English Explorers

The ice remained so long in the St. Lawrence that Cartier could not depart until May. On the third of that month he erected a huge cross, thirty-five feet in height, on the site of Dalhousie Bastion, the highest point of Cape Diamond, the promontory at Quebec, and upon it he hung the arms of France with a Latin inscription: "Francis First, by the grace of God King of France, reigns." On the same day, Donnacona, whose unstinted kindness Cartier had enjoyed, was invited with nine of his chiefs to a feast on the French flag-ship, where they were treacherously detained, and were borne away captives three days afterward. Cartier sailed out of the St. Lawrence on the southern side of Anticosti. He reached the open sea from the gulf, between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, and reached St. Malo on the 6th of July, 1536. The Petite Hermione was found to be so unseaworthy that she was left in the St. Charles, where her remains were found in the year 1848, imbedded in the mud.

At about the time when Cartier sailed from Quebec, two English vessels, the Trinity and the Minion, sailed from Gravesend, with the good wishes of Henry the Eighth, bearing "thirty gentlemen and ninety seamen," to explore the region of the St. Lawrence, and to plant a colony in Newfoundland. The expedition was organized by "Master How, of London, a man of goodly stature, and of great courage, and given to the study of cosmography." His companions were young men of rank and fortune. The ships were two months on the voyage to Cape Breton, where they first touched and then sailed to Newfoundland. There the company came very near starving to death. The famine was so great that some of the stouter sailors killed weaker ones in the woods, and ate them. The "gentlemen" were about to cast lots to determine which of their number should become food for the rest, when a French fishing-vessel, amply provisioned, came into the port. The Englishmen seized her, and with that vessel and their own they returned to England. The Frenchmen laid their case before Henry, who, when he learned how great had been the necessities of his countrymen when they took possession of the vessel, did not punish them, but paid the foreigners the value of their property out of his private purse.

Cartier's report of his second voyage was not cheering. The rigors of the climate on the St. Lawrence in winter; the ice-bound condition of that stream for several months, and the barrenness of the land in precious stones and metals, were so discouraging that more than four years passed away before another like expedition from a French port was planned. The king was then fighting Charles with more intense hatred than ever under the impression that the emperor had caused the death of the eldest son of Francis, who died from the effects of poison. For two years the father could think of nothing but revenge, when through the intervention of the Pope and the Queen of Hungary, the two monarchs whose mutual exasperation was intense, became reconciled and embraced and kissed each other as friends. But the French treasury was drained by long wars, and Francis would not listen to propositions for colonization in America, until late in 1540. Then Francis de la Roque, Lord of Robertval, in Picardy, importuned the king for permission to make further discoveries and plant a colony in New France. The monarch had, meanwhile, talked with Donnacona and learned much about Canada which Cartier could not know. He told him of the large numbers of fur-bearing animals in its woods and waters; the delicious salmon in its rivers, and the richness of its soil and value of its pine timber. Francis was willing to make another trial, and he gave his consent to the fitting out of ships according to the plan of De la Roque. He commissioned that gentlemen Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of "Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Cape Breton and Labrador;" and as the services of Cartier were indispensable, he was recommissioned "Captain and Pilot of the King," and appointed chief mariner of the expedition, in which six or seven ships were to be employed. De la Roque was authorized to make conquests in the name of France and to plant a colony. To obtain men for the latter purpose--for the founders of a State--the prisons of France were ransacked, and many desperate characters were mingled with good men in making up the required number. The work of preparation went vigorously on, and the harbor of St. Malo was alive with busy men in the spring of 1541. Every thing and every body were in readiness late in May excepting De la Roque.