Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France. Claude Glennon Bryan
emporium for the fur trade of the continent.
In 1613 Champlain's enthusiasm was kindled by the tale of one Nicolas de Vignau, who claimed to have traced the Ottawa to its source in a great lake, which also emptied itself through a northern river into an unknown sea. Champlain set off with Vignau and three others to establish this new route to Cathay. In two birch canoes they proceeded up the St. Lawrence and into the rushing Ottawa. Portaging around the seething Chaudière, they came at length to Allumette Island. Here the old Algonquin chief, Tessouat, received them; but he presently convinced Champlain that there was no such northern route as he looked to find. Whereupon Vignau confessed his imposture, and Champlain generously let him go unpunished.
Meanwhile, De Monts had wearied of his New World enterprise, and to secure the interests of his colony Champlain was constrained to make annual voyages to France. In 1612 he found a protector in the Comte de Soissons, who appointed the discoverer his deputy in New France. Soissons, however, died in the same year; but fortunately the Prince of Condé, by whom he was succeeded, was also well-disposed, and retained Champlain as his lieutenant.
Up to this time Quebec had realised only an elementary form of colonisation. The entire population numbered less than fifty persons, and the city consisted of the fortified post at the foot of the cliff, with a few cabins clustering about the log palisades. But on his visit to France in 1615, Champlain took a step forward in his policy. Hitherto the dwellers at Quebec had been transients. They came not to take up residence, but to trade, intending to return again to France as soon as possible. The fear of a death unshriven likewise contributed to tentative settlement; and to meet the latter want, Champlain resolved to establish a church in his colony. Four Récollet friars—Franciscans of the Strict Observance—were easily persuaded to return with him to Quebec. Burning with holy zeal, they confessed their sins, received absolution, and embarked at Honfleur on the 24th of April, 1615. A month later they arrived at Tadousac, and sailed on to Quebec. Every new arrival increased the surprise of the bewildered Indians, who gazed with suspicion upon the four mendicant friars, in their coarse, gray soutanes girt at the waist with the knotted cord of St. Francis of Assisi, and wearing peaked capotes and thick wooden sandals.
The site of the first church in New France was selected without delay. It stood on the strand near the Cul-de-sac, a little distance from the Habitation. Its construction was simple and speedy, and before the end of June the half-hundred citizens of Quebec knelt upon the bare ground and reverently listened to the first Mass ever said in Canada. The guns of the ship in the harbour, and the cannon on the ramparts, boomed forth in honour of the event. That day the priesthood began its long régime. The colonial policy of New France had now been definitely shaped. Henceforth this new Power would stride into the wilderness with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the other—for God and for the King; by baptism, binding the heathen to the faith, and by co-operation with the native tribes against the Iroquois, making Quebec the heart and soul of the vast Indian country, whose boundaries no one knew, and whose wealth none could divine.
BONNE STE. ANNE (OLD CHURCH)
In pursuance of this policy, Father Dolbeau, with much suffering, accompanied the roving Montagnais to their northern hunting-grounds. Their wanderings were so wide that, before he returned, the priest had encountered the Esquimaux of Labrador. Meanwhile, Père Joseph made his way to the Sault St. Louis, where a mighty concourse of savages was assembled; and when the war-conference was ended he went back with the Hurons to their villages. Champlain and Étienne Brulé, the most daring bushman in New France, followed him thither by way of the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing, French River, and the Georgian Bay. Thus Lake Huron was discovered. Then, from Cahiagué, the Huron capital, set out the memorable war-party of 1615, which came near to altering the fate of the Colony. Up the Severn, across Lake Simcoe, thence by portage route to the valley of the Trent, they arrived at Lake Ontario. Crossing to the south shore, they hid their canoes in the forest and were soon in Iroquois territory; but when they came within sight of the Onondaga town, Champlain was no longer able to control his naked allies, and in spite of his precautions they rushed the palisade, only to be beaten back and scattered. The muskets of the twelve Frenchmen alone saved a rout, Champlain himself being wounded; and with much chagrin the dispersed Hurons made their way back to Lake Ontario. They refused even to escort their wounded leader to Quebec as they had promised, and he was obliged to spend the winter in the lodge of one of the chiefs. He hunted and fished with the Hurons, and in one of these expeditions he was lost in the forest for several days, being only saved by that wonderful resource which marked his character. When the spring came again Champlain set off for Quebec, guided by his kind host Durantal. He reached the fort in July, after an absence of a year, and the inhabitants, who had long since believed him dead, assembled in the Récollet church for a special thanksgiving service—nor without good reason, for upon the inveterate ruler and leader depended the destiny of France in America.
The condition of the little colony had not improved during the absence of the governing and inspiring spirit. From the force of circumstances, it did not at once improve upon Champlain's return. These first settlers of Quebec, whose food and living were easily got, and with no ambition to work or trade, idled their time away. Gambling and drinking were their common diversions, the more reckless spirits taking to the woods and adopting the savage life of the hunting tribes. These became the famous coureurs de bois, the picturesque vagrants who were destined in the succeeding years to constitute so serious a "problem" in the administration of New France. At first Champlain could do little more than hold his colony together. Intelligent as his purposes were, he received no help from the Court of France or from the Viceroy De Monts, though the importance of the enterprise of colonisation was set before Europe with every circumstance of national pride and no detail of responsibility.
A painful evidence of the slight importance which the Louvre attached to New France is furnished by the frequent and easy changes in its patronage to which reference has already been made. On the imprisonment of Condé, the young Duc de Montmorency purchased for a song the Lieutenancy of New France, and he in turn sold it to his nephew, Henri Lévis, the Duc de Ventadour. All except De Ventadour had been moved by the lust of gain; in his case, however, the motive was religious—to win the infidels of the New World to the faith of the Old. The Jesuits were his chosen instruments; and accordingly, in the summer of 1625, Charles Lalement, Enemond Masse, and Jean de Brébeuf, landed at Quebec. No guns boomed a welcome to the disciples of Loyola. No salvos of artillery hailed their arrival. Their reception was even distressing. In the temporary absence of Champlain, the Calvinist Émery de Caen was in charge of the fort, and in the violence of his heresy refused them shelter. The inhabitants, likewise, declined to admit the newcomers to their homes. In despair at such treatment the three Jesuits were on the point of returning to France, when the hospitable Récollets invited them to the convent at Notre Dame des Anges. In September the Jesuits made a clearing on the opposite side of the St. Charles, and here they began to build a convent of their own. Thus had the forty-three French exiles, who now made the permanent population of Quebec, a sufficiency of both Récollets and Jesuits for their spiritual guidance. Lalement soon became the keeper of Champlain's conscience, and from this time forward the Jesuits were to have their way in New France.
In 1627 Richelieu's policy of absolutism was extended also to the New World. Revoking the charter of De Caen the Huguenot merchant, he organised the Company of One Hundred Associates, of which he was himself the head. In return for sovereign powers and a perpetual monopoly of the fur trade, this society was to people New France with artisans and colonists, whom they were pledged to provide with cleared lands for agriculture and to maintain. Huguenots, moreover, were to be for ever excluded from the colony.
For a time the new company took an honest view of its obligations—but only for a time. Within a year or so, Quebec was again on the verge of starvation; and in the spring of 1629 the famished inhabitants were eagerly awaiting the Company's ships from France. By July their patience was almost worn out, when at last the watchers at Cap Tourmente brought the news that a fleet of six vessels had reached Tadousac. Quebec could scarcely await their arrival, and the more eager inhabitants prepared to meet the