Contrast His Landing On The Flinty Rock At The Base Of
Cape Diamond, The 14th September, 1535, And Reception By A Few Gaping
Savages, With That Of The Present Governor-General, Sir Charles Metcalfe;
Amidst Acclaiming Thousands, On The 25th (Aug.
1843) - the manner of
passing a winter at Stadacone in 1535-6 and at the same place in 1842-3.
What changes have the three centuries wrought!
What recollections have
they left! And what changes will not the next three hundred years bring
about? More wonderful probably than those we admire to-day. But come what
may of that which men sometimes call great and glorious, nothing can
obliterate or eclipse the honors justly due to the memory of the
celebrated navigator and his comrades, who first "coasting the said island
(now Orleans) found at the end of it an expanse of water very beautiful
and pleasant, and a little bar harbour," ('hable,' as he calls it,) and
wintered there at about half a league northward of and under the highland
of Stadacone."
"During the dismal winter Jacques Cartier must have passed in his new
quarters at Ste. Croix, he lost, by sickness contracted, it is said,
from the natives, but more probably from scurvy, twenty-five of his
men. This obliged him to abandon one of his three vessels (La Petite
Hermine it is believed) which he left in her winter quarters, returning
with the two others to France. The locale of the debris or remains,
not only corresponds with the description given by Jacques Cartier of Ste.
Croix, but also with the attention and particular care that might be
expected from a skilful commander, in the selection of a safe spot in an
unknown region where never an European had been before him, for wintering
his vessels. They lie in the bottom of a small creek or gulley, known as
the ruisseau St. Michel, into which the tides regularly flow, on the
property of Charles Smith, Esq., on the north side of the St. Charles and
at about half a mile following the bends of the river above the site of
the old Dorchester Bridge. - They are a little up the creek at about an
acre from its mouth, and their position (where a sudden or short turn of
the creek renders it next to impossible that she should be forced out of
it by any rush of water in the spring or efforts of the ice,) evinces at
once the precaution and the judgment of the commander in his choice of the
spot. But small portions of her remaining timber (oak) are visible through
the mud, but they are bitumanised and black as ebony, and after reposing
in that spot 307 years, seem, as far as by chopping them with axes or
spades, and probing by iron rods or picks, can be ascertained, sound as
the day they were brought thither. The merit of the discovery belongs to
our fellow townsman, Mr. Joseph Hamel, the City Surveyor."
Quebec, 28th August, 1843.
"LE CANON DE BRONZE." - THE BRONZE CANNON.
"A few years ago an ancient cannon of peculiar make, and supposed to have
been of Spanish construction, was found in the river St. Lawrence,
opposite the Parish of Champlain, in the District of Three Rivers. It is
now in the Museum of Mr. Chasseur, and will repay the visit of the curious
stranger. The ingenious writer of the Treatise upon this piece of
ordnance, published in the second volume of the TRANSACTIONS of the
Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, has endeavoured to show that it
belonged to Verazzani, - that the latter perished before the second voyage
of Jacques Cartier, either by scurvy or shipwreck, on his way up the river
towards Hochelaga. He also endeavors, with great stretch of fancy, to
explain and account for the pantomime enacted by the Indians in the
presence of Jacques Cartier, in order to dissuade him from proceeding to
Hochelaga so late in the season, by their recollection and allusion to the
death of Verazzani, some nine or ten years before. But if they had really
known anything respecting the fate of this navigator - and it must have
been fresh in their memory, if we recall to mind how comparatively short a
period had elapsed - is it not most likely that they would have found
means, through the two interpreters to communicate it to Cartier? Yet it
appears that the latter never so much as heard of it, either at Hochelai,
now the Richelieu, where he was on friendly terms with the chief of the
village - or at Hochelaga, where it must have been known - or when he
wintered at Ste. Croix, in the little river St. Charles - nor yet when he
passed a second winter at Carouge! The best evidence, however, that the
Indian pantomime had no reference to Verazzani, and to disprove at once
the truth of the tradition respecting his death in any part of the St.
Lawrence, is to show, which we shall do on good authority, that at the
very time when Cartier was passing the winter at Ste. Croix, Verazzani was
actually alive in Italy. From a letter of Annibal Caro, quoted by
Tiraboschi, an author of undoubted reputation, in the Storie della
Literature Italiana, Vol. VII. part I. pp. 261, 462, it is proved that
Verazzani was living in 1537, a year after the pantomime at Ste. Croix!
While on the subject of the Canon de Bronze it may be noted that
Charlevoix mentions also a tradition, that Jacques Cartier himself was
shipwrecked at the mouth of the river called by his name, with the loss of
one of his vessels. From this it has been supposed that the Canon de
Bronze was lost on that occasion; and an erroneous inscription to that
effect has been engraved upon it. In the first place the cannon was not
found at the mouth of the River Jacques Cartier, but opposite the Parish
of Champlain; in the next, no shipwreck was ever suffered by Jacques
Cartier, who wintered in fact at the mouth of the little river St.
Charles.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 184 of 231
Words from 187961 to 188984
of 236821
