The Mariner of St Malo | Page 2

lost.
It appears, therefore, that we have the right to be content with the
picture which hangs in the town hall of the seaport of St Malo. If it
does not show us Cartier as he was,--and we have no absolute proof in
the one or the other direction,--at least it shows us Cartier as he might
well have been, with precisely the face and bearing which the
hero-worshipper would read into the character of such a discoverer.
The port of St Malo, the birthplace and the home of Cartier, is situated
in the old province of Brittany, in the present department of
Ille-et-Vilaine. It is thus near the lower end of the English Channel. To
the north, about forty miles away, lies Jersey, the nearest of the
Channel Islands, while on the west surges the restless tide of the broad
Atlantic. The situation of the port has made it a nursery of hardy
seamen. The town stands upon a little promontory that juts out as a
peninsula into the ocean. The tide pours in and out of the harbour thus
formed, and rises within the harbour to a height of thirty or forty feet.
The rude gales of the western ocean spend themselves upon the rocky
shores of this Breton coast. Here for centuries has dwelt a race of
adventurous fishermen and navigators, whose daring is unsurpassed by
any other seafaring people in the world.
The history, or at least the legend, of the town goes back ten centuries

before the time of Cartier. It was founded, tradition tells us, by a certain
Aaron, a pilgrim who landed there with his disciples in the year 507
A.D., and sought shelter upon the sea-girt promontory which has since
borne the name of Aaron's Rock. Aaron founded a settlement. To the
same place came, about twenty years later, a bishop of Castle Gwent,
with a small band of followers. The leader of this flock was known as
St Malo, and he gave his name to the seaport.
But the religious character of the first settlement soon passed away. St
Malo became famous as the headquarters of the corsairs of the northern
coast. These had succeeded the Vikings of an earlier day, and they
showed a hardihood and a reckless daring equal to that of their
predecessors. Later on, in more settled times, the place fell into the
hands of the fishermen and traders of northern France. When hardy
sailors pushed out into the Atlantic ocean to reach the distant shores of
America, St Malo became a natural port and place of outfit for the
passage of the western sea.
Jacques Cartier first saw the light in the year 1491. The family has been
traced back to a grandfather who lived in the middle of the fifteenth
century. This Jean Cartier, or Quartier, who was born in St Malo in
1428, took to wife in 1457 Guillemette Baudoin. Of the four sons that
she bore him, Jamet, the eldest, married Geseline Jansart, and of their
five children the second one, Jacques, rose to greatness as the
discoverer of Canada. There is little to chronicle that is worth while of
the later descendants of the original stock. Jacques Cartier himself was
married in 1519 to Marie Katherine des Granches. Her father was the
Chevalier Honore des Granches, high constable of St Malo. In all
probability he stood a few degrees higher in the social scale of the
period than such plain seafaring folk as the Cartier family. From this,
biographers have sought to prove that, early in life, young Jacques
Cartier must have made himself a notable person among his townsmen.
But the plain truth is that we know nothing of the circumstances that
preceded the marriage, and have only the record of 15199 on the civil
register of St Malo: 'The nuptial benediction was received by Jacques
Cartier, master-pilot of the port of Saincte-Malo, son of Jamet Cartier
and of Geseline Jansart, and Marie Katherine des Granches, daughter of

Messire Honore des Granches, chevalier of our lord the king, and
constable of the town and city of Saint-Malo.'
Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no direct descendants.
But the branches of the family descended from the original Jean Cartier
appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other places in
some profusion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
family seems to have died out, although not many years ago direct
descendants of Pierre Cartier, the uncle of Jacques, were still surviving
in France.
It is perhaps no great loss to the world that we have so little knowledge
of the ancestors and relatives of the famous mariner. It is, however,
deeply to be deplored that, beyond the record of his voyages, we know
so little of Jacques Cartier himself.