The French in the Heart of America | Page 5

in 1611 to this site to build his outpost, not a
trace was left of the palisades which Cartier describes and one of his
men pictures, not an Indian was left of the population that gave such
cordial welcome to Cartier. And for all Champlain's planning it was
still a meadow and a forest--the spring flowers "blooming in the young
grass" and birds of varied plumage flitting "among the boughs"--when
the mystic and soldier Maisonneuve and his associates of Montreal,
forty men and four women, in an enterprise conceived in the ancient
Church of St. Germain-des-Prés and consecrated to the Holy Family by
a solemn ceremonial at Notre-Dame, knelt upon this same ground in
1642 before the hastily reared and decorated altar while Father Vimont,
standing in rich vestments, addressed them. "You are," he said, "a grain
of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow
the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is
on you and your children shall fill the land." [Footnote: François
Dollier de Casson, "Histoire du Montreal," quoted in Parkman's
"Jesuits in North America," p. 209, a free rendering of the original.
"Voyez-vous, messieurs, dit-il, ce que vous voyez n'est qu'un grain de
moutarde, mais il est jeté par des mains si pieuses et animées de l'esprit
de la foi et de la religion que sans doute il faut que le ciele est de grands
desseins puisqu'il se sert de tels ouvriers, et je ne fais aucun doute que
ce petit grain ne produise un grand arbre, ne fasse un jour des
merveilles, ne soit multiplié et ne s'étende de toutes parts."] Parkman
(from the same French authority) finishes the picture of the memorable
day: "The afternoon waned; the sun sank behind the western forest, and
twilight came on. Fireflies were twinkling over the darkened meadow.
They caught them, tied them with threads into shining festoons and
hung them before the altar, where the Host remained exposed. Then
they pitched their tents, lighted their bivouac fires, stationed their
guards and lay down to rest. Such was the birth-night of Montreal."
[Footnote: François Dollier de Casson, "Histoire du Montreal," quoted
in Parkman's "Jesuits in North America," p. 209, a free rendering of the
original. "On avait point de lampes ardentes devant le St. Sacrement,
mais on avait certaines mouches brillantes qui y luisaient fort

agréablement jour et nuit étant suspendues par des filets d'une façon
admirable et belle, et toute propre à honorer selon la rusticité de ce pays
barbare, le plus adorable de nos mystères."]
On the both of September in 1910 two hundred thousand people knelt
in that same place before an out-of-door altar, and the incandescent
lights were the fireflies of a less romantic and a more practical age.
Maisonneuve and Mademoiselle Mance would have been enraptured by
such a scene, but it would have given even greater satisfaction to the
pilot of St. Malo if he could have seen that commercial capital of the
north lying beneath the mountain which still bears the name he gave it,
and stretching far beyond the bounds of the palisaded Hochelaga. It
should please France to know that nearly two hundred thousand French
keep the place of the footprint of the first pioneer, Jacques Cartier.
When a few weeks before my coming to France I was making my way
by a trail down the side of Mount Royal through the trees--some of
which may have been there in Cartier's day--two lads, one of as
beautiful face as I have ever seen, though tear-stained, emerged from
the bushes and begged me, in a language which Jacques Cartier would
have understood better than I, to show them the way back to "rue St.
Maurice," which I did, finding that street to be only a few paces from
the place where Champlain had made a clearing for his "Place Royale"
in the midst of the forest three hundred years ago. That beautiful boy,
Jacques Jardin, brown-eyed, bare-kneed, in French soldier's cap, is to
me the living incarnation of the adventure which has made even that
chill wilderness blossom as a garden in Brittany.
But to come back to Cartier. It was too late in the season to make
further explorations where the two rivers invited to the west and
northwest, so Cartier joined the companions who had been left near
Quebec to build a fort and make ready for the winter. As if to recall that
bitter weather, the hail beat upon the windows of the museum at St.
Malo on the day when I was examining there the relics of the vessel
which Cartier was obliged to leave in the Canadian river, because so
many of his men had died of scurvy and exposure that he had not
sufficient crew