cabot was to have ten armed ships. At Cabot's request, the
king conceded to him all the prisoners needed to man this fleet, saving
only persons condemned for high treason. It is one of the ironies of
history that on the first pages of its annals the beautiful new world is
offered to the criminals of Europe.

During the winter that followed, John Cabot was the hero of the hour.
Busy preparations went on for a new voyage. Letters patent were issued
giving Cabot power to take any six ships that he liked from the ports of
the kingdom, paying to their owners the same price only as if taken for
the king's service. The 'Grand Admiral' became a person of high
importance. On one friend he conferred the sovereignty of an island; to
others he made lavish promises; certain poor friars who offered to
embark on his coming voyage were to be bishops over the heathen of the
new land. Even the merchants of London ventured to send out goods for
trade, and brought to Cabot 'coarse cloth, caps, laces, points, and
other trifles.'

[Illustration: HENRY VII From the painting in the National Portrait
Gallery]

The second expedition sailed from the port of Bristol in May of 1498.
John Cabot and his son Sebastian were in command; of the younger
brothers we hear no more. But the high hopes of the voyagers were doomed
to disappointment. On arriving at the coast of America Cabot's ships
seem first to have turned towards the north. The fatal idea, that the
empires of Asia might be reached through the northern seas already
asserted its sway. The search for a north-west passage, that
will-o'-the-wisp of three centuries, had already begun. Many years later
Sebastian Cabot related to a friend at Seville some details regarding
this unfortunate attempt of his father to reach the spice islands of the
East. The fleet, he said, with its three hundred men, first directed its
course so far to the north that, even in the month of July, monstrous
heaps of ice were found floating on the sea. 'There was,' so Sebastian
told his friend, 'in a manner, continual daylight.' The forbidding
aspect of the coast, the bitter cold of the northern seas, and the
boundless extent of the silent drifting ice, chilled the hopes of the
explorers. They turned towards the south. Day after day, week after
week, they skirted the coast of North America. If we may believe
Sebastian's friend, they reached a point as far south as Gibraltar in
Europe. No more was there ice. The cold of Labrador changed to soft
breezes from the sanded coast of Carolina and from the mild waters of
the Gulf Stream. But of the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, and
the 'towns and castles' over which the Great Admiral was to have
dominion, they saw no trace. Reluctantly the expedition turned again
towards Europe, and with its turning ends our knowledge of what happened
on the voyage.

That the ships came home either as a fleet, or at least in part, we have
certain proof. We know that John Cabot returned to Bristol, for the
ancient accounts of the port show that he lived to draw at least one or
two instalments of his pension. But the sunlight of royal favour no
longer illumined his path. In the annals of English history the name of
John Cabot is never found again.

[Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT From a contemporary portrait]

The son Sebastian survived to continue a life of maritime adventure,
to be counted one of the great sea-captains of the day, and to enjoy an
honourable old age. In the year 1512 we hear of him in the service of
Ferdinand of Spain. He seems to have won great renown as a maker of maps
and charts. He still cherished the idea of reaching Asia by way of the
northern seas of America. A north-west expedition with Sebastian in
command had been decided upon, it is said, by Ferdinand, when the death
of that illustrious sovereign prevented the realization of the project.
After Ferdinand's death, Cabot fell out with the grandees of the Spanish
court, left Madrid, and returned for some time to England. Some have it
that he made a new voyage in the service of Henry VIII, and sailed
through Hudson Strait, but this is probably only a confused
reminiscence, handed down by hearsay, of the earlier voyages. Cabot
served Spain again under Charles V, and made a voyage to Brazil and the
La Plata river. He reappears later in England, and was made Inspector of
the King's Ships by Edward VI. He was a leading spirit of the Merchant
Adventurers who, in Edward's reign, first opened up trade by sea with
Russia.

The voyages of the Bristol traders and the enterprise of England by no
means ended with the exploits of the Cabots. Though our ordinary
history books tell us nothing more of English voyages until we come to
the days of the great Elizabethan navigators, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins,
and to the planting of Virginia, as a matter of fact many voyages were
made under Henry VII and Henry VIII. Both sovereigns seem to have been
anxious to continue the exploration of the western seas, but they had
not the good fortune again to secure such master-pilots as John and
Sebastian Cabot.

In the first place, it seems that the fishermen of England, as well as
those of the Breton coast, followed close in the track of the Cabots. As
soon as the Atlantic passage to Newfoundland had been robbed of the
terrors of the unknown, it was not regarded as difficult. With strong
east winds a ship of the sixteenth century could make the run from
Bristol or St Malo to the Grand Banks in less than twenty days. Once a
ship was on the Banks, the fish were found in an abundance utterly
unknown in European waters, and the ships usually returned home with
great cargoes. During the early years of the sixteenth century English,
French, and Portuguese fishermen went from Europe to the Banks in great
numbers. They landed at various points in Newfoundland and Cape Breton,
and became well acquainted with the outline of the coast. It was no
surprise to Jacques Cartier, for instance, on his first voyage, to find
a French fishing vessel lying off the north shore of the Gulf of St
Lawrence. But these fishing crews thought nothing of exploration. The
harvest of the sea was their sole care, and beyond landing to cure fish
and to obtain wood and water they did nothing to claim or conquer the
land.

There were, however, efforts from time to time to follow up the
discoveries of the Cabots. The merchants of Bristol do not seem to have
been disappointed with the result of the Cabot enterprises, for as early
as in 1501 they sent out a new expedition across the Atlantic. The
sanction of the king was again invoked, and Henry VII granted letters
patent to three men of Bristol--Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst, and
John Thomas--to explore the western seas. These names have a homely
English sound; but associated with them were three Portuguese--John
Gonzales, and two men called Fernandez, all of the Azores, and probably
of the class of master-pilots to which the Cabots and Columbus belonged.
We know nothing of the results of the expedition, but it returned in
safety in the same year, and the parsimonious king was moved to pay out
five pounds from his treasury 'to the men of Bristol that found the
isle.'

Francis Fernandez and John Gonzales remained in the English service and
became subjects of King Henry. Again, in the summer of 1502, they were
sent out on another voyage from Bristol. In September they brought their
ships safely back, and, in proof of the strangeness of the new lands
they carried home 'three men brought out of an Iland forre beyond
Irelond, the which were clothed in Beestes Skynnes and ate raw fflesh
and were rude in their demeanure as Beestes.' From this description
(written in an old atlas of the time), it looks as if the Fernandez
expedition had turned north from the Great Banks and visited the coast
where the Eskimos were found, either in Labrador or Greenland. This time
Henry VII gave Fernandez and Gonzales a pension of ten pounds each, and
made them 'captains' of the New Found Land. A sum of twenty pounds was
given to the merchants of Bristol who had accompanied them. We must
remember that at this time the New Found Land was the general name used
for all the northern coast of America.

There is evidence that a further expedition went out from Bristol in
1503, and still another in 1504. Fernandez and Gonzales, with two
English associates, were again the leaders. They were to have a monopoly
of trade for forty years, but were cautioned not to interfere with the
territory of the king of Portugal. Of the fate of these enterprises
nothing is known.

By the time of Henry VIII, who began to reign in 1509, the annual
fishing fleet of the English which sailed to the American coast had
become important. As early as in 1522, a royal ship of war was sent to
the mouth of the English Channel to protect the 'coming home of the New
Found Island's fleet.' Henry VIII and his minister, Cardinal Wolsey,
were evidently anxious to go on with the work of the previous reign, and
especially to enlist the wealthy merchants and trade companies of London
in the cause of western exploration. In 1521 the cardinal proposed to
the Livery Companies of London--the name given to the trade
organizations of the merchants--that they should send out five ships on
a voyage into the New Found Land. When the merchants seemed disinclined
to make such a venture, the king 'spake sharply to the Mayor to see it
put in execution to the best of his power.' But, even with this
stimulus, several years passed before a London expedition was sent out.
At last, in 1527, two little ships called the _Samson_ and the _Mary of
Guildford_ set out from London with instructions to find their way to
Cathay and the Indies by means of the passage to the north. The two
ships left London on May 10, put into Plymouth, and finally sailed
therefrom on June 10, 1527. They followed Cabot's track, striking
westward from the coast of Ireland. For three weeks they kept together,
making good progress across the Atlantic. Then in a great storm that
arose the _Samson_ was lost with all on board.

The _Mary of Guildford_ pursued her way alone, and her crew had
adventures strange even for those days. Her course, set well to the
north, brought her into the drift ice and the giant icebergs which are
carried down the coast of America at this season (for the month was
July) from the polar seas. In fear of the moving ice, she turned to the
south, the sailors watching eagerly for the land, and sounding as they
went. Four days brought them to the coast of Labrador. They followed it
southward for some days. Presently they entered an inlet where they
found a good harbour, many small islands, and the mouth of a great
river of fresh water. The region was a wilderness, its mountains and
woods apparently untenanted by man. Near the shore they saw the
footmarks of divers great beasts, but, though they explored the country
for about thirty miles, they saw neither men nor animals. At the end of
July, they set sail again, and passed down the coast of Newfoundland to
the harbour of St John's, already a well-known rendezvous. Here they
found fourteen ships of the fishing fleet, mostly vessels from Normandy.
From Newfoundland the _Mary of Guildford_ pursued her way southward, and
passed along the Atlantic coast of America. If she had had any one on
board capable of accurate observation, even after the fashion of the
time, or of making maps, the record of her voyage would have added much
to the general knowledge of the continent. Unfortunately, the Italian
pilot who directed the voyage was killed in a skirmish with Indians
during a temporary landing. Some have thought that this pilot who
perished on the _Mary of Guildford_ may have been the great navigator
Verrazano, of whom we shall presently speak.

The little vessel sailed down the coast to the islands of the West
Indies. She reached Porto Rico in the middle of November, and from that
island she made sail for the new Spanish settlements of San Domingo.
Here, as she lay at her anchorage, the _Mary of Guildford_ was fired
upon by the Spanish fort which commanded the river mouth. At once she
put out into the open sea, and, heading eastward across the Atlantic,
she arrived safely at her port of London.




CHAPTER VI

FORERUNNERS OF JACQUES CARTIER


WE have seen that after the return of the second expedition of the
Cabots no voyages to the coasts of Canada of first-rate importance were
made by the English. This does not mean, however, that nothing was done
by other peoples to discover and explore the northern coasts of America.
The Portuguese were the first after the Cabots to continue the search
along the Canadian coast for the secret of the hidden East. At this
time, we must remember, the Portuguese were one of the leading nations
of Europe, and they were specially interested in maritime enterprise.
Thanks to Columbus, the Spaniards had, it is true, carried off the grand
prize of discovery. But the Portuguese had rendered service not less
useful. From their coasts, jutting far out into the Atlantic, they had
sailed southward and eastward, and had added much to the knowledge of
the globe. For generations, both before and after Columbus, the pilots
and sailors of Portugal were among the most successful and daring in the
world.

For nearly a hundred years before the discovery of America the
Portuguese had been endeavouring to find an ocean route to the spice
islands of the East and to the great Oriental empires which, tradition
said, lay far off on a distant ocean, and which Marco Polo and other
travellers had reached by years of painful land travel across the
interior of Asia. Prince Henry of Portugal was busy with these tasks at
the middle of the fifteenth century. Even before this, Portuguese
sailors had found their way to the Madeiras and the Canary Islands, and
to the Azores, which lie a thousand miles out in the Atlantic. But under
the lead of Prince Henry they began to grope their way down the coast of
Africa, braving the torrid heats and awful calms of that equatorial
region, where the blazing sun, poised overhead in a cloudless sky, was
reflected on the bosom of a stagnant and glistening ocean. It was their
constant hope that at some point the land would be found to roll back
and disclose an ocean pathway round Africa to the East, the goal of
their desire. Year after year they advanced farther, until at last they
achieved a momentous result. In 1487, Bartholomew Diaz sailed round the
southern point of Africa, which received the significant name of the
'Cape of Good Hope,' and entered the Indian Ocean. Henceforth a water
pathway to the Far East was possible. Following Diaz, Vasco da Gama,
leaving Lisbon in 1497, sailed round the south of Africa, and, reaching
the ports of Hindustan, made the maritime route to India a definite
reality.

Thus at the moment when the Spaniards were taking possession of the
western world the Portuguese were establishing their trade in the
rediscovered East. The two nations agreed to divide between them these
worlds of the East and the West. They invoked the friendly offices of
the Pope as mediator, and, henceforth, an imaginary line drawn down the
Atlantic divided the realms. At first this arrangement seemed to give
Spain all the new regions in America, but the line of division was set
so far to the West that the discovery of Brazil, which juts out eastward
into the Atlantic, gave the Portuguese a vast territory in South
America. At the time of which we are now speaking, however, the
Portuguese were intent upon their interests in the Orient. Their great
aim was to pass beyond India, already reached by da Gama, to the
further empires of China and Japan. Like other navigators of the time,
they thought that these places might be reached not merely by southern
but also by the northern seas. Hence it came about that the Portuguese,
going far southward in Africa, went also far northward in America and
sailed along the coast of Canada.

We find, in consequence, that when King Manoel of Portugal was fitting
out a fleet of twenty ships for a new expedition under da Gama, which
was to sail to the Indies by way of Africa, another Portuguese
expedition, setting out with the same object, was sailing in the
opposite direction. At its head was Gaspar Corte-Real, a nobleman of the
Azores, who had followed with eager interest the discoveries of
Columbus, Diaz, and da Gama. Corte-Real sailed from Lisbon in the summer
of 1500 with a single ship. He touched at the Azores. It is possible
that a second vessel joined him there, but this is not clear. From the
Azores his path lay north and west, till presently he reached a land
described as a 'cool region with great woods.' Corte-Real called it from
its verdure 'the Green Land,' but the similarity of name with the place
that we call Greenland is only an accident. In reality the Portuguese
captain was on the coast of Newfoundland. He saw a number of natives.
They appeared to the Portuguese a barbarous people, who dressed in
skins, and lived in caves. They used bows and arrows, and had wooden
spears, the points of which they hardened with fire.

Corte-Real directed his course northward, until he found himself off the
coast of Greenland. He sailed for some distance along those rugged and
forbidding shores, a land of desolation, with jagged mountains and
furrowed cliffs, wrapped in snow and ice. No trace of the lost
civilization of the Norsemen met his eyes. The Portuguese pilot
considered Greenland at its southern point to be an outstanding
promontory of Asia, and he struggled hard to pass beyond it westward to
a more favoured region. But his path was blocked by 'enormous masses of
frozen snow floating on the sea, and moving under the influence of the
waves.' It is clear that he was met not merely by the field ice of the
Arctic ocean, but also by great icebergs moving slowly with the polar
current. The narrative tells how Corte-Real's crew obtained fresh water
from the icebergs. 'Owing to the heat of the sun, fresh and clear water
is melted on the summits, and, descending by small channels formed by
the water itself, it eats away the base where it falls. The boats were
sent in, and in that way as much was taken as was needed.'

Corte-Real made his way as far as a place (which was in latitude 60)
where the sea about him seemed a flowing stream of snow, and so he
called it Rio Nevado, 'the river of snow.' Probably it was Hudson
Strait.

Late in the same season, Corte-Real was back in Lisbon. He had
discovered nothing of immediate profit to the crown of Portugal, but his
survey of the coast of North America from Newfoundland to Hudson Strait
seems to have strengthened the belief that the best route to India lay
in this direction. In any case, on May 15, 1501, he was sent out again
with three ships. This time the Portuguese discovered a region, so they
said, which no one had before visited. The description indicates that
they were on the coast of Nova Scotia and the adjacent part of New
England. The land was wooded with fine straight timber, fit for the
masts of ships, and 'when they landed they found delicious fruits of
various kinds, and trees and pines of marvellous height and thickness.'
They saw many natives, occupied in hunting and fishing. Following the
custom of the time, they seized fifty or sixty natives, and crowded
these unhappy captives into the holds of their ships, to carry home as
evidence of the reality of their discoveries, and to be sold as slaves.
These savages are described by those who saw them in Portugal as of
shapely form and gentle manner, though uncouth and even dirty in person.
They wore otter skins, and their faces were marked with lines. The
description would answer to any of the Algonquin tribes of the eastern
coast. Among the natives seen on the coast there was a boy who had in
his ears two silver rings of Venetian make. The circumstance led the
Portuguese to suppose that they were on the coast of Asia, and that a
European ship had recently visited the same spot. The true explanation,
if the circumstance is correctly reported, would seem to be that the
rings were relics of Cabot's voyages and of his trade in the trinkets
supplied by the merchants.

Gaspar Corte-Real sent his consort ships home, promising to explore the
coast further, and to return later in the season. The vessels duly
reached Lisbon, bringing their captives and the news of the voyage.
Corte-Real, however, never returned, nor is anything known of his fate.

When a year had passed with no news of Gaspar Corte-Real, his brother
Miguel fitted out a new expedition of three ships and sailed westward in
search of him. On reaching the coast of Newfoundland, the ships of
Miguel Corte-Real separated in order to make a diligent search in all
directions for the missing Gaspar. They followed the deep indentations
of the island, noting its outstanding features. Here and there they fell
in with the natives and traded with them, but they found nothing of
value. To make matters worse, when the time came to assemble, as agreed,
in the harbour of St John's, only two ships arrived at the rendezvous.
That of Miguel was missing. After waiting some time the other vessels
returned without him to Portugal.

Two Corte-Reals were now lost. King Manoel transferred the rights of
Gaspar and Miguel to another brother, and in the ensuing years sent out
several Portuguese expeditions to search for the lost leaders, but
without success. The Portuguese gained only a knowledge of the abundance
of fish in the region of the Newfoundland coast. This was important, and
henceforth Portuguese ships joined with the Normans, the Bretons, and
the English in fishing on the Grand Banks. Of the Corte-Reals nothing
more was ever heard.

The next great voyage of discovery was that of Juan Verrazano, some
twenty years after the loss of the Corte-Reals. Like so many other
pilots of his time, Verrazano was an Italian. He had wandered much about
the world, had made his way to the East Indies by the new route that the
Portuguese had opened, and had also, so it is said, been a member of a
ship's company in one of the fishing voyages to Newfoundland now made in
every season.

The name of Juan Verrazano has a peculiar significance in Canadian
history. In more ways than one he was the forerunner of Jacques Cartier,
'the discoverer of Canada.' Not only did he sail along the coast of
Canada, but did so in the service of the king of France, the first
representative of those rising ambitions which were presently to result
in the foundation of New France and the colonial empire of the Bourbon
monarchy. Francis I, the French king, was a vigorous and ambitious
prince. His exploits and rivalries occupy the foreground of European
history in the earlier part of the sixteenth century. It was the object
of Francis to continue the work of Louis XI by consolidating his people
into a single powerful state. His marriage with the heiress of Brittany
joined that independent duchy, rich at least in the seafaring bravery of
its people, to the crown of France. But Francis aimed higher still. He
wished to make himself the arbiter of Europe and the over-lord of the
European kings. Having been defeated by the equally famous king of
Spain, Charles V, in his effort to gain the position and title of Holy
Roman Emperor and the leadership of Europe, he set himself to overthrow
the rising greatness of Spain. The history of Europe for a quarter of a
century turns upon the opposing ambitions of the two monarchs.

As a part of his great design, Francis I turned towards western
discovery and exploration, in order to rival if possible the
achievements of Columbus and Cortes and to possess himself of
territories abounding in gold and silver, in slaves and merchandise,
like the islands of Cuba and San Domingo and the newly conquered empire
of Montezuma, which Spain held. It was in this design that he sent out
Juan Verrazano; in further pursuit of it he sent Jacques Cartier ten
years later; and the result was that French dominion afterwards
prevailed in the valley of the St Lawrence, and seeds were planted from
which grew the present Dominion of Canada.

[Illustration: FRANCIS I From a portrait in the Dominion Archives]

At the end of the year 1523 Juan Verrazano set out from the port of
Dieppe with four ships. Beaten about by adverse storms, they put into
harbour at Madeira, so badly strained by the rough weather that only a
single seaworthy ship remained. In this, the _Dauphine_, Verrazano set
forth on January 17, 1524, for his western discovery. The voyage was
prosperous, except for one awful tempest in mid-Atlantic, 'as terrible,'
wrote Verrazano, 'as ever any sailors suffered.' After seven weeks of
westward sailing Verrazano sighted a coast 'never before seen of any man
either ancient or modern.' This was the shore of North Carolina. From
this point the French captain made his way northward, closely inspecting
the coast, landing here and there, and taking note of the appearance,
the resources, and the natives of the country. The voyage was chiefly
along the coast of what is now the United States, and does not therefore
immediately concern the present narrative. Verrazano's account of his
discoveries, as he afterwards wrote it down, is full of picturesque
interest, and may now be found translated into English in Hakluyt's
_Voyages_. He tells of the savages who flocked to the low sandy shore to
see the French ship riding at anchor. They wore skins about their loins
and light feathers in their hair, and they were 'of colour russet, and
not much unlike the Saracens.' Verrazano said that these Indians were of
'cheerful and steady look, not strong of body, yet sharp-witted, nimble,
and exceeding great runners.' As he sailed northward he was struck with
the wonderful vegetation of the American coast, the beautiful forest of
pine and cypress and other trees, unknown to him, covered with tangled
vines as prolific as the vines of Lombardy. Verrazano's voyage and his
landings can be traced all the way from Carolina to the northern part of
New England. He noted the wonderful harbour at the mouth of the Hudson,
skirted the coast eastward from that point, and then followed northward
along the shores of Massachusetts and Maine. Beyond this Verrazano seems
to have made no landings, but he followed the coast of Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland. He sailed, so he says, as far as fifty degrees north, or
almost to the Strait of Belle Isle. Then he turned eastward, headed out
into the great ocean, and reached France in safety. Unfortunately,
Verrazano did not write a detailed account of that part of his voyage
which related to Canadian waters. But there is no doubt that his glowing
descriptions must have done much to stimulate the French to further
effort. Unhappily, at the moment of his return, his royal master was
deeply engaged in a disastrous invasion of Italy, where he shortly met
the crushing defeat at Pavia (1525) which left him a captive in the
hands of his Spanish rival. His absence crippled French enterprise, and
Verrazano's explorations were not followed up till a change of fortune
enabled Francis to send out the famous expedition of Jacques Cartier.

[Illustration: JUAN VERRAZANO From an engraving in the Dominion
Archives]

One other expedition to Canada deserves brief mention before we come to
Cartier's crowning discovery of the St Lawrence river. This is the
voyage of Stephen Gomez, who was sent out in the year 1524 by Charles V,
the rival of Francis I. He spent about ten months on the voyage,
following much the same course as Verrazano, but examining with far
greater care the coast of Nova Scotia and the territory about the
opening of the Gulf of St Lawrence. His course can be traced from the
Penobscot river in Maine to the island of Cape Breton. He entered the
Bay of Fundy, and probably went far enough to realize from its tides,
rising sometimes to a height of sixty or seventy feet, that its farther
end could not be free, and that it could not furnish an open passage to
the Western Sea. Running north-east along the shore of Nova Scotia,
Gomez sailed through the Gut of Canso, thus learning that Cape Breton
was an island. He named it the Island of St John--or, rather, he
transferred to it this name, which the map-makers had already used.
Hence it came about that the 'Island of St John' occasions great
confusion in the early geography of Canada. The first map-makers who
used it secured their information indirectly, we may suppose, from the
Cabot voyages and the fishermen who frequented the coast. They marked it
as an island lying in the 'Bay of the Bretons,' which had come to be the
name for the open mouth of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Gomez, however, used
the name for Cape Breton island. Later on, the name was applied to what
is now Prince Edward Island. All this is only typical of the
difficulties in understanding the accounts of the early voyages to
America. Gomez duly returned to the port of Corunna in June 1525.

       *       *       *       *       *

We may thus form some idea of the general position of American
exploration and discovery at the time when Cartier made his momentous
voyages. The maritime nations of Europe, in searching for a passage to
the half-mythical empires of Asia, had stumbled on a great continent.
At first they thought it Asia itself. Gradually they were realizing that
this was not Asia, but an outlying land that lay between Europe and Asia
and that must be passed by the navigator before Cathay and Cipango could
rise upon the horizon. But the new continent was vast in extent. It
blocked the westward path from pole to pole. With each voyage, too, the
resources and the native beauty of the new land became more apparent.
The luxuriant islands of the West Indies, and the Aztec empire of
Mexico, were already bringing wealth and grandeur to the monarchy of
Spain. South of Mexico it had been already found that the great barrier
of the continent extended to the cold tempestuous seas of the Antarctic
region. Magellan's voyage (1519-22) had proved indeed that by rounding
South America the way was open to the spice islands of the east. But the
route was infinitely long and arduous. The hope of a shorter passage by
the north beckoned the explorer. Of this north country nothing but its
coast was known as yet. Cabot and the fishermen had found a land of
great forests, swept by the cold and leaden seas of the Arctic, and
holding its secret clasped in the iron grip of the northern ice. The
Corte-Reals, Verrazano, and Gomez had looked upon the endless panorama
of the Atlantic coast of North America--the glorious forests draped with
tangled vines extending to the sanded beaches of the sea--the wide
inlets round the mouths of mighty rivers moving silent and mysterious
from the heart of the unknown continent. Here and there a painted savage
showed the bright feathers of his headgear as he lurked in the trees of
the forest or stood, in fearless curiosity, gazing from the shore at the
white-winged ships of the strange visitants from the sky. But for the
most part all, save the sounds of nature, was silence and mystery. The
waves thundered upon the sanded beach of Carolina and lashed in foam
about the rocks of the iron coasts of New England and the New Found
Land. The forest mingled its murmurs with the waves, and, as the sun
sank behind the unknown hills, wafted its perfume to the anchored ships
that rode upon the placid bosom of the evening sea. And beyond all this
was mystery--the mystery of the unknown East, the secret of the pathway
that must lie somewhere hidden in the bays and inlets of the continent
of silent beauty, and above all the mysterious sense of a great history
still to come for this new land itself--a sense of the murmuring of
many voices caught as the undertone of the rustling of the forest
leaves, but rising at last to the mighty sound of the vast civilization
that in the centuries to come should pour into the silent wildernesses
of America.

To such a land--to such a mystery--sailed forth Jacques Cartier,
discoverer of Canada.




BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


THE Icelandic sagas contain legends of a discovery of America before
Columbus. Benjamin de Costa, in his _Pre-Columbian Discovery of
America_, has given translations of a number of these legends. Other
works bearing on this mythical period are: A. M. Reeves's _The Finding
of Wineland the Good_; J. E. Olson's 'The Voyages of the Northmen' in
Vol. I of the _Original Narrative of Early American History_, edited by
J. F. Jameson; Fridtjof Nansen's _In Northern Mists_; and John Fiske's
_The Discovery of America_. A number of general histories have chapters
bearing on pre-Columbian discovery; the most accessible of these are:
Justin Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_;
Charlevoix's _Histoire et description gnrale de la Nouvelle France_
(1744), translated with notes by J. G. Shea (1886); Henry Harrisse's
_Discovery of North America_; and the _Conquest of Canada_, by the
author of _Hochelaga_.

There are numerous works in the Spanish, French, Italian, and English
languages dealing with Columbus and his time. Pre-eminent among the
latter are: Irving's _Life of Columbus_; Winsor's _Christopher Columbus
and how he Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery_; Helps's _Life
of Columbus_; Prescott's _History of Ferdinand and Isabella_; Crompton's
_Life of Columbus_; St John's _Life of Columbus_; and Major's _Select
Letters of Columbus_ (a Hakluyt Society publication). Likewise in every
important work which deals with the early history of North or South
America, Columbus and his voyages are discussed.

The literature dealing with the Cabots is quite as voluminous as that
bearing on Columbus. Henry Harrisse's _John Cabot, the Discoverer of
North America, and Sebastian, his Son; a Chapter of the Maritime History
of England under the Tudors, 1496-1557_, is a most exhaustive work.
Other authoritative works on the Cabots are Nichols's _Remarkable Life,
Adventures, and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot_, in which an effort is
made to give the chief glory of the discovery of America not to John
Cabot, but to his son Sebastian; Dawson's 'The Voyages of the Cabots,
1497 and 1498,' 'The Voyages of the Cabots, a Sequel,' and 'The Voyages
of the Cabots, Latest Phases of the Controversy,' in _Transactions Royal
Society of Canada_; Biddle's _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_; Beazley's
_John and Sebastian Cabot, The Discovery of North America_; and Weare's
_Cabot's Discovery of America_.

A number of European writers have made able studies of the work of
Verrazano, and two American scholars have contributed valuable works on
that explorer's life and achievements; these are, De Costa's _Verrazano
the Explorer: a Vindication of his Letter and Voyage_, and Murphy's _The
Voyage of Verrazano_.

In addition to the general histories already mentioned, the following
works contain much information on the voyages of the forerunners of
Jacques Cartier: Parkman's _Pioneers of France_; Kohl's _Discovery of
Maine_; Woodbury's _Relation of the Fisheries to the Discovery of North
America_ (in this work it is claimed that the Basques antedated the
Cabots); Dawson's _The St Lawrence Basin and Its Borderlands_; Weise's
_The Discoveries of America; The Journal of Christopher Columbus, and
Documents relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte-Real_,
translated with Notes and an Introduction by Sir Clements R. Markham;
and Biggar's _The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497-1534._ This last
work is essential to the student of the early voyages to America. It
contains documents, many published for the first time, in Latin,
Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French dealing with exploration. The
notes are invaluable, and the documents, with the exception of those in
French, are carefully though freely translated.

For the native tribes of America the reader would do well to consult the
_Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico_, published by the Bureau
of American Ethnology, and the _Handbook of Indians of Canada_,
reprinted by the Canadian Government, with additions and minor
alterations, from the preceding work, under the direction of James
White, F.R.G.S.




INDEX


Alberta, remains of past ages in,    6.

Algonquins, their tribes,    32;
  physical description,    32;
  agriculture and industries,    32, 33;
  religion,    34;
  picture writing,    35.

Archan age,    3, 4.

Arctic seas, the islands of, tropical vegetation and life on,    8.

Athapascans, their tribes,    40, 41;
  their language,    41;
  cannibalism,    42.

Aztecs of Mexico, and picture writing,    25.


Banks of Newfoundland, fishing on,    82, 83.

Basques of the Pyrenees,    21.

Bathurst Island, evidences of a once tropical climate,    8, 9.

Beothuks of Newfoundland, their characteristics,    31.

Bjarne Herjulf, his voyage to Greenland,    54-6.

Bristol, voyages from, by the Cabots,    71, 72, 82;
  further voyages from,    83-5.


Cabots, John and Sebastian,    67, 70;
  history and voyages,    71-6, 79-80;
  their discoveries create a stir in England,    77-8;
  John, styled the 'Grand Admiral, 'granted a pension,    77-8;
  Sebastian's later career,    80-1.

Cape Breton coal-beds,    6.

Carboniferous era,    5.

Cartier, Jacques,    98;
  discoverer of Canada,    102, 105.

Columbus, Christopher,
  and his discovery of America,    11-12, 66, 67, 70, 71.

Continental sea, possible origin of the Mackenzie,
  Saskatchewan, and Mississippi rivers,    4-5.

Corte-Real, Gaspar, his voyage from Lisbon,    92-4;
  second voyage,    94-5.

Corte-Real, Miguel, his voyage in search of Gaspar,    96.

Crusades, effect of on Eastern trade,    68.


Diaz, Bartholomew, his voyage,     91.


Eric the Red, founds a colony in Greenland,    51.

Eskimos, 21;
  relation to other races,    28;
  John Fiske's theory regarding,    28-9;
  their boats, clothes, and modes of life,    29, 30;
  their beliefs,    30;
  in Greenland,    53.

Europe, relations with Eastern Asia,    67;
  effect of the Crusades on trade with the East,    68.


Fiske, John, on the Eskimos,    28-9;
  on the Norsemen having visited America,    65.

Five Nations,    36, 39.

Francis I of France, his reasons for sending out explorers,    97-8.


Geology, its evidence as to mankind's early presence in America,    22-3.

Glacial drift, its path, extent, and where its stones are found,    7-8.

Gomez, Stephen, his voyage of exploration,    101-2.

Great Lakes, early area,    6.

Greenland, first settlement,    51-3.

Gunnbjorn,    50-1.


Henry VII, his interest in the voyages of the Cabots,    72-3, 77, 78;
  other voyages under him,    82, 83-4.

Henry VIII, his interest in western exploration,    82, 85.

Hurons, when Cartier discovered the St Lawrence,    35;
  their abode in western Ontario,    37;
  degradation of their women,    39-40;
  gluttony,    40.


Ice Age, effect of on the climate and soil of Canada,    7-8;
  evidences showing that men lived in,    23-4.

Indians, origin of the name,    12;
  theories as to origin,    13-19;
  their languages,    20-1;
  writing and tools,    25-6;
  canoe their one great invention,    27;
  treatment of their women,    39;
  tribes of the Pacific Coast,    42;
  estimated numbers,    43-4.

Iroquoian Family,    35;
  tribes,    36;
  physical and mental characteristics,    37-8;
  agriculture and settlements,    38-9;
  influence of their women,    39.


Karlsevne, Thorfinn, his colony in Vineland,    63;
  his son Snorre, first white child born in America,    63.


Legends concerning America, among the Greeks and Romans,    45;
  among the Irish,    46;
  the Chinese,    46-7;
  the Norse,    48-9, 55-65.

Leif, son of Eric the Red, his voyage,    57-9;
  discovery of Vineland,    59-61.

Livery Companies of London,    85.


Mankind, races in Old World and New,    19;
  languages,    19-21;
  evidences as to how long in America,    22-4.

Mayas of Central America,    25.


Nachvak, sea-beach at,    10.

Nansen, Fridtjof, his opinion anent stories of Norsemen
  having reached America,    65.

'National Name-Book of Iceland,'    50.

Nebular Theory,    1.

Niagara, possible origin of,    10.

Nicaragua, evidence of prehistoric man in,    22.

Norsemen, reputation as mariners,    48;
  story of their voyages,    49-65.


Peruvians, system of recording events,    25.

Portuguese, voyages of exploration of the,    89-96.


Quaternary Age, changes wrought in the earth's formation in,    6.


Spaniards, voyages and discoveries of the,    89, 91.


Thorwald, son of Eric the Red, his voyage to Vineland,    62;
  death and burial,    63.

Thorward and Freydis, tragedy of,    64.

Toltecs of Mexico, and picture writing,    25.


Vasco da Gama, his voyage,    91.

Verrazano, Juan, his voyage of discovery,    97-104.


Wolsey, Cardinal, anxious to enlist merchants and
  trade companies in exploration,    85.

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press




[End of _The Dawn of Canadian History_ by Stephen Leacock]
