"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.
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