The Mariner of St Malo | Page 9

that they were constrained to go back again naked,
and made us signs that the next day they would come again and bring
more skins with them.'
Four more days Cartier lingered in the bay. Again he sent boats from
the ships in the hope of finding the westward passage, but to his great
disappointment and grief the search was fruitless. The waters were
evidently landlocked, and there was here, as he sadly chronicled, no
thoroughfare to the westward sea. He met natives in large numbers.
Hundreds of them--men, women, and children--came in their canoes to
see the French explorers. They brought cooked meat, laid it on little
pieces of wood, and, retreating a short distance, invited the French to
eat. Their manner was as of those offering food to the gods who have
descended from above. The women among them, coming fearlessly up
to the explorers, stroked them with their hands, and then lifted these
hands clasped to the sky, with every sign of joy and exultation. The
Indians, as Cartier saw them, seemed to have no settled home, but to
wander to and fro in their canoes, taking fish and game as they went.
Their land appeared to him the fairest that could be seen, level as a
pond; in every opening of the forest he saw wild grains and berries,
roses and fragrant herbs. It was, indeed, a land of promise that lay
basking in the sunshine of a Canadian summer. The warmth led Cartier
to give to the bay the name it still bears--Chaleur.
On July 12 the ships went north again. Their progress was slow.
Boisterous gales drove in great seas from the outer Gulf. At times the
wind, blowing hard from the north, checked their advance and they had,
as best they could, to ride out the storm. The sky was lowering and
overcast, and thick mist and fog frequently enwrapped the ships. The
16th saw them driven by stress of weather into Gaspe Bay, where they
lay until the 25th, with so dark a sky and so violent a storm raging over
the Gulf that not even the daring seamen of St Malo thought it wise to
venture out.

Here again they saw savages in great numbers, but belonging, so
Cartier concluded, to a different tribe from those seen on the bay below.
'We gave them knives,' he wrote, 'combs, beads of glass, and other
trifles of small value, for which they made many signs of gladness,
lifting their hands up to heaven, dancing and singing in their boats.'
They appeared to be a miserable people, in the lowest stage of savagery,
going about practically naked, and owning nothing of any value except
their boats and their fishing-nets. He noted that their heads were shaved
except for a tuft 'on the top of the crown as long as a horse's tail.' This,
of course, was the 'scalp lock,' so suggestive now of the horrors of
Indian warfare, but meaning nothing to the explorer. From its presence
it is supposed that the savages were Indians of the Huron-Iroquois tribe.
Cartier thought, from their destitute state, that there could be no poorer
people in the world.
Before leaving the Bay of Gaspe, Cartier planted a great wooden cross
at the entrance of the harbour. The cross stood thirty feet high, and at
the centre of it he hung a shield with three fleurs-de-lis. At the top was
carved in ancient lettering the legend, 'VIVE LE ROY DE FRANCE.'
A large concourse of savages stood about the French explorers as they
raised the cross to its place. 'So soon as it was up,' writes Cartier, 'we
altogether kneeled down before them, with our hands towards heaven
yielding God thanks: and we made signs unto them, showing them the
heavens, and that all our salvation depended only on Him which in
them dwelleth; whereat they showed a great admiration, looking first at
one another and then at the cross.'
The little group of sailors kneeling about the cross newly reared upon
the soil of Canada as a symbol of the Gospel of Christ and of the
sovereignty of France, the wondering savages turning their faces in awe
towards the summer sky, serene again after the passing storms,--all this
formed an impressive picture, and one that appears and reappears in the
literature of Canada. But the first effect of the ceremony was not
fortunate. By a sound instinct the savages took fright; they rightly saw
in the erection of the cross the advancing shadow of the rule of the
white man. After the French had withdrawn to their ships, the chief of
the Indians came out with his brother and his sons to make protest

against what had been done. He made a long oration, which the French
could not,