Crusaders of New France | Page 5

that France gave any
attention to the work of gaining some foothold in the New World. By
that time Spain had become firmly entrenched in the lands which
border the Caribbean Sea; her galleons were already bearing home their
rich cargoes of silver bullion. Portugal, England, and even Holland had
already turned with zeal to the exploration of new lands in the East and
the West: French fishermen, it is true, were lengthening their voyages
to the west; every year now the rugged old Norman and Breton seaports
were sending their fleets of small vessels to gather the harvests of the
sea. But official France took no active interest in the regions toward
which they went. Five years after the peace of Cambrai the Breton port
of St. Malo became the starting point of the first French voyageur to the
St. Lawrence. Francis I had been persuaded to turn his thoughts from
gaming and gallantries to the trading prospects of his kingdom, with the
result that in 1534 Jacques Cartier was able to set out on his first
voyage of discovery. Cartier is described in the records of the time as a
corsair--which means that he had made a business of roving the seas to
despoil the enemies of France. St. Malo, his birthplace and home, on
the coast of Brittany, faces the English Channel somewhat south of
Jersey, the nearest of the Channel Islands. The town is set on high
ground which projects out into the sea, forming an almost landlocked
harbor where ships may ride at ease during the most tumultuous gales.
It had long been a notable nursery of hardy fishermen and adventurous
navigators, men who had pressed their way to all the coasts of Europe
and beyond.
Cartier was one of these hardy sailors. His fathers before him had been
mariners, and he had himself learned the way of the great waters while
yet a mere youth. Before his expedition of 1534 Jacques Cartier had
probably made a voyage to Brazil and had in all probability more than

once visited the Newfoundland fishing-banks. Although, when he
sailed from St. Malo to become the pathfinder of a new Bourbon
imperialism, he was forty-three years of age and in the prime of his
days, we know very little of his youth and early manhood. It is enough
that he had attained the rank of a master-pilot and that, from his skill in
seamanship, he was considered the most dependable man in all the
kingdom to serve his august sovereign in this important enterprise.
Cartier shipped his crew at St. Malo, and on the 20th of April, 1534,
headed his two small ships across the great Atlantic. His company
numbered only threescore souls in all. Favored by steady winds his
vessels made good progress, and within three weeks he sighted the
shores of Newfoundland where he put into one of the many small
harbors to rest and refit his ships. Then, turning northward, the
expedition passed through the straits of Belle Isle and into the Gulf of
St. Lawrence. Coasting along the northern shore of the Gulf for a short
distance, Cartier headed his ships due southward, keeping close to the
western shore of the great island almost its whole length; he then struck
across the lower Gulf and, moving northward once more, reached the
Baie des Chaleurs on the 6th July. Here the boats were sent ashore and
the French were able to do a little trading with the Indians. About a
week later, Cartier went northward once more and soon sought shelter
from a violent gulf storm by anchoring in Gaspé Bay. On the headland
there he planted a great wooden cross with the arms of France, the first
symbol of Bourbon dominion in the New Land, and the same symbol
that successive explorers, chanting the _Vexilla Regis_, were in time to
set aloft from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. It was
the augury of the white man's coming.
Crossing next to the southerly shore of Anticosti the voyageurs almost
circled the island until the constant and adverse winds which Cartier
met in the gradually narrowing channel forced him to defer indefinitely
his hope of finding a western passage, and he therefore headed his ships
back to Belle Isle. It was now mid-August, and the season of autumnal
storms was drawing near. Cartier had come to explore, to search for a
westward route to the Indies, to look for precious metals, not to
establish a colony. He accordingly decided to set sail for home and,

with favoring winds, was able to reach St. Malo in the early days of
September.
In one sense the voyage of 1534 had been a failure. No stores of
mineral wealth had been discovered and no short route to