The French in the Heart of America | Page 7

a part of every day by the
sea, for the amphibious life of this master pilot, going in and out of the
harbor with the tide, had added to France a thousand miles of coast and
river, had opened the door of the new world, beyond the banks of the

Baccalaos, to the imaginations of Europe, and unwittingly showed the
way not to Asia, but to a valley with which Asia had nothing to
compare.
For a half century after Cartier's home bringing of Roberval--the very
year that De Soto's men quitted in misery the lower valley of the
Mississippi--there is no record of a sail upon the river St. Lawrence.
Hochelaga became a waste, its tenants annihilated or scattered, and
Cartier's fort was all but obliterated. The ambitious symbols of empire
were alternately buried in snows and blistered by heat. France had too
much to think of at home. But still, as Parkman says, "the wandering
Esquimaux saw the Norman and Breton sails hovering around some
lonely headland or anchored in fleets in the harbor of St. John, and still
through salt spray and driving mist, the fishermen dragged up the riches
of the sea." For "codfish must still be had for Lent and fast-days."
Another authority pictures the Breton babies of this period playing with
trinkets made of walrus tusks, and the Norman maidens decked in furs
brought by their brothers from the shores of Anticosti and Labrador.
Meanwhile in Brouage on the Bay of Biscay a boy is born whose spirit,
nourished of the tales of the new world, is to make a permanent colony
where Cartier had found and left a wilderness, and is to write his name
foremost on the "bright roll of forest chivalry"--Samuel Champlain.
Once the sea, I am told, touched the massive walls of Brouage. There
are still to be seen, several feet below the surface, rings to which
mariners and fishermen moored their boats--they who used to come to
Brouage for salt with which to cure their fish, they whose stories of the
Newfoundland cod-banks stirred in the boy Champlain the desire for
discovery beyond their fogs. The boys in the school of Hiers-Brouage a
mile away--in the Mairie where I went to consult the parish
records--seemed to know hardly more of that land which the Brouage
boy of three centuries before had lifted out of the fogs by his lifelong
heroic adventures than did the boy Champlain, which makes me feel
that till all French children know of, and all American children
remember Brouage, the story of France in America needs to be retold.
The St. Lawrence Valley has not forgotten, but I could not learn that a

citizen of the Mississippi Valley had made recent pilgrimage to this
spot. [Footnote: For an interesting account of Brouage to-day, see
"Acadiensis," 4:226.]
In the year of Champlain's birth the frightful colonial tragedy in Florida
was nearing its end. By the year 1603 he had, in Spanish employ, made
a voyage of two years in the West Indies, the unique illustrated journal
[Footnote: "Brief Discours des Choses plus remarquables que Sammuel
Champlain de Brouage, reconnues aux Indies Occidentalles au voiage
qu'il en a faict en icelles en l'annee V'C IIIJ'XX XIX (1599) et en
l'annee VJ'C J (1601) comme ensuite." Now in English translation by
Hakluyt Society, 1859.] of which in his own hand was for two centuries
and more in Dieppe, but has recently been acquired by a library in the
United States [Footnote: The John Carter Brown Library at Providence,
R. I.]--a journal most precious especially in its prophecy of the Panama
Canal: [Footnote: Several earlier Spanish suggestions for a canal had
been made. See M. F. Johnson, "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal."]
"One might judge, if the territory four leagues in extent, lying between
Panama and the river were cut thru, he could pass from the south sea to
that on the other side, and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen
hundred leagues. From Panama to Magellan would constitute an island,
and from Panama to Newfoundland would constitute another, so that
the whole of America would be in two islands."
He had also made one expedition to the St. Lawrence, reaching the
deserted Hochelaga, seeing the Lachine Rapids, and getting vague
reports of the unknown West. He must have been back in Paris in time
to see the eleven survivors of La Roche's unsuccessful expedition of
1590, who, having lived twelve years and more on Sable Island, were
rescued and brought before King Henry IV, "standing like river gods"
in their long beards and clad in shaggy skins. During the next three
years this indefatigable, resourceful pioneer assisted in founding
Acadia and exploring the Atlantic coast southward. Boys and girls in
America are familiar with the story of