The Awakening of Europe (Yesterday's Classics) by Synge M. B

The Awakening of Europe (Yesterday's Classics) by Synge M. B

Author:Synge, M. B. [Synge, M. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781599150154
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-12T21:47:21.584000+00:00


CHAPTER XXIX

The Founding of Quebec

"Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past."

—T. MOORE, (Canadian Boat Song).

WHILE Henry Hudson was sailing up his newly discovered river, and the little colony of Virginia was growing daily stronger under Captain John Smith, other countries were busy colonising on the shores of the New World. If there was a New England and a New Holland over the seas, there was also a New France.

Some sixty years before this time, when the spirit of discovery was abroad and all eyes were turned towards the golden East, a French sailor called Jacques Cartier left his native shores to try and find a new passage to India by way of America. His home was at St Malo, a seaport in Brittany—the nursery of hardy mariners such as himself. In the town hall there to-day hangs his portrait, the keen eyes ever searching something beyond the seas that dashed against the shores of his native town.

He left France in the summer of 1534 with three small ships, and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the storm-beaten shores of Labrador, already discovered by Cabot. Passing through the narrow straits between that coast and Newfoundland, he came to a great expanse of water, which he named the Bay of St Lawrence, a name he gave later to the great river which flows into this mighty bay. Undaunted by the dangers of the unknown, Jacques Cartier, with two young natives, made his way up the river St Lawrence till he came to some great cliffs standing high above the surging current below. Little did he think, as he looked at those silent heights, that here should be the site of the busy city of Quebec 20 in Canada, now full of heroic memories. At this time only a cluster of rude huts crowned the summit of the rock. But this little native village was not the capital of the forest state, so the Indians told the French sailor.

On the banks of the river, some days' journey hence, stood the great native town called Hochelaga. In a little boat, with fifty sailors, Cartier set out for the mysterious city. Forests with trees thickly hung with grapes lined the shores of the river up which they now rowed, the water was alive with wildfowl, the air rang with the song of blackbird and thrush. As they neared the city, Indians thronged the shore. Wild with delight, dancing, singing, crowding round the strangers, they threw into the boat presents of fish and maize. As it grew dark, fires were lit, and the Frenchmen could see the excited natives still leaping and dancing by the blaze. When day dawned Cartier followed his guides by a forest path to Hochelaga. Beneath the oaks of the forest the ground was thickly strewn with acorns. Before him rose a great mountain, at the foot of which lay the Indian town. Swarms of natives now rushed round the white men, touching their beards and feeling their faces.



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