The Mariner of St Malo | Page 3

We may take it for granted that he
early became a sailor. Brought up at such a time and place, he could
hardly have failed to do so. Within a few years after the great discovery
of Columbus, the Channel ports of St Malo and Dieppe were sending
forth adventurous fishermen to ply their trade among the fogs of the
Great Banks of the New Land. The Breton boy, whom we may imagine
wandering about the crowded wharves of the little harbour, must have
heard strange tales from the sailors of the new discoveries. Doubtless
he grew up, as did all the seafarers of his generation, with the
expectation that at any time some fortunate adventurer might find
behind the coasts and islands now revealed to Europe in the western sea
the half-fabled empires of Cipango and Cathay. That, when a boy, he
came into actual contact with sailors who had made the Atlantic voyage
is not to be questioned. We know that in 1507 the Pensee of Dieppe
had crossed to the coast of Newfoundland and that this adventure was
soon followed by the sailing of other Norman ships for the same goal.
We have, however, no record of Cartier and his actual doings until we
find his name in an entry on the baptismal register of St Malo. He stood
as godfather to his nephew, Etienne Nouel, the son of his sister Jehanne.
Strangely enough, this proved to be only the first of a great many
sacred ceremonies of this sort in which he took part. There is a record
of more than fifty baptisms at St Malo in the next forty-five years in

which the illustrious mariner had some share; in twenty-seven of them
he appeared as a godfather.
What voyages Cartier actually made before he suddenly appears in
history as a pilot of the king of France and the protege of the high
admiral of France we do not know. This position in itself, and the fact
that at the time of his marriage in 1519 he had already the rank of
master-pilot, would show that he had made the Atlantic voyage. There
is some faint evidence that he had even been to Brazil, for in the
account of his first recorded voyage he makes a comparison between
the maize of Canada and that of South America; and in those days this
would scarcely have occurred to a writer who had not seen both plants
of which he spoke. 'There groweth likewise,' so runs the quaint
translation that appears in Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' 'a kind of Millet as big
as peason [i.e. peas] like unto that which groweth in Bresil.' And later
on, in the account of his second voyage, he repeats the reference to
Brazil; then 'goodly and large fields' which he saw on the present site of
Montreal recall to him the millet fields of Brazil. It is possible, indeed,
that not only had he been in Brazil, but that he had carried a native of
that country to France. In a baptismal register of St Malo is recorded
the christening, in 1528, of a certain 'Catherine of Brezil,' to whom
Cartier's wife stood godmother. We may, in fancy at least, suppose that
this forlorn little savage with the regal title was a little girl whom the
navigator, after the fashion of his day, had brought home as living
evidence of the existence of the strange lands that he had seen.
Out of this background, then, of uncertainty and conjecture emerges, in
1534, Jacques Cartier, a master-pilot in the prime of life, now sworn to
the service of His Most Christian Majesty Francis I of France, and
about to undertake on behalf of his illustrious master a voyage to the
New Land.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST VOYAGE--NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
It was on April 20, 1534, that Jacques Cartier sailed out of the port of

St Malo on his first voyage in the service of Francis I. Before leaving
their anchorage the commander, the sailing-masters, and the men took
an oath, administered by Charles de Mouy, vice-admiral of France, that
they would behave themselves truly and faithfully in the service of the
Most Christian King. The company were borne in two ships, each of
about sixty tons burden, and numbered in all sixty-one souls.
The passage across the ocean was pleasant. Fair winds, blowing fresh
and strong from the east, carried the clumsy caravels westward on the
foaming crests of the Atlantic surges. Within twenty days of their
departure the icebound shores of Newfoundland rose before their eyes.
Straight in front of them was Cape Bonavista, the 'Cape of Happy
Vision,' already known and named by the fishermen-explorers, who
had welcomed the sight of its projecting headlands after the weary
leagues of unbroken sea. But approach to the