WM ■i¥, Class £j_0,a^_ Book j l\^''^- vGopyiiglit]^" . -COPYRIGHT DEPOSai Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/popularhistoryofOOwith J.^' QUEEN VICTORIA, 187 7 lOSTON, B.B.RUSSELL. POPULAR HISTORY DOMINION OF CANADA jFr0m tl)z ©tscflijers at America to tfjc Present ULimz, INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE PROVINCES OF ONTARIO, QUEBEC, NOVA SCOTIA, NEW BRUNSWICK, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA, MANITOBA, AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; AND OF THE ISLAND OF NEWFOUNDLAND. WILLIAM rf. WITHROW, M.A. Author of "The Catacombs of Rome," "School History of Canada," etc WITH STEEL PORTRAITS, MAPS, AND NUMEROUS WOOD ENGRAVINGS. PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, BOSTON, MASS. CLOUGH & TOWNSEND, TORONTO, ONT. L. A. KENDALL, MONTREAL, P. Q. JOHN KILLAM, Sr., YARMOUTH, N. S. JOHN RUSSELL, PORTLAND, ME. 1S78. /7n ffiopnrigfjf, tSZS, BY B. B. RUSSELL. ALL RIGHTS RK8ERVED. Albert J. Wkight, ,-^ PBINTEK, A '\ No. 79 Milk Street (cor. of Federal), BOSTON. ^■\i3 i-O'HS DUFFEFM HIS EXCELLENCY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF DUFFERIN, K.P., G.C.M.G., K.C.B., (Sobrniax'tSenttul of Ifje Somfnion of CanaUa, THIS HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY WHICH HE HAS SO WISELY GOVERNED, AND IN WHOSE WELFARE HE TAKES SO DEEP AN INTEREST IS, BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. The essential pre-requisite of a rational patriotism, is an intelligent acquaintance with the history of one's country. To supply the means of making that acquaint- ance has been for years the cherished purpose of the writer. After long-continued and careful labour, in which no pains have been spared, this volume is sub- mitted to the public. The author has endeavoured to describe, in as full detail as his prescribed limits of space would permit, the picturesque incidents of the early history of Canada; the stirring episodes of its military conflicts; and the important events leading to and following the confed- eration of the British l!^orth American Provinces. The growth of the principles of civil liberty and the develop- ment of the Canadian Constitution will, it is hoped, be found impartially traced in these pages. The history of the maritime provinces, ^ova Scotia, INTew Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, together with that of the newer provinces of the ]N'orthwest and the Pacific coast, as well as that of Old Canada, has been given as fully as possible. The contemporary his- tory of the Empire, and of foreign countries, where it 6 PREFACE. is intimately connected with that of Canada, has been interwoven with the text. The writer has made copious use of the best existing sources of information, embracing original documents in French and English, parliamentary reports, newspa- per files representing the views of all political parties, and many printed volumes. He has endeavoured to observe strict impartiality, and trusts that he has suc- ceeded in doing so, even in treading upon the delicate ground of recent political events. The particular attention of the reader is directed to the carefully prepared map which accompanies this volume, without the use of which, the important geo- graphical relations of places and events cannot be un- derstood. A copious index has been considered essen- tial to the completeness of the work. W. H. w. Toronto, May 10, 1878. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. Ancient Traditions — The Norsemen in America — Diaz — Columbus Discovers San Salvador, 1492 — His further Discoveries, Misfortunes, and Death — Vespucci — Da'Gama, 17 CHAPTER II. EARLY EXPLORATION. The Cabots — Corter6al — De Lfery — Verrazzani — Jacques Cartier Discovers the St. Lawrence, 1534 — Eoberval, Viceroy, 1541 — Cartier his Lieutenant — Founds Charlesbourg — The Eobervals Founder at Sea, 1549, . . 25 CHAPTER III. THE INDIAN TRIBES. The Mound-Builders — Their probable Origin and Fate — Modern Tribes — Their Arts, Wars, Superstitions — Alliances — The Fur-Trade — Tribal Divi- sions — Present Conation, 34 CHAPTER IV. EARLY COLONIZATION — FOUNDING OP PORT ROYAL. Spanish and English Colonization — Frobisher — Magellan — Drake — Sir Humphrey Gilbert — Raleigh — Gosnold — Hudson — Convicts at Sable Island — Chauvin at Tadousac — Champlain's first Voyage to Canada, 1603 — The Tragedy of St. Croix — Poutrincourt Founds Port Royal, 1605 — Lescharbot — The " Order of the Good Time " — Discord at Port Royal — Mount Desert — Captain Argall. 44 CHAPTER V. champlain's administration. Champlain Founds Quebec, 1608 — Explores Country — Iroquois War — The De Caens — The Hundred Associates, 1627 — Acadia — Kirk's Conquest of Quebec, 1629 — Restored to the French, 1632 — The La Tours in Acadia — Death of Champlain, 1635 — His Character, 57 CHAPTER VI. ENGLISH COLONIZATION — CANADA UNDER THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. English Colonies — Montmagny — Madame de la Peltrie — Marie de I'ln- carnation — Founding of Ville Marie (Montreal), 1642 — Indian Wars and Treaties — The Jesuit Missionaries — Isaac Jogues — Bressani, . . 70 3 CONTENTS. CHAPTER yil. THE WILDERNESS MISSIONS. The Huron Mission — Br^euf, Lalemant, Daniel, DaTosfc — Trials and Triumphs of the Missionaries — Destruction of the Huron Mission, 1648-1649 — Iroquois Ravages — The Onondaga Mission planted, 1656 — Abandoned, 1658 — Dulac des Ormeaux — Thermopylss of Canada — Laval — Earthquakes, . . 84 CHAPTER VIII. ACADIA. La Tour and D'Aulnay — Their Feuds — Madame La Tour's Heroic Defence of St. John — Its Capture, 1667— Perfidy of D'Aulnay — His Death — La Tour Marries his Widow — Le Borgne — Re-conquest of Acadia by the English, 1654 — It is Restored to the French, 1667, 105 CHAPTER IX. ROYAL GOVERNMENT. The Supreme Council — De Mezy — Great Company of the West — De Tracy — Talon — De Courcelles — Mohawk Wars — Seigneurial Tenure — The Fur Trade — Jesuit Explorations — The French on Hudson's Bay — In Newfound- land, . Ill CHAPTER X. DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST. Frontenac — Joliet and Marquette Discover the Mississippi, 1673 — La Salle — Fort Frontenac — Launch of the " Griffin," 1679 — Cr^ve Cceur — Mutiny — Tonti — Hennepin — La Salle in Louisiana — Disasters at Fort St. Louis — Assassination of La Salle, 1687 — Tragic Fate of Texan Colony, . 129 CHAPTER XI. "the AGONY OF CANADA." Civil Disputes — La Barre, Viceroy — Iroquois Wars — Famine Cove — Denon- ville. Viceroy — Iroquois Ravage Frontier — Treachery of Le Rat (Kon- diaronk) -^ Massacre of Lachine, 1689, 147 CHAPTER XIL frontenac's second administration. Abenaquis Ravages — Massacres of Corlaer, Salmon Falls, and Casco Bay, 1690 — Sir Wm. Phips Captures Port Royal — Repulsed at Quebec — St. Castine — Fall of Fort Pemaquid — Villebon on the St. John — D'Iberville in New- foundland and Hudson's Bay — Treaty of Ryswick, 1697 — Death of Frontenac, 1698, 155 CHAPTER XIII. " QUEEN ANNE'S WAR." De Calliferes — Detroit Founded, 1702 — Vandreuil — Massacres of Deerfield and Haverhill — Port Royal Captured, 1710 — Sir Hovenden Walker's Disastrous Attempt against Quebec, 1711 — The Treaty of Utrecht, 1713 — Charlevoix — Rasles — Death of Vaudreuil — The V^rendryes, .... 170 COXTEJSFTS. 9 CHAPTER XIV. LOUISBURG — J)V QUESNE. Pepperell's Conquest of Louisburg, 1745 — Death of D'Anville and D'Estonmelle — Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle Restores Louisburg, 1748 — Halifax Founded, 1749 — The Acadian "Neutrals" — Beau S€jour — Bigot — Fort Du Quesne — CoUision in the Ohio VaUey, 1754, 187 CHAPTER XV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1755. Convention of Britisb Colonists at Albany — William Johnson — British Naval Victories — Braddock's Defeat — The Expedition against Fort Niagara a Failure — Johnson Defeats Dieskau at Lake George — Capture of Beau S6jour — The Tragedy of Grand Pr6 — Expulsion of the Acadians, . . . 198 CHAPTER XVI. THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AND 1757. The Seven Years' War begun, 1756 — Bradstreet's Gallant Exploit — Montcalm Captures Fort Oswego — Immense Booty — Loudon at Louisburg — Montcalm Reduces Fort William Henry — Massacre of Prisoners — Exhaustion of Can- ada — Famine — Extortion of Bigot, 210 CHAPTER XVII. THE CAMPAIGNS OP 1758 AND 1759. William Pitt — Fall of Louisburg — Abercrombie's Defeat at Ticonderoga — Bradstreet Captures Fort Frontenac — Fort Du Quesne Reduced — The Hero of Louisburg — Fall of Fort Niagara — Amherst Reduces Ticonderoga — Exploit and Sufferings of Major Rogers, 219 CHAPTER XVIII. THE CONQUEST OF CANADA, 1759-1760. Wolfe at Quebec — The Fire-rafts — The Siege opened — Straits of the Inbabi- tants — Attack at Montmorenci — Wolfe's Illness — An Audacious Design — The Battle of the Plains of Abraham — The Death of Wolfe and Mont- calm — British Occupation of Quebec — Battle of Ste. Foye — French Siege of Quebec — English Fleet arrives — Siege raised — Amherst's Advance — Surrender of Montreal and Capitulation of Canada, .... 237 CHAPTER XIX. BRITISH RULE — THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. Beneficial Effects of the Conquest — Military Government — Punishment of Bigot — The Peace of Paris, 1763 — Conspiracy of Pontiac — Siege of Detroit — Massacres in the West — Bouquet's Victory at Bushy Run — Sir Guy Carleton, Governor — Law Reforms — The Quebec Act, 1764, . . 257 CHAPTER XX. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Causes of the American Revolution — Concord, Lexington, Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill, 1775 — American Invasion of Canada — Capture of Forts Chambly and St. John — Montgomery Occupies Montreal — Arnold's Wilderness Raid — Ineffective Siege of Quebec — Death of Montgomery — Defeat of Arnold — American Invasion Repulsed — Burgoyne's Surrender, 1777 — General Haldi- mand. Governor, 1779 — The Peace of VersaiUes, 1783 — The U. E. Loyal- ists, 273 2 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXI. THE FOUNDING OF tfPPER CANADA. Lord Doreliester (Sir Guy Carleton), Governor-General, 1780 — The Constitu- tional Act, 1792 — Government of Upper Canada Organized — York (Toronto) Founded, 1795 — Major-General Hunter, Lieut.-Govemor, 1799 — Growth of Parties — Francis Gore, Lieut. Governor, 1806 — Judge Thorpe — Social Or- ganization — Education — Eeligiou, etc., . . . . i . . 288 CHAPTEE XXII. LOWER CANADA — OUTBREAK OF THE WAR OF 1812-15. The New Constitution, 1792 — McLean's Treason — Sir James Craig, 1808-11 — Constitutional Crisis — Sir George Prevost — Causes of the War of 1812-15 — The " Chesapeake " and " Shannon " — " Secret Correspondence " — War Declared, June 18, 1812 — Canadian Loyalty — Hull's Invasion and Eepulse — He Surrenders to Brock, Aug. 15, 1812 — Battle of Queenston Heights — Death of Brock, Oct. 13, 1812 — Dearborn's Invasion — Naval Engage- ments, 299 CHAPTEE XXIII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1813. Proctor at French Town — Capture of York and Niagara — Victories of Stony Creek, Beaver Dams, and Fort Meigs — Defeats of Sackett's Harbour, San- dusky, Lake Erie, and Moravian Town — Death of Tecumseh — ■ Victories of Chrysler's Farm, and Chateauguay — Burning of Niagara — Retaliation at Lewiston, Black Eock, and Buffalo — Sea Fights, the " Chesapeake " " Shan- non," etc. 312 CHAPTEE XXIV. CAMPAIGN OF 1814. Victories of LacoUe and Oswego — Battles of Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, and Fort Erie — Surrender of Maine — Prevost's Ee treat from Plattsburg — Capture of Washington — Burning of Capitol — Menace of Baltimore — Treaty of Ghent, December 24th — Battle of New Orleans — Valour and Patriotism of the Canadians, . . 328 CHAPTEE XXV. AFTER THE WAR — LOWER CANADA. Effects of the War — Internal Development — Political Strive — Administra- tions of Sir John Sherbrooke, the Duke of Eichmond, and Earl of Dalhousie — Union of the Provinces Proposed, .341 CHAPTEE XXVI. AFTER THE WAR — UPPER CANADA. Clergy Eeserves — The '' Family Compact " — Eobert Gourlay — The " Can- ada Trade Act" — Eev. Dr. Strahan — William Lyon Mackenzie — Eobert Baldwin — Sir Francis Bond Head, 349 CHAPTEE XXVII. THE REBELLION — LOWER CANADA. Political Disaffection — Election Eiot — Papineau's Grievance Eesolutions — The Gosford Commission — Seditious Gatherings — Collision at Montreal — Rebels Eendezvous at the Eichelieu — Eouted by Wetherall and Sir John Colbome — Lord Durham — His Clement Policy and able Eeport, . 363 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTEK XXVIII. THE RKBELLION — UPPER CANADA. Struggle for Responsible GoTemment — Speaker Bidwell — Mackenzie Defeated — Rebellious Projects — Apatliy of the Government — The Rendezvous at Gal- lows* Hill — Death of Colonel Moodie — Dr. Rolph — Van Egmont — Attack on Toronto — Rout of the Rebels — Colonel McNab, . . ' . . 373 CHAPTER XXIX. THE "patriot" war. Hunters' Lodges — Mackenzie at Navy Island — " The Republic of Upper Canada " — Colonel McNab on Niagara Frontier — Destruction of the " Caroline " — " Patriot " Raids — Battle of Wtadmill Point — RebeUion Sup- pressed, 382 CHAPTER XXX. THE TJiaON OF THE CANADAS. Beneficial Effect of Lord Durham's Report — Hon. Charles Poulett Thompson, Governor-General — He Urges the Union Policy of Home Government — The Union Act Passed — Responsible Government Granted — Mr. Draper's Clergy Reserve Bill, 390 CHAPTER XXXI. RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. The New Constitution — " Double Majority " — Municipal System — Sir Charles Bagot — Baldwin-Hincks Ministry — Sir Charles Metcalfe — Constitutional Struggle — Draper Ministry — Upper Canada — Rebellion Losses Bill, . 396 CHAPTER XXXII. REBELLION LOSSES AGITATION. Lord Elgin — Fiscal Emancipation — Large Emigration — Baldwin-Lafontaine Ministry — Lower Canada — Rebellion Losses Bill — Mob Violence at Mon- treal — Burning of Parliament Buildings — Lord Elgin Mobbed, . . 406 CHAPTER XXXIIL THE RAILWAY ERA. Political and Commercial Emancipation — Internal Development — Clergy Reserve Question — Francis Hincks — Railway Legislation — Municipal Loan Fund, 413 CHAPTER XXXIV. IMPORTANT LEGISLATION. Gavazzi Riots — Reciprocity Treaty — McNab-Morin Ministry — Secularization of Clergy Reserves — Abolition of Seigneurial Tenure — Canada Steamship Company — Resignation of Lord Elgin — His Death — Crimean "War, . 421 CHAPTER XXXV. COALITION MINISTRY. Sir Edmund Walker Head — Militia Organization — The Corrigan Trial — Mr. John A. Macdonald — Legislative Council made Elective — Commercial Crisis— Representation by Population Demanded — Mr. George Brown, 430 12 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXVI. " REPKESENTATION BY POPULATIOX." T. D'Arcy McGee — Ottawa selected as Capital— The Two Days' Ministry— The Cartier-Macdonald Ministry — The " Double-Shufae "—" Joint Authority" Eesolutions — The Prince of Wales in Canada — Outbreak of American War, 439 CHAPTER XXXVII. POLITICAL CRISIS. Lord Monck — The "Trent" Affair — Militia Bill — Macdonald-Sicotte Ministry — Commercial Prosperity — Macdonald-Dorion Ministry — Alabama Pi- racies, 451 CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE CONFEDERATION MOVEMENT. The Tach^-Macdonald Ministry — Political Dead-lock — Coalition Ministry — Confederate Raids — Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences — Canadian .Parliament Adopts Quebec Scheme — Close of American War — Ottawa the Seat of Government, 458 CHAPTER XXXIX. THE FENIAN INVASION. Abrogation of Reciprocity Treaty — The Fenian Brotherhood — Its Plans — Invasion of Canada — Fight at Ridgeway — Fenians Escape — Prescott and Cornwall Menaced — Eastern Frontiers Crossed — The Raids Suppressed — Last Parliament of Old Canada — Monroe Doctrine — Fenian Trials, 469 CHAPTER XL. NOVA SCOTIA, 1755 - 1834. Organization of Government, 1758 — The Revolutionary War — United Empire Loyalists — The War of 1812 - 15 — Cape Breton — Quit-rent Claims, . 482 CHAPTER XLI. NOVA SCOTIA, 1834-1867. The " Family Compact " — Joseph Howe — Constitutional Struggle — Respon- sible Government Granted, 1848 — Railway Agitation — Confederation Con- ferences — Anti-Confederate Re-action, 490 CHAPTER XLII. NEW BRUNSWICK, 1784 - 1831. Organisation of Government — Col. Thomas Carleton — Political Strife — Timber Trade — Miramichi Fire — Disputed Territories — Baltic Timber Dues, . 499 CHAPTER XLIII. NEW BRUNSWICK, 1831-1867. Sir Alexander Campbell — Crown-land Grievance — Lemuel Allan Wilmot — Struggle for Responsible Government — The Boundary Dispute — The Ash- burton Treaty — Confederation Negotiations, 505 COXTEXTS. 13 CHAPTER XLIV. PRmCE EDWARD ISLAND. Early History — Divided by Lottery — Organization of Government — Quit- rent Claims — Evils of Absenteeism — Arbitration Scheme — Confederation Rejected — Railway Question — Enters Dominion — Land Question Set- tled, ... 513 CHAPTER XLV. CONTEDEKATION ACCOMPX.ISHED. British North America Act — Its Provisions — Inauguration of New Constitu- tion — Titles of Honour — First Cabinet — Sir John Young — Anti-Confeder- ation Agitation — " Better Terms " Granted Nova Scotia, . . . 520 CHAPTER XLVI. RIVAL FUR COMPANIES — RED RIVER SETTLEMENT. Hudson's Bay Company — French Fur Conipany — North-west Company — — Fort William — Red River Settlement Planted — Fierce Rivalries,* and' Con- flicts — Privations and Disasters — Prosperity and Development — Council of Assiniboia, 528 CHAPTER XLYII. THE RED RIVER REBELLION. Cession of North-west Territory — Hon. William Macdougall, Lieut-Governor — Riel's Insurrection — Insurgants Seize Fort Garry — Imprisonment of Can- adian Loyalists — Execution of Thomas Scott — Manitoba Act — The Wolseley Expedition — Collapse of the Rebellion — Last Fenian Raid — British Columbia Enters Dominion — Its Previous History, . . . 537 CHAPTER XL VIII. CLOSE OF THE MACDONALD ADMINISTRATION. The Washington Treaty — Ontario Legislation — Lord Dufferin, Governor- General — Geneva Award — Canada Pacific Railway — Mr. Huntington's Charges — Investigation Committee — Royal Commission — Debate on the Report — Resignation of the Ministry, 547 CHAPTER XLIX. THE MACKENZIE ADMINISTRATION. Constitution of New Government — Dissolution of Parliament — Simultaneous Elections — New Pacific Railway Act — Qu 'Appelle Treaty — Religious Riots — New Brunswick Schoot Law Troubles — Canada at Centennial Ex- hibition — St. John Fire — Fishery Award — Dismissal of De Boucherville Ministry — The Joly Ministry — Party Riots in Montreal — Boundary Award — The Marquis of Lome — General Elections, 558 CHAPTER L. EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OP CANADA. Primary, and Higher Education in Quebec — Ontario — • Nova Scotia — New Brunswick — Prince Edward Island — Manitoba — British Columbia - 592 14 ILLUSTRATIONS. ILLUSTRATIONS. STEEL P0BTBAIT8. "^Her Majesty the Queen. (Frontispiece.) J. His Excellency, the Earl of Dufferin, K. P., G. C. M. G., K. C. B. The Hon. S. L. Tilley, C. B. ; C. Z. Eakle, Esq.; John Boyd, Esq.; Alexander Gibson, Esq. 1 Map of Canada. WOOD ENGRAVINGS. Page DigMon Rock Inscription 19 Old Tower at Newport 19 Christopher Columbus, ' 21 Fleet of Columbus, 22 Amerigo Vespucci, 24 Sebastian Cabot, 25 Jacques Cartier 23 La Grande Hermine, 29 Running a Rapid, 4 ... 39 Making a Portage 39 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 45 Sir "Walter Raleigh 47 Henry Hudson 48 Samuel Champlain, .."... 50 Sieur de Monts, 51 View near Orillia 61 View on Lake Simcoe 62 Captain John Smith, 70 Smith and his Captors, 71 Frontier Block-house, 97 Oliver Cromwell, 109 Colbert, HI Sault Ste. Marie Rapids, 126 Old Stone Towers, Montreal I53 Ancient Halbert, Montreal I54 Old Frontier Block-house 156 Frontier Village Palisade, I73 Old City "Wall, Montreal, I79 Pfere Charlevoix, 181 Rasles' Monument at Norridgewock I84 Sir "William Pepperell, 188 Siege of Louisburg, 1745 189 Benjamin Franklin, 198 ILLUSTRATIONS. 15 Page Sir William JoliDson, _ . • ' 199 General Braddock, 199 Fort Du Quesne, 200 Lake George, 203 ■William Pitt, 219 General Abercromble 223 General Wolfe, 229 Fort Niagara, 230 Lord Amherst 232 Buins of Ticonderoga, 235 City of Quebec 238 Siege of Quebec, 1759 241 Old St. John's Gate, Quebec, . 24T St. Louis Gate, Quebec, 249 Wolfe's Old Monument . 249 Wolfe's New Monument 250 Marquis de Montcalm, 251 Wolfe's and Montcalm's Monument 252 Ste. Foye Monument, 254 Kichard Montgomery • • ■ • • • • • 276 Benedict Arnold, 277 Walls of Quebec 278 Face of Citadel Cliff, Quebec, 279 Marc[uis de La Fayette, 283 Washington's Cabinet, 285 Hope Gate, Quebec, 288 Joseph Brant, 298 Prescott Gate, Quebec, 300 Niagara Frontier, 306 Colonel De Salaberry, 324 Battle of New Orleans 337 Hon. Louis J. Papineau, 344 Sir John Beverly Robinson 350 Palace Gate, Quebec, . ■ 364 City of Kingston 397 Sir L. H. Lafontaine, 400 Sir Francis Hincks, 401 SirE. P. Tache 432 Sir John A. Macdonald, 433 Hon, George Brown, 435 SirA. T. Gait 441 Sir George E.<3artier 442 Montreal from the Mountain, ■ 446 Sir William Fenwick Williams , . . . . 447 Hon. Antoine A. Dorion, ....'. 456 Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, 468 The* Great Eastern " Steamship 480 Hon. Joseph Howe 490 Sir R. Graves MacDonnell, 496 Hon. Dr. Tupper, ■ . . 497 Christ Church Cathedral, Fredericton, N. B 510 Sir N. F. Belleau, 624 LordLisgar 526 McKay's Mountain, Fort William, 530 Kakabekah Falls 541 Hon. A, G, Archibald, 542 Sir Hugh Allan 552 Hon. Alex. Mackenzie 553 16 ILLUSTRATIONS. Page Thunder Cape, Lake Superior, 661 Post-Offlce and Bank, Montreal, 573 New Custom-House, Toronto 674 PoBt-Office, Toronto 674 Young Men's Christian Association Building, Montreal 575 Union Station, Toronto, , 676 St. James' Cathedral, Toronto, 676 Metropolitan Church, Toronto 677 Jarvis Street Baptist Church, Toronto 677 Market Block, St. John, N. B., 682 The Marquis of Lome 590 Toronto University 692 Normal School, Toronto 698 College Avenue, Toronto 698 Knox College, Toronto 699 Seminary, Yarmouth, N. S 602 University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, , . 604 , _ Wfle^/f.^ r , / r/Minjii'iin ^; •OSWEGO A^,/,^,,„^; I yi>,nu/nu/ -No: S i' ^^ 2 t|ff® < JX4>/, ,V/'«^/y • ALBANY , (-/ tl ^ J ' J. iV , F 7 . iU''i .tV'^ i 4^ ^ ^/wsWrn/ceB M/ 1 1 5 \jnv^. M ecit fr. Jtv GrcemiyioK HISTORY OF CANADA. CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF MIEEICA. Ancient Traditions — Irish and Welsli Claims — The Norsemen Colonize Green- land and Discover America in the Tenth Century — Trade with India — Diaz Discovers the Cape of Good Hope, 1486 — Columhus Discovers San Salvador, 1492 — His further Discoveries, Misfortunes, and Death — Vespucci — Da Gama. FEOM very ancient times there were traditions of the exist- ence of a Western World. Hesiod sang of the fabled gardens of the Hesperides, and Plato wrote of the vast island of Atlantis, far beyond the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar. Phoenician and Carthaginian explorers reported the discovery of a fair and fertile country beyond the Western wave. These strange lands, however, were probably the Canary, Cape Verde, or Azores islands, or possibly even the famed Tin Islands of Great Britain. The Thule mentioned by Pytheas, a Greek mariner of about the time of Alexander the Great, was probably the island of Iceland, which, there is rea- son to believe, was known at a very early period. The Irish and the Welsh have also laid claim to the discovery of the continent of America. Madoc, a legendary Welsh prince of the twelfth century, is recorded by the bards to have returned from a voyage of exploration with marvellous accounts of strange lands beyond the sunset. Many vessels, it is said, were fitted out to accompany him upon a second voyage, but they were never heard of again. The non-maritime character of the Welsh of that period, however, invalidates the veracity of this story. 3 . [17] 13 BISTORT OF CANADA. TTpon much hotter grounds rest the claims of the Norsemen, of having, first of the European race, visited this Western World. Tli(;se brave ohl sc^i-kings, swarming out of the Blorniy Nortli, early sul)ducd a large part of England, Belgium, and Noi-niandy ; and, under Robert Guiscard, in the eleventh contury, made tlicmsolves masters of Sicily and Southern Italy. Tn the y(>ar 874, a strong colony of these adventurous spirits cmigr.'ili'd from Norway to Iceland, six hundred miles distant in the wild northern sea ; and in the year 1874 was celebrated the niill(MiiiiMl anuivcrsnry of the colony then planted. it is only one hundred and sixty miles from the west coast of Iceland to the east coast of Greenland, and this distance was soon traversed .by the adventurous barks * of the Norsemen. Icelandic sagas record, that in the year 985, Erik the Red, with twenly-live vessels, set sail for Greenland. With only fourteen of tliese ho doubled Cape Farewell, and planted a settlement at Eriksliord, on the west coast. For four hundred years Green- land continued to be a See of Rome, with a succession of seven- teen Christian bishops. At one time there were more than ihree hundred farms and villages in this now inhospitable region. The sagas further record, that in the year 996, Biarne Her- julfson, a Norse navigator, sailing from Iceland to Greenland, was driven by a storm as far west as Newfoundland or Labra- dor. No landing was eUoctod upon the low-lying, forest-clad shores ; but the news of their discovery created a deep interest among the adventurous Icelanders. In the year 1000, there- fore, Ijoif Erikson, with a company of live and thirty^men, set sail from Greenland to follow up the discovery of Ilerjulfson. They first reached an island, supposed to be Newfoundland, to which they gave the name of Ilolluland, and next, a wooded coast, i)r()l)ably Nova Scotia, which they called ]Markhmd. Sail- ing southward for two days, they again sighted land about the * Soino of tlioso Norso vessels were not. inadequate to standing a rongli sea. Tlie koel of King Olaf s '* Long Serpent '' was one liundrod and forty feet iu length. IIo had two vessels, capable of carrying two hundred men eaoli. DISCOVERT OF AMERICA. 19 latitude of Massachusetts. To this pleasant country, mild as compared with their snowy Greenland, they gave the name, on account of the abundance of wild-grape vines, of Vniland. Here they wintered, and, in the spring, bore back to Greenland the tidings of their discovery. The following year, 1002, Thorwald, the brother of Leif Erikson, with a crew of thirty men, came to Vinland, and after three years, was killed in a skirmish with the natives, the first victim of the long and bloody contest between the red race and the white for the possession of the continent.* In the year 1007, the sagas record, Thorfinn Karlsefne, a rich Icelander, with his wife, Gudrid, and a company of one hundred and fifty-one men and seven wo- men, planted a colony in Vinland. A num- bighton rock inscription. ber of cattle and sheep were brought from Greenland, and efforts were made to establish a permanent settlement. Hos- tilities with the natives, however, compelled the abandonment * In 1831, there was found, near Fall Eiver, Massachusetts, a skeleton, encased in rust-corroded armour. This skeleton, sanguine antiquarians have thought to be possibly a relic of Thorwald Erikson. Associating it with the old round tower at Newport, shown in the engraving, for which a Norse origin is claimed, the poet Longfellow has made it the subject of one of his most delightful ballads : — " Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to leeward ; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower, Which to this very hour, Stands looking seaward." old tower at Newport. 20 HISTORY OF CANADA. of the effort at the end of three years.* From a son of Thor- finn, born in Vinland, Danish genealogists trace the lineal de- scent of the celebrated sculptor, Bertel* Thorwaldsen. The planting of subsequent colonies is recorded by the sagas, but they were all eventually expelled by the natives, or wasted by famine or disease. The credibility of these documents is ad- mitted by competent critics, and is confirmed by the contem- porary authority of Adam of Bremen, who records, from the testimony of the Danes, the discovery and settlement of Vinland, beyond the Atlantic Ocean. f Several causes conspired to obliterate the memory of those Norse colonies in Yinland and Greenland. Conflicts with the natives, and the attacks of pirate fleets, destroyed the organiza- tion of the colonies, and caused the abandonment of the see of Greenland in 1409. The awful pestilence, known as the Black Death, which, in the fourteenth century, desolated Europe, so greatly reduced the population of the Scandinavian countries, and interrupted commercial intercourse, that those remote col- onies could no longer be recruited, and eventually passed out of mind. But the forgotten discoveries of the Norsemen do not lessen the glory of Columbus for his re-discovery of the Western Con- tinent. His was no less the commanding genius that wrested its secret from the bosom of the sea, and revealed to the aston- ished eyes of Europe a new world. He was not the first to believe that the earth was round. Ptolemy had long before * The remarkable Dighton Eock Inscription in Massachusetts, shown in the engraving, is considered by some archiBologists to be the record, in runic characters, of the colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne. The rock is eleven feet in length by four feet and a half high, and consists of a mass of gray granite lying on the sands of the Taunton River, "which partly covers it at every tide. The figures are rudely carved, and partially obliterated near the base by the action of the water. Professor Eafn, of- Copenhagen, interprets these thus : " Thorfinn, with one hundred and fifty-one Norse seafaring men, took posses- sion of this land." t There is also evidence extant which indicates, that about the year 1390, Nicolo Zeno, a Venetian navigator, visited Greenland, and there learned the existence of lands to the southwest, supposed to be Newfoundland and the main-land of America. DISCOVERT OF AMERICA. 21 demonstrated this and liad measured the length of a degree on its surface ; and in the first English book ever written, Sir John Mandeville repeats the demonstration, and approximately cal- culates the circumference of the earth*. These truths, however, led to no important discovery till a great mind arose to put them to a practical test. Columbus lived in a period of remark- able maritime adventure. The rich commerce with the East in gold and silver and precious stones, in ivory, silks, and costly spices, had stimulated the desire to find a shorter way of access to India— the land of those coveted treasures— than the tedious caravan r6ute through the Syrian deserts. The invention of the mariner's compass, and the increased knowledge of astron- omy and navigation encouraged the efforts to seek this distant land by sea. With this design the Portuguese had extended their voyages along the African coast, till at length, in 1486, Bartolomeo Diaz reached the southern point of that continent, which was named, as an augury of the long-sought discovery, the Cape of Good Hope. Christopher Columbus now en- deavoured to solve, by a new method, the great maritime problem of the ase. He was mistaken, however, concerning the size of the earth, but not with regard to its shape. He be- lieved it to be not more than ten or twelve thousand miles in circumfer- ence. He therefore concluded that by sailing westward about three thousand miles he would reach the codimeus. golden strand of India. To accom- plish this became the absorbing purpose of his life. Columbus was born in that 'cradle of maritime adventure, the port of Genoa. His own inclination led him early to follow the sea. For twenty years he traversed the Mediterranean and and Atlantic seaboard, and even made a voyage as far as dis- * The Voiage and Travaile of Sir Jolin Maundeville, Kt., A. D. 1356. 22 HISTORY OF CANADA. tant Iceland. Here he probably heard traditions of the former discovery of a land beyond the Western Sea. He was con- firmed in his convictions by the writings of learned geographers and travellers, and by the strange products of unknown countries cast by western gales upon the shores of Europe. For twenty years he cherished his grand design, and for ten years he went from court to court — to Genoa, Portugal, and Spain — seeking to inspire confidence like his own, and to obtain an outfit for his cherished enterprise. After many disheartening rebuffs, delays, and disappointments from bigot monks and faithless monarchs, when impoverished and almost despairing, the gen- erous Isabella of Castile became his patroness, pledging even her crown jewels for the supjport of his project. But the means thus furnished were strange- ly inadequate to the magni- tude of the task under- taken — only three small vessels and one hundred and twenty men. With an unfaltering faith in what he believed to be his provi- dential mission Columbus claimed, and was promised by the Sovereigns of Spain, the office of Admiral of all the lands to be discovered, and one-tenth of the profit of all their merchandise. After solemn religious rites, on Friday, August 3d, 1492, Columbus and his companions set forth on their memorable voyage. . Leaving the Canary Islands on the 6th of Septem- ber, they sailed steadily westward for five and thirty days. The mysterious trade-winds seemed to the sailors to waft them remorselessly onward to some dread unknown. The appalling distance they had travelled, the alarming variations of the com- pass which occurred, the strange portents of a sea of weeds that almost impeded their progress, and of a fierce storm that fol- lowed, aroused in the disaffected crews dark conspiracies and turbulent mutinies. But, with the majesty of a great spirit full of faith, Columbus overruled their coward minds. But FLEET OP COLUMBUS. DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 23 even his courage at length proved unavaihng against their tur- bulent fears, and he was compelled to promise that if land were not discovered in three days, he would abandon his life-project. But within the allotted time, on the night of October the 11th, lights were seen by the eager watchers, moving amid the darkness, and the joyous cry of " Land ! land ! " rang from ves- sel to vessel. "With the dawn of the morning, the New World lay revealed to European eyes. The discoverers eagerly dis- embarked upon the virgin strand, and, with tears and thanks to Heaven, kissed the ground. With devout prayers and hymns of praise, Columbus took possession of the new-found regions in the name of God, and of his sovereign mistress, Isabella of Castile. The land proved to be one of the Bahama Islands, and was reverently named San Salvador. After visiting several of the neighbouring islands, designated, in accordance with his erro- neous geographical theory, the West Indies, Columbus returned to Spain, to proudly lay at his sovereigns' feet the dominion of a new world. He was crowned with the highest honours, and the naval resources of the kingdom were placed at his disposal. With seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men, he speedily sailed again to prosecute his discoveries in these unknown lands. In successive voyages he explored the West Indian archipelago and the adjacent main-land. But calumny, envy, and malice pursued his steps, and the discoverer of a new world was dis- possessed of his authority, and sent back in chains to the ungrateful country which, beyond the dreams of avarice, he had enriched. Broken in health, bowed in spirit, impoverished in estate, stricken with the weight of seventy years, neglected by the soverign whom he had so faithfully served — his noble benefactress, Isabella, no longer lived to protect him — this great man died at Seville, May 20th, 1506. As if his remains could find a fit resting-place only in the new lands which he had discovered, they were conveyed in 1536 to the island of Santo Domingo, and in 1796, with great pomp, to Havana, witliin whose cathedral they now repose. But the greatest wrong done to Columbus was that which 24 HISTORY OF CANADA. VESPUCCI. defrauded liim of the honour of giving the name to that new world which he had found. Of this he was deprived by one of the least worthy of the numerous adventurers who followed the path of exploration which he revealed. Amerigo Yespucci, a Florentine navigator, gave to the world the first written narrative of the wonderful discoveries in the western seas. It is claimed, though erroneously, that he, first of European navigators, reached the main-land ; hence his name is identified forever with the Western Continent.* The coast of India, the chief object of the adventurous voyages of discovery of this period, was first reached by the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, in 1498. Bounding the stormy south- ern promontory of Africa, the superstitious mariner imagined that he beheld the awful Spirit of the Cape hovering in the air. Boldly pressing onward through unknown seas, discovering strange lands and islands, he at length reached the long-sought strand of India. The revolution in commerce thus brought about led to the commercial decline of the maritime republics of the Mediterranean, which had previously been the chief agents of the lucrative oriental trade. The adventures of Da Gama are commemorated by the poet Camoens, in the " Lusiad," the earliest epic of modern Europe. * He did not reach Brazil till 1501. Cabot had previously, 1497, disembarked on the main-land of North America. EARLY EXPLORATION, 25 CHAPTER II. EAELY EXPLOEATION. John Cabot discovers Labrador and Newfoundland, 1497 — Sebastian Cabot's explorations — Corter^al — De Lfery — Verrazzani — Jacques Cartier discoYers tbe St. Lawrence, 1534 — Visits Stadacona and Hocbelaga — Names Mont Eoyal — Winters at Stadacona — Suiferings from Scurvy — Eoberval, Viceroy, 1541 — Cartier his Lieutenant — Founds Charlesbourg — Eoberval -winters at Cape Eouge — Mutiny and Scurvy — The Eobervals founder at sea, 1549. TIIE discovery of America was the beginning of a new era in the world. It led to the development of great mari- time enterprise. The western nations of Europe were eager to take possession of the new-fomid continent. Numerous voy- ages of exploration were projected by adventurous spirits under the patronage of their respective sovereigns. England was even then lay- ing the foundations of her subsequent maritime supremacy. Merchants of for- eign countries were welcomed to her shores and found both protection and pa- tronage. Among these were John Cabot and his sons, a Venetian family doing business in the ancient seaport town of Bristol. Henry VII., king of England, eager to share the advantage of the wonderful discoveries that were startling the world, in 1496 gave a commission of explo- ration to John Cabot, on the condition that one-fifth of all the 1497. profits accruing should go to the crown. The following year, with his son Sebastian, afterwards a famous mariner, he sailed from the port of Bristol for the purpose of reaching, by a western voyage, the kingdom of Cathay, or China. Having sailed seven hundred leagues, he sighted the coast of Labra- dor, which he concluded to be part of the dominions of the Grand Cham. He lauded, planted in the soil of the New 4 SEEASTIAK CABOT. 26 BISTORT OF CANADA. t World the banner of England, and named the country Prima Vista. He was thus the first discoverer of the Continent of America, fourteen months before Columbus, in his third voy- age, beheld the main-land. Two days afterward, he reached a large island, probably Newfoundland, which, in honour of the day, he called St. John's Island. Having sailed along the coast of North America for three hundred leagues, he returned to Bristol. His discovery awakened great interest. He was awarded a liberal pension, and the king gave him authority to impress six English ships and to enlist volunteers, " and theym convey and lede to the londe and lies of late founde by the seid John." For some unknown reason this expedition did not take place, and John Cabot disappears from the records of the times. "He gave England a continent, and no one knows his burial-place."* The following year, however, his son Sebastian, with two 1498. vessels, endeavoured to reach China and Japan by a northwest passage. He sailed as far north as Hudson's Straits, the daylight in the early part of July being there continuous. Prevented by icebergs from proceeding further, he sailed south- ward, skirting the coast of North America as far as Chesapeake Bay. He landed at several places, and partially explored the fertile country he had discovered, with its strange inhabitants, clad in skins and using barbaric weapons of stone and copper, but he was greatly disappointed to find that he had not reached the wealthy and populous countries of the Asiatic Continent. It was in virtue of these discoveries that Great Britain laid claim to the possession of the greater part of North America. In a subsequent voyage in 1517, under the patronage of Henry VIII., Cabot penetrated the bay to which, a hundred years later, Hudson gave his name. Afterwards, in the service of the Emperor Charles V. , he explored the coast of South Amer- ica as far as the La Plata. In the early part of the sixteenth century the Portuguese sent an expedition to explore, and take possession of, a portion * This account of John Cabot, wMch differs from that generally given, is hased upon the latest and best authorities. EARLY EXPLORATION. 27 of tlie new-found continent. In 1501, Gaspard Corter^al, with two vessels, sailed from Lisbon. He skirted the rock-bound coast of North America, observing the fine harbours, the excel- lent shipbuilding material of the forests, and the finny wealth of the ocean. The name Labrador — Terra Zaborador, land which may be cultivated— is a memorial of this visit. With a perfidy that disgi-aced the Christian name, he carried off fifty-seven of the natives on his own vessel and his consort, for the purpose of selling them as slaves. But a terrible retribution soon over- took him. He, himself, with his ship and crew and fifty of the mihappy victims of his treachery, sank in mid-ocean, and were never heard of again. His consort alone escaped to tell the dreadful story. The rich fisheries of the Banks of Newfoundland were soon visited by the hardy Breton, Basque, and Norman fishermen. The name of Cape Breton, found on the oldest maps, is a memorial of those early voyages. Denys and Aubert, French sailors, explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the years 1506 and 1508. In 1518, Baron De Lery, with a company of colo- nists, landed on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, but were compelled by its inhospitable climate to abandon it. The cattle that he left, however, multiplied remarkably, and their progeny have frequently furnished subsistence to shipwrecked mariners. After the discovery of the rich harvest of the sea that might be gathered on the Banks of Newfoundland, those valuable fish- eries were never abandoned. As early as 1517, no less than fifty French, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels were engaged in this industry. The spoils of ocean froni the fisheries of the New World formed an agreeable addition to the scanty Lenten fare of the Koman Catholic countries of Europe. France had as yet done little in exploring or occupying any portion of the boundless continent, whose wealth was enriching its European rivals. Francis I. resolved to claim a portion of the prize. " Shall the kings of Spain and Portugal," he ex- claimed, " divide all America between them, without allowing me any share ? I would like to see the clause in Father Adam's 28 BISTORT OF CANADA. will that bequeaths that vast inheritance to them." He, there- fore, in the year 1523, dispatched Verrazzani, a Florentine nav- igator, on a voyage of discovery. Skirting the American sea- board northward from the Chesapeake, he laid claim to the entire region previously explored by the Cabots, for Francis I., under the designation of New France. The rival claims arising from these explorations were the grounds of the long and bloody conflict between Great Britain and France for the j)ossession of a broad continent. * The failure to discover gold or silver, and the military disasters of France, prevented for some time fur- ther exploration beyond the Atlantic. The real discov- erer of Canada was Jacques Cartier, a na- tive of the ancient seaport of St. Malo, for centuries the nurs- ,ery of a hardy race of mariners. In 1534, when France had somewhat rallied from its disasters, fresh enterprises in the New World were un- dertaken. On the 20th of April in that year, Cartier sailed from St. Malo with two small vessels of about sixty tons each, and a company, in all, of one hundred and twenty-two men. In twenty days ' he * The name Norem'bega was given to the River Penobscot and the regions adjacent. It was fabled that a stately city of the same name was situated some twenty leagues up the river. Champlain, seventy years after, eagerly sought it, hut found nothing hut an old and moss-grown cross in the depths of the wilderness. 3ACQTIES CAETIEB. EARLY EXPLORATION. 29 reached the coast of Newfoundland, where he was detained ten days by the ice. Sailing through the Straits of Belle Isle, he scanned the barren coast of Labrador, and almost circum- navigated the island of Newfoundland. Turning southwest- ward, he passed the Magdalen Islands, abounding in birds, flowers, and berries. On a resplendent day in July, he entered the large bay to which, on account of the intense heat, he gave the name Des Chaleurs. Landing at the rocky headland ot\ Gaspe, he erected a large cross bearing the lily shield of France, and took possession of the country in the name of his sover- eign, Francis I. He inspired such confidence in the natives, that one of the chiefs allowed his two sons to return with him to France. Learning from these the existence of a great river, leading so far into the interior that ' ' no man had ever traced it to its source," he sailed up the Gulf of St. Lawrence till he could see the land on either side. The season being advanced, he resolved to return, postponing further exploration till the following summer. The successful voyage very favourably impressed the king, and three vessels,* better equipped and manned than the first, were furnished, for the purpose, as the commission ran, *' of forming settlements in the country and of opening, traffic with the native tribes." Several of the young nobility of France joined the expedition. On Whit-Sunday, 1535, Cartier and his ^^ grakde hermine. companions reverently attended high mass in the venerable cathedral of St. Malo. In the religious spirit of the age, they received the Holy Sacrament, and the benediction of the bishop upon their undertaking. The little squadron, dispersed by ad- verse winds, did not reach the mouth of the St. Lawrence till the middle of July. On the 10th of August, the festival 1535. of St. Lawrence, Cartier entered a small bay, to which he gave *La Grande Rermine, of one hundred and twenty tons, La Petite Hei-mine, of sixty tons, and VErmerillon, a smaller vessel, with a company of one hundred and ten men. 30 HISTORY OF CAN-ADA. the name of the samt, since extended to the entire gulf and river. Passing the gloomy gorge of the Saguenay, and sailing on beneath lofty bluffs jutting out into the broad river, on the 7th of September he reached the Island of Orleans, covered with wild grapes, which he therefore named Isle of Bacchus. Here he received a friendly visit from Donnacona, an Algon- quin chief, with five hundred of his followers. Seven days after, having resolved to winter in the country, the little squad- ron dropped anchor at the mouth of the St. Charles, where stood the Indian town of Stadacona, beneath the bold cliff now crowned with the ramparts of Quebec. Eager to explore the noble river, Cartier advanced with fifty men in his smallest vessel. Arrested by a sand-bar at Lake St. Peter, he took to his boats, with thirty of his companions, and pressed onward, watching with delight the ever-shifting landscape of primeval forest, now gorgeous with autumnal foliage, and the stately banks of the broad, swift river. On the 2d of October, he reached the populous Indian town of Hochelaga, nestling beneath the wood-crowned height, to which he gave the name of Mont Royal, now Montreal. The friendly natives thronged the shore by hundreds, and received the pale-faced strangers with manifestations of the utmost de- light. With lavish hospitality they heaped their boats with presents of fish and maize. An Indian chief, or as Cartier quaintly describes him, " one of the principal lords of the said city,"* with several of his braves, came forth to courteously receive the strangers and conduct them to the town. This was a circular enclosure, situated amid fields of ripened corn. A triple row of wooden palisades surrounded it. On the inside were galleries for the defenders, with stores of stones ready to be hurled on the heads of any assailants. In the centre was an open square, " a stone's throw in width." Around it were some fifty large dwellings, about fifty feet wide by one hundred and fifty feet in length, framed with saplings and covered with bark, each accommodating several families. The inmates * " . . . lu'n des principaulx seigneurs de la dicte ville." EARLY EXPLORATIOX. 31 swarmed around the new comers, gazing with wonder at their bearded faces, glittering armour and strange attire. Soon an ample feast was provided for the white guests. After this an aged and crippled chief, and a crowd of blind and maimed and sick persons were brought to the perplexed com- mander, "as if," he says, *'a God had come down to save them." Moved wdth pity he read from the Gospel the story of the passion of the Saviour, made the sign of the cross, and offered a prayer for the souls as well as the bodies of the savages. With a flourish of trumpets and a liberal gift of knives, beads, and trinkets, the strange scene came to a close. Having ascended the neighbouring mountain, Cartier and his companions surveyed the magnificent panorama of forest and river stretching to the far horizon; a scene now studded with toTvms and spires, farms and villages, and busy with the thousand activities of civilized life. From the natives he learned the existence, far to the west and south, of inland seas, broad lands, and mighty rivers — an almost unbroken solitude, yet destined to become the abode of great nations. After three days' agreeable intercourse with the friendly red- men, Cartier returned to Stadacona, which he reached on the eleventh of the month. Having protected their vessels by a stockaded enclosure, mounted with cannon, the French pre- pared, as best they could, for the winter, which proved of un- usual severity. They were neither adequately clothed nor pro- visioned. Scurvy of a malignant type appeared. Eeligious processions, vows and litanies were unavailing to stay the j)lague. By the month of April, twenty-six of the little com- pany had died and were buried in the snow. The neighbouring Indians, who, " hardy as so many beasts," prowled half-naked round the fort, prescribed for the recovery of the sick an infu- sion of spruce boughs, to whose efficacy Cartier attributed their restoration to health. The cruel winter slowly wore away, and when the returning spring released the imprisoned ships, the energetic commander prepared to return to France. Before his departure he was guilty of an act of perfidy that ill requited the kindness of the natives. Donnacona and nine of his chiefs 32 HISTORY OF CANADA. being lured on board his vessels, they were made prisoners and carried as trophies of the expedition to France.* The kid- napped Indians never again saw their native land, all of them dying before another expedition returned, having been previ- ously baptized into the Eoman Catholic faith, with great pomp, in the grand old cathedral of Eouen. The religious wars with Charles Y. now for four years absorbed the attention and exhausted the treasury of Francis I. At length, in 1540, the Sieur De Koberval, a wealthy noble of Picardy, obtained the appointment of Viceroy of New France, and organized a colonizing expedition. Cartier, as his lieu- tenant, sailed with five ships the following spring, and reached 1541. Stadacona in the month of August. The natives, at first friendly, became less so on finding that Donnacona and his companions had not returned. Cartier therefore removed to Cape Rouge, three leagues up the river, laid up three of his vessels, sent two back to France for reinforcements, built a fort, to which he gave the name of Charlesbourg, and began to cultivate the soil. He again visited Hochelaga, and explored the country for gold and precious stones, but found only some glistening scales of mica, and some quartz crystals on the cliff still known as Cape Diamond. After a gloomy winter, having 1543. heard nothing from Roberval, and the Indians proving unfriendly, without waiting for orders, he sailed for France. At St. John's, Newfoundland, he met Eoberval, with three ships and two hundred colonists, of both sexes. Cartier and his com pany were commanded to return, but, disheartened by their disasters and sufferings, they refused to do so, and, escaping under cover of night, continued their homeward voyage. Roberval proceeded on his course and landed his little colony at Cape Rouge. A capacious structure, '* half barrack, half castle," was soon built for their accommodation and de- fence. The winter was a time of suffering and disaster. Over sixty men perished by cold, by famine, or by scurvy. The * In 1843, a portion of one of Cartier's vessels was discovered in the bed of the St. Charles Kiver, where it had been abandoned three hundred and seven years before. EARLY EXPLORATION. 33 Indians, too, were unfriendly ; and the colonists, most of whom were convicts, proved so insubordinate, that the Gov- ernor had to hang some, and scourge or imprison others. In the spring, with seventy men, Eoberval attempted to 1543. explore the interior, but without beneficial results, and with the loss of eight men by drowning. In the fall of this year, Cartier was again sent to Canada, to order Eoberval's return. He wintered for the third time in the country, and finally left it in May, 1544, conveying with him the remains of the ill- fated colony, and his name henceforth disappears from history. Five years later, on the return of peace, Eoberval and his brother organized another colonizing expedition to Canada, but the fleet was never heard of after it sailed, and probably foun- dered by encounter with icebergs. Thus ended in disastrous failure all the early expeditions to New France. 5 34 - BISTORT OF CANADA. CHAPTEE m. THE INDIAN TEIBES. The Mouncl-Builders — Their Superior Art, Manufactures, and Social Organiza- tion — Their probable Origin and Fate — The Modern Indians, probably an intrusive Asiatic Race — Their Physical Aspect — Their Agriculture, Art, Dress, and Ornaments — Their Wars, Craft, Cruelty, and Stoicism — Their Councils, Oratory, and Treaties — Wampum Belts — Their Eeligious Beliefs — Their Alliances — The Fur-Trade — Tribal Divisions — Present Condition. THE name Indians, given to the native races of America, commemorates the mistaken idea of its discoverers, that they had reached the shores of the Asiatic continent. A short account of these races, and of their character, customs, and tribal divisions, is necessary, in order to understand the long and cruel conflict between the white man and the red for the pos- session of the New World. All over the North American continent, from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, are found the remains of an extinct and pre-historic people. These remains consist, for the most part, of earthen mounds, often of vast extent and almost countless numbers. Hence their unknown creators are called the Mound-Builders. These strange structures may be divided into two classes : En- closures and Mounds proper. The ciiief purpose of the En- closures seems to have been for defence, — the formation, as it were, of a fortified camp. They were sometimes of great size, covering many hundreds of acres. They were surrounded by parapets of earth, in the form of circles, octagons, or similar figures. They were evidently designed for protection against an intrusive race, and formed a line of forts from the Alle- ghanies to the Ohio. Another striking form of enclosure, is that designated Animal Mounds. These are outlines in earth- work, of low relief, of sacred animals — probably the totems of INDIAN TRIBES. 35 different tribes, as the turtle, lizard, serpent, alligator, eagle, buffalo, and the like.* The mounds proper are of much less extent, but of greater elevation. Some, there is reason to believe, from the presence of charred bones, charcoal, trinkets, etc., were used as altars for the burning of sacrifice, and perhaps for the offering of human victims. Others are known as Temple Mounds. These were chiefly truncated pyramids, with graded approaches to their tops, which are always level, and are sometimes fifty feet in height. In Mexico and Central America this class is repre- sented by the Teocallis, — vast structures, faced with flights of steps, and surmounted by temples of stone. More numerous than any are the Sepulchral Mounds. They always contain the remains of one or more bodies, accompanied by trinkets, cups, and vases, probably once containing food pro- vided by living hands, for the departed spirit faring forth, as was fondly believed, on its unknown journey to the happy hunting-grounds beyond the sky. The size of these is gener- ally inconsiderable ; but they sometimes attain great magnitude, in which case they probably cover the remains of some distin- guished chief, f Sometimes earthen vessels are found, contain- hig charred human remains, indicating the practice of crema- tion among the Mound-Builders. But there are other evidences of the comparatively high state of civilization of those remarkable people. There are numer- ous remains of their art and manufactures. Among these are flint arrow-heads and axes ; pestles and mortars for grinding corn; and pipes, frequently elaborately carved with consider- able artistic skill. These last often occur in the form of animal or human figftres, sometimes exhibiting much grotesque humour, and frequently executed in very intractable material. Eemains of closely woven textile fabrics have also been found, together * They are especially numerous in the valley of the Wisconsin. The " Great Serpent" of Adams County, Ohio, is over a thousand feet long, and the " Alli- gator " of Licking County is two hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet broad. t One of these, known as Grave Creek Mound, in Virginia, is seventy feet ia height and nine hundred feet in circumference. 36 HISTORY OF CANADA. with implements used in the spinning of the thread and manu- facture of the cloth. The potteiy and other fictile wares of the Mound-Builders exhibit graceful forms, elegant ornamenta- tion, and much skill in manufacture. On some of these the human face and form are delineated with much fidelity and grace, and the features differ widely from those of the present race of Indians. Copper implements, the work of this strange people, are also found in considerable quantities. Among these are knives, chisels, axes, spear and arrow heads, bracelets, and personal ornaments. Many of these implements exhibit on their surface the unmistakable traces of the moulds in which they were cast, showing that their manufacturers understood the art of reducing or, at least, of fusing metals. But the most striking proof of the mechanical skill of the Mound-Builders is their extensive mining operations on the south shore of Lake Superior. Here are a series of mines and drifts, sometimes fifty feet deep, extending for many miles along the shore.* In one of these was found, at the depth of eighteen feet, resting on oaken sleepers, a mass of native cop- per weighing over six tons, which had been raised five feet from its original bed. Nume'i'ous props, levers, ladders, and shovels employed in mining operations were also found. These old miners had become extinct long before the dis- covery of America, for the present race of Indians had no knowledge of copper when first visited by white men ; and trees, whose concentric rings indicated an age of four hundred years, have been found growing upon the accumulated rubbish that filled the shafts. The commerce of the Mound-Builders was also quite exten- sive. Copper from these northern mines is found widely dis- tributed through eighteen degrees of latitude, from Lake Su- perior to the Gulf of Mexico. Iron was also brought from Missouri, mica from North Carolina, and obsidian from Mexico. An examination of the crania of those pre-historic people scattered over a wide area, indicates, together with other evi- * At Ontonagon and Keweenaw Point, and at Isle Eoyal, off the nortli shore. INDIAN TRIBES. 37 dences, that they were a mild, unwarlike race, contented to toil like the Egyptian serfs in the vast and profitless labours of mound-building. Agriculture must have received among them a high degree of development, in order to the maintenance of the populous communities by which the huge mounds were con- structed. Their principal food was probably maize, the most prolific cereal in the world. The question, "Who were the Mound-Builders?" only in- volves the investigator in the mazes of conjecture. They seem to have been of the same race with the ancient people of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They probably came, by way of Behring's Strait, from the great central Asiatic plateau, which "has been, through the ages, the fruitful birth-place of nations. As they advanced towards the tropical and equatorial regions of the continent, they seem to have developed the civilization which met the astonished eyes of Cortes and Pizarro. Successive waves of Asiatic emigration of a fierce and barbarous race, apparently expelled them from the Mis- sissippi valley and drove them south of the Rio Grande. Prob- ably little will ever be known of their history unless some new Champollion shall arise to decipher the strange hieroglyphs which cover the. rocky tablets of the ruined cities of Yucatan and G*uatemala. Dr. Daniel Wilson expresses the opinion, founded largely on the evidence of language and architectural remains, that the earliest current of New World population ' ' spread through the islands of the Pacific, and reached the South American conti- nent long before an excess of Asiatic population had diffused itself into its own inhospitable steppes." * He also thinks that another wave of population reached Central America and Brazil by the Canaries and Antilles, and that then the intrusive race, from which our Indians have sprung, arrived by way of Behring's Strait, driving the Mound-Builders before them, f This intruding race was of a fierce and warlike character, and, continuing its nomad life, never attained to a degree of civilization at all comparable to that of the race which they * Pre-historic Man, pp. 604-605. t Ih. jyassim. 38 HISTORY OF CANADA. dispossessed. They have certain common characteristics, though with numerous minor tribal distinctions of aspect, language, and customs. They were, for the most part, a tall, athletic people, with sinewy forms, regular features, cheek- bones prominent, but less angular than in the Mongolian, straight black hair, sometimes shaven, scanty beard, dark eyes, which, except when the passions are roused, are rather sluggish in expression, and copper-coloured skin. In some tribes, as the Flatheads, the artificial moulding of the skull, by means of pressure applied in infancy, was common. They were capable of much endurance of cold, hunger, and fatigue ; were haughty, taciturn, and stoical in their manners ; were active, cunning, and stealthy in war ; but in camj) were sluggish, and addicted to gluttonous *feasts. The women, in youth, were of agreeable form and feature, but through severe drudgery soon became withered and coarse. The high degree of health and vigour of the race, was jDrobably due to the large mortality of weak or sickly children, through the hardships of savage life. The agriculture of the native tribes, with slight exception, was of the scantiest character — a little patch of Indian corn or tobacco rudely cultivated near their summer cabins. Their chief subsistence was derived from hmiting and fishing, in which they became very expert. With flint-headed arrows and spears, and stone axes and knives, they would attack and kill the deer, elk, or buifalo. The necessity of following these objects of their pursuit to their often distant feeding-grounds, precluded social or political organization except within very narrow limits. The same cause also prevented the construction, with a few exceptions, of any but the rudest and simplest dwellings — conical wigwams of skins or birch-bark, spread over a framework of poles. Some of the more settled and agricultural communities had, however, large lodges for public assemblies or feasts, and even for the joint accommodation of several families. Groups of these lodges were sometimes sur- rounded by palisades, and even by strong defensive works, with ' heaps of stones to repel attack, and reservoirs of water to ex- tinguish fires kindled by the enemy. INDIAN TRIBES. 39 The triumph of Indian skill and ingenuity was the bark-canoe — a marvel of beauty, lightness, and strength. It was con- structed of birch-bark, severed in large sheets from the trees. RUNNING A BAPID. stretched over a slender framework of ribs bent into the de- sired form, and well gummed at the seams with pine resin. Kneeling in these fragile barks, and wielding a short strong paddle, the Indian or his squaw would navigate for hundreds of miles the inland waters, shooting the arrowy rapids, and MAKING A PORTAGE. even boldly launching upon the stormy lake. Where rocks or cataracts interrupted the ptogress, the light canoe could easily be carried over the ' ' portage " to the navigable waters beyond. 40 HISTORY OF CANADA. The Indian dress consisted of skins of wild animals, often ornamented with shells, porcupine quills, and brilliant pigments. In summer, little clothing was worn, but the body was tattooed and painted, or smeared with oil. When on a war expedition, the face and figure were bedaubed with startling contrasts of colour, as black, white, red, yellow, and blue. The hair was often elaborately decorated with dyed plumes or crests of feathers. Sometimes the head was shaved, all but the scalp- lock on the crown. The women seldom dressed their hair, and, except in youth, wore little adornment. Their life after mar- riage was one of perpetual drudgery. They tilled the fields, gathered fuel, bore the burdens on the march, and performed all the domestic duties in camp. The Indian wars were frequent and fierce, generally spring- ing out of hereditary blood-feuds between tribes, or from the purpose to avenge real or fancied insults or wrongs. After a war-feast and war-dance, in which the plumed and painted "braves" wrought themselves into a phrensy of excitement, they set out on the war-path against the object of their resent- ment. Stealthily gliding like snakes through the forest, they would lie in wait, sometimes for days, for an opportunity of surprising the enemy. "With a wild whoop they would burst upon a sleeping village and involve in iiidiscriminate massacre every age and either sex. Firing the inflammable huts and dragging off their prisoners, they would make a hasty retreat with their victims. Some of these were frequently adopted by the tribe in place of its fallen warriors ; others were reserved for fiendish tortures by fire or knife. One trophy they never neglected, if possible, to secure — the reeking scalp-lock of their enemy. Torn with dreadful dexterity from the skull, and dried in the smoke of the hut, it was worn as the hideous proof of the prowess of the savage warrior. When captured, they exhibited the utmost stoicism in the endurance of pain. Amid agonies of torture they calmly sang their death-song, hurling defiance at the foe. Their councils for deliberation were conducted with great gravity and decorum. The speakers often exhibited much IXDIAX TRIBES. 41 eloquence, wit, vigour of tliouglit, and lively imagination. Their oratory abounded in bold and striking metaphors, and was characterized by great practical shrewdness. They were without a written language, but their treaties were ratified by the exchange of wampum-belts of variegated beads, having definite significations. These served also as memorials of the transac- tion, and were cherished as the historic records of the tribe. The Indians were deeply superstitious. Some tribes had an idea of a Great Spirit or Manitou, whose dwelling-place was the sk}', where he had provided happy hunting-grounds for his red children after death. Hence they were often buried vdth their weapons, pipes, ornaments, and a supply of food for their subsistence on their journey to the spirit- wo rid. Others ob- served a sort of fetichism — the worship of stones, plants, waterfalls, and the like ; and in the thunder, lightning, and tempest, they recognized the influence of good or evil spirits. The "medicine man" or conjurer, cajoled or terrified them by their superstitious hopes or fears. They attached great impor- tance to dreams and omens, and observed rigorous fasts, when they starved themselves to emaciation ; and glutton feasts, when they gorged themselves to repletion. They were inveterate and infatuated gamblers, and have been known to stake their lives upon a cast' of the dice, and then bend their heads for the stroke of the victor's tomahawk^ In the unhappy conflicts between the English and the French for the possession of the continent, the Indians were the cov- eted allies of the respective combatants. They were supplied with knives, guns, and ammunition, and the atrocities of savage were added to those of civilized warfare. The profitable trade in peltries early became an object of ambition to the rival na- tions, and immense private fortunes and public revenue were derived from this source. The white man's " fire-water " and the loathsome small-pox wasted the native tribes. The prog- ress of settlement drove them from their ancient hunting- grounds. A chronic warfare between civilization and barbar- ism raged along the frontier, and dreadful scenes of massacre and reprisal stained with blood the annals of the time. • 6 42 HISTORY OF CANADA. The great Algonquin nation occupied the larger part of the Atlantic slope, the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the country around the great lakes. It embraced the Pequods and ISTarra- gansetts of New England, the Micmacs of Nova Scotia, the Abenaquis of New Brunswick, the Montagnais and Ottawas of Quebec, the Ojibways or Chippeways on the great lakes, and the Crees and Sioux of the far west. The Hurons and Iroquois were allied races, though for ages the most deadly enemies. They were more addicted to agri- culture than the Algonquins, and dwelt in better houses, but they were equally fierce and implacable. The Hurons chiefly occupied the county between Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Huron, and the northern bank of the St. Lawrence. Their principal settlement, till well-nigh exterminated by the Iroquois, was between Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay. The Iroquois or Five Nations occupied northern New York, from the Mohawk River to the Genesee. The confederacy embraced the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, and was afterwards joined by the Tuscaroras from South Carolina. Each tribe, however, asserted its independ- ence, and made war or peace on its own account, as was shown by many a cruel raid upon Montreal or Quebec in a time of nominal truce with the confederacy. They were the most cruel and blood-thirsty of all the savage tribes — skilful in war, cunning in policy, and ruthless in slaughter. They were chiefly the allies of the British, and proved a thorn in the side of the French for a hundred and fifty years. The latter, through their missions, early acquired an ascendency over the Algonquin and Huron tribes. Several of the Indian children were educated in Catholic schools, and some of the girls even became nuns. After the British conquest of Canada, the Indians were gathered into reserves under military superintendents at Caugh- nawaga, the Bay of Quint6, Grand Eiver, Credit Eiver, Rice Lake, River Thames, Manitoulin and Walpole Islands, and elsewhere. They were supplied with annual presents of knives, guns', ammunition, blankets, trinkets, grain, implements, and INDIAN TRIBES. 43 the like. Special efforts have been made, with marked success, for their education in religion, agricultural industry, and secu- lar learning. Many tribes have been raised from barbarism to Christian civilization, although a few of the old men cling to the faith of their fathers, and worship the Great Spirit, beat the conjurer's drum, and sacrifice the white dog. The reserves are under the charge of an Indian agent, who watches over the interests of the tribe, and prevents the alienation of its prop- erty. The Indians seem contented with their lot, though their natural apathy prevents the growth of industrial enterprise, and many of the men leave home for months on hunting or trapping excursions. They profess deep loyalty to the Crow^n and to their great ' ' White Mother " beyond the sea. In the new provinces of Manitoba and Keewatin, and in the North-west Territory are numerous tribes of plain or forest Indians, for whom civilization has as yet done little. They sub- sist chiefly by buffalo-hunting, fishing, and collecting peltries for the Hudson's Bay Company and other great fur traders. Mis- sionaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, have, with self- denying zeal, laboured for their spiritual welfare, and in many cases with very considerable success. Treaties have been made with many of these tribes, and liberal land reserves secured to them. The Indian tribes in the Pacific province of British Columbia are, for the most part, pagan and savage. Those on the sea- coast live principally by fishing, in which they exhibit great dexterity. They hollow out, with much patient labour, huge canoes from a single tree-trunk. * They also build large framed and bark-covered lodges, which will accommodate several fam- ilies. In front of these they, will often erect a lofty tree-trunk, carved into hideous, grotesque representations of the human face and figure, bedaubed with bright, crude pigments, f * One, at the American Centennial Exhibition, was sixty feet long, t Some of these are over thirty feet high, elaborately carved from top to bottom. 44 HISTORY OF CANADA. CHAPTER IV. EAELY COLONIZATION— FOUNDING OF POET EOYAL. Spanish and English. Colonization — Frobisher explores the Arctic Seas, 1576 — Magellan — Drake — Sir Humphrey Gilbert — Ealeigh's unsuccessful Colony at Eoanoke, 1585 — Gosnold — Hudson — De la Eoche lands Convicts at Sable Island — Their tragic fate — Chauvin plants a Trading Post at Tadousac, 1600 — Champlain's first Voyage to Canada, 1603 — The Tragedy of St. Croix — Poutrincourt founds Port Eoyal, 1605 — Lescharbot — The "Order of the Good Time " — Charter cancelled — Discord at Port Eoyal — Mount Desert — Captain Argall. FOR fifty years after the failure of Roberval, there was no' further attempt to colonize Canada. France, engaged in her prolonged struggle with Spain and Austria, and convulsed by the civil wars of religion, had neither men nor means to spare for foreign settlement. Spain had early claimed the whole continent, from the Gulf 1513. of MexicQ to Labrador. Balboa, from the mountains of Darien, had descried the Pacific, and dispelled the illusion that 1581. America was a part of Asia. Cortez, with a handful of followers, had taken and sacked the populous city of Mexico.* Ponce de^ Leon had sought amid the evergiades of Florida a fountain of youth, and found an early grave. Ferdinand de 1548. Soto had discovered the mighty Mississippi, and been buried beneath its waters. In 1565 was founded St. Augus- tine, the oldest town in America, f Admiral Coligny, the leader of the French Protestants, had already planted a private Hu- * In 1530, Spanish valour, led by Pizarro, conquered the kingdom of Peru, and Spanish cruelty well nigh exterminated the inhabitants. t The dates of the earliest settlements are as follows : — St. Augustine, 1565 ; Port Eoyal, 1605 ; Jamestown, 1607 ; Quebec, 1608 ; Albany, 1615 ; Plymouth, 1620; New York, 1623 ^ Boston, 1630; Montreal, 1642; Frontenac (Kingston), 1672; Philadelphia, 1683; Detroit, 1702; New Orleans, 1718; Halifax, 1749; St. John, 1783 } Toronto, 1795. EARLY COLONIZATION. 45 guenot colony in Florida ; but through, the jealousy of i565- the Spaniards at St. Augustine, it was utterly destroyed, with the atrocious murder of eight hundred Frenchmen. Their countryman, De Gourges, terribly avenged their death. The hope of finding a northwest passage to the Indies con- tinued to be a strong incentive to North American exploration. In 1553, Sir Hugh Willoughby, in attempting a northwest pas- sage to China, perished of cold in a harbour in Lapland. The following year, he, with his crew, were found frozen to marble in their oak-ribbed sepulchre. In 1576, Martin Frobisher, an English mariner, again essayed the task, " as the only thing in the world yet left undone, by which a notable minde might be made famous and fortunate." In a vessel of only five and twenty tons, he reached the straits still known by his name. He took possession of a barren island in the name of Queen Elizabeth, and found in its soil some grains of gold or what resembled it. A gold mania ensued. Two successive fleets, one of fifteen vessels, were despatched to the arctic El Dorado. Several of the vessels were wrecked or driven from their course ; the others returned, laden with hundreds of tons of glittering mica. The discovery of its worthlessness ended the attempt at arctic .colonization, but the dream of a northwest passage is still a potent spell. A Portuguese sailor was the first to circumnavigate the globe, and left his name stamped forever upon the 1521. geography of the earth, and emblazoned in the constellations of the skies.* The gallant Drake, an Englishman, pillaged the Spanish settleinents of the Pacific, explored the northwest coast of America as far as Oregon, and followed in ists. Magellan's wake around the world. From early in the century the maritime nations of Europe pursued the whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and fished for cod on the banks of Newfoundland. The latter industry became of great importance, to supply the demand for fish, of Eoman Catholic countries. In 1578, four hundred vessels * Magellan's Straits and th.e Magellanic Clouds. 46 HISTORY OF CANADA. gathered the harvest of the sea upon those fertile banks. One hundred and fifty of these "were French, but the English, we read in contemporary records, "were commonly lords in the harbours." A profitable trade in peltry with the natives along the seaboard and far up the St. Lawrence, had also sprung up. Codfish and whale oil, beaver-skins and walrus-tusks proved treasures scarce less valuable than the gold and silver that the Spaniards wrung, by the unrequited toil of the conquered inhabitants, from the mines of Mexico and Peru. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Ealeigh, re- asserted England's claim, by right of discovery, to Newfoundland, by tak- ing possession of the island, with feudal cere- mony, in the name of Queen Elizabeth. The crews became insubor- dinate, and went gold- hunting and pillaging the Spanish and Portuguese SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. shlps lu the neighbouring waters ; and Gilbert's colonization scheme was abandoned. On its return, the little fleet was shattered by a tempest. The pious admiral, in the tiny pinnace, *' Squirrel," of only ten tons burden, foundered in mid-ocean. Before night fell, as he sat in the stern of the doomed vessel, with the Bible in his hand, he called aloud to the crew of his consort, the " Hind," " Fear not, comrades ; heaven is as near by sea as by land." ^ Undeterred by the fate of his gallant kinsman, Sir Walter Ealeigh, the flower of Queen Elizabeth's court and friend of 1585. Edmund Spenser, planted the first English colony m America — named, in honour of the maiden queen, Yirginia — on Eoanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The colony consisted of one hundred and eight persons, among whom were EARLY COLONIZATION. 47 RALEIGH. several of gentle blood and scholarly training. But disaster, imprudence, and conflicts with the natives led, within a year, to the abandonment of tho country. Nevertheless, the glowing account given of its stately forests, its remarkable productions — the escu- lent potato, the prolific maize, the soothing tobacco — and the rumours of its mineral wealth, awakened a deep interest in Great Britain. The following year, another colony was sent out, but it also was overtaken by disaster. ' ' If America had no Eng- isst. lish to^vn, it soon had English graves." But Life went hand in hand with Death, and the birth of Virginia Dare, the first- born of English children in the New World, seemed an omen of good for the future of the colony. The threatened Spanish invasion of the mother country, however, absorbed every energy of the nation, and for three years no succour could be sent the infant colony. At the end of that time, the island was found deserted, the houses in ruins, and human bones 1590. strewed the neighbouring fields. Falling under royal censure, bankrupt in fortune,* and broken in health, Ealeigh languished for thirteen years in prison, solacing his solitude by writing his eloquent " History of the World." Eeleased, but not pardoned, he sought to retrieve his credit and fortunes by the search for a fabled city of gold on the banks of the Orinoco, amid the tropical forests of Guiana. Defeated by the Spaniards, his eldest son slain, his ^vessels wrecked, his body smitten with palsy, Raleigh returned a heart-broken man to his native country, which he had impoverished himself to serve. The unjust sentence which had slumbered fifteen years was revived, and the heroic veteran perished on the scaffold, a memorable example of the * He had expended two hundred thousand dollars of his private fortune, an immense sum in those days, in this enterprise. 48 HISTORY OF CANADA. ingratitude of kings, 1618. His fair fame has been vindicated by time, and his name is commemorated by the city of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. English expeditions now became frequent. In 1602, aban- doning the southern route previously followed by way of the Canaries and Azores, Bartholomew Gosnold, in a small bark, sailed due west boldly across the Atlantic. He reached Massa- chusetts Bay, and rounding Cape Cod, built a fort and began a settlement on an island in Buzzard's Bay, which, however, was soon forsaken. In 1603 and 1605, Martin Bring and George "Weymouth opened a traffic with the natives of what is now New England, Weymouth perfidiously kidnapping several of the inhabitants. In 1609, Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, in a small vessel, the "Half Moon," discovered, and explored as far as the site of Troy, the river to which he gave his name. The following year, seeking a northwest passage to China, he penetrated the depths of Hudson's Bay, and wintered amid its icy regions. In the spring, with his son and seven others, he was turned HENRY HUDSON. adrift by a mutinous crew and never heard of again. The noble bay which became his grave perpetuates his memory. We now return to the narrative of early French colonization. The very year that Henry IV., by the edict of Nantes, gave religious toleration to his Protestant subjects, he granted to the Marquis de la Roche a commission, as Viceroy of New France — a designation which included the whole northern part of the continent. That nobleman was promised a monopoly of trade, and received a profusion of empty titles and feudal privileges. He fitted out an expedition strangely inadequate to the task of colonizing the vast territory assigned to him. He ransacked the prisons for pioneers of Christianity and civilization in the New World. The vessel in which they sailed was so small, that EARLY COLONIZATION. 49 the crew, leaning over her sides, could Avash their hands in the sea. De la Roche landed his forty convicts on the desolate sand-dunes of Sable Island, about one hundred and fifty miles off the rocky coast of Nova Scotia, apparently fearing that they would desert as soon as they reached the main-land, and sailed away to select a site for his colony. But a Avestern gale drove his frail vessel back to France. Here he came under the power of enemies, and was thrown into prison. For five years the wretched convicts were abandoned to their fate. They subsisted on fish and on wild cattle, the progeny of those left by De Lery eighty years before. They clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and obtained shelter in a cabin, built out of a wreck. Their savage natures found vent in violence and murder. When a vessel was sent for their release, only twelve remained alive. In shaggy attire and unkempt hair and beards — "rough with the salt of the sea, and brown with the brand of the sun" — they were brought before the generous-hearted king, and received a liberal bounty from his hands. The marquis was utterly ruined, and soon after, died of chagrin, on account of his broken fortunes. Meanwhile the forfeited patent of De la Eoche was granted to Pontgrave, a merchant of St. Malo, and Chauvin, a 1599. captain of the marine, who undertook to plant a colony of five hundred persons in Canada. Their chief object, however, was the fur trade. In order to prosecute this the more successfully, they established a trading-post at Tadousac, at the entrance to the gloomy gorge of the Saguenay. Of the sixteen men left to gather the rich harvest of furs, before Avinter was over sev- eral had died, and the rest were dependent for food on the charity of the Indians. After tAvo more unsuccessful attempts at colonization, Chauvin died, and the patent again lapsed. NoAV appears upon the scene one of the most remarkable of the many able men who have aided in moulding the fortunes and destiny of Canada. Samuel de Champlain, a gentleman of Saintonge, was born in 1567, at Brouage, a small seaport in the Bay of Biscay. From youth he was familiar with the sea, and had reached the position of captain of the royal marine. 7 50 HISTORY OF CANADA. He had also served as a soldier, and fought during the wars of the I^eague, under Henry of Navarre. He was a hero of the BAMnEL. CEASIELAIH, mediaeval type of chivalric courage, fond of romantic enter- prise, and inspired by religious enthusiasm, " the zeal of the missionary tempered the fire of the soldier." He observed acutely and described vividly the wonders of the new countries that he visited.* On the restoration of peace, weary of dally- ing at court, he sought adventure in a voyage to the West Indies and Mexico. Aymar de Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, and commander of the Order of St. John, received authority from the King to plant the cross and the fieur de lis in the New 1603. World, and to extend the religion and commerce of France among its savage tribes. Discerning the commanding qualities * His journal, with rude drawings of the strange animals and scenes that he beheld, is still extant in MS. EARLY COLONIZATION. 51 of Champlain, De Chastes commissioned him to join Pontgrave in this pious enterprise. Two small barks, of twelve and fifteen tons bm^den, bore the adventurers across the stormy deep. Gliding up the vast and solitary St. Lawrence, past the deserted post of Tadousac, past the tenantless rock of Quebec, and the ruined fort of Cape Eouge, they reached the Island of Montreal and the rapids of St. Louis. But not a vestige of the Indian towns of Stadacona or Hochelaga, nor of their friendly population, described by Cartier sixty-eight years be- fore, remained. Returning to France with a cargo of furs, they found that De Chastes, the generous patron of the enterprise, was dead. A successor in the work of colonization was soon found. Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a Calvinist nobleman, obtained a patent of the vice royalty of La Cadie or Acadie,* a terri- tory described as ex- tending from the for- tieth to the forty- sixth degree of north latitude, from the par- allel of Philadelphi to that of Louisburg. Protestantism was to be freely tolerated, but the Roman Catho- lic religion alone might be taught to the na- sieur de monts. * The name is said to "be derived from the Indian Aquoddie, i.e., a fisli like a pollock. 52 HISTORY OF CANADA. 1604. tives. The new colony was composed of strangely incongruous materials. In the crowded ships were assembled some of the best blood, and some of the worst criminals of France, — the Baron de Poutrincourt, the Sieur de Monts, Champlain, soldiers, artisans and convicts. Catholic priest and Calvinist minister carried their polemics, says Champlain, from words to blows. Entering a harbour on the southern shore of Nova Scotia, they found a fur-trading vessel. This De JNIonts forthwith confiscated for invasion of his monopoly, and commemorated the circumstance by giving the name of the owner to the harbour, Rossignol, now Liverpool. Rounding Cape Sable, De Monts entered the narrow harbour of St. Mary's. Here M. Aubry, a young priest from Paris, explor- ing through the woods, disappeared. After diligent search, he was given up as dead, not without suspicion of having met with foul play from the Calvinist minister, with whom he had been engaged in much vigorous controversy. After sixteen days wandering, the missing priest was discovered by a fishing party, nearly famished with hunger. The reputation of his clerical antagonist was thereby re-established. Sailing up the Bay of Fundy, the voyagers entered a narrow inlet, which expanded into a noble land-locked basin. Delighted with the beauty of the scene, Poutrincourt asked a grant of the place, as the site for a settlement. This was granted, and the Baron gave to his new domain the name, destined to be- come historical, of Port Royal. De Monts and Champlain explored, to its extremity, the Bay of Fundy, named Bale Francaise, at times imperilled by its dense fogs and swirling tides. On the 24th of June, they en- tered a spacious harbour which, in honour of the day, they named St. John, a designation which it still bears. A sandy island in a river, which he named the St. Croix, now the boundary between New Brunswick and Maine, was selected by De Monts as the site of a fort and settlement. It was an un- fortunate choice. The island, though easy of defence, was barren, bleak, and desolate ; and became the scene of a dread- ful tragedy. The whole colony, however, set to work, — gen- EARLY COlONIZATIOX. 53 tlemen, soldiers, sailors, and convicts. Before winter a spa- cious quadrangle was surrounded by barracks, storehouses, workshops, lodgings, chapel, and Governor's house, the whole surrounded by a palisade. Poutrincourt now returned to France for recruits for his domain of Port Koyal. From the Spanish Settlement of St. Augustine to the arctic waste, from the surging tides of the Atlantic to the waters of the Pacific, the only habitation of civilized man, was this outpost of Christendom on the edge of the boundless and savage wilderness. The winter set in early, and the cold was intense. The bleak winds howled around the wooden houses, drifting the snow through their crevices. Even the wine froze in the casks. As the hap- less Frenchmen shivered over their scanty fires, they fell into deepest dejection, and became the easy prey of disease. Of the seventy-nine exiles, thirty-five, before the spring, fell vic- tims to the loathsome scurvy, and many others were brought to the very door of death. Amid such sufferings were laid the foundations of New France. One heart, however, struggled against despair. By his indomitable spirit, Champlain sustained the courao;e of the wretched colonists! In the spring, Pontgrave arrived with succours from France, and was hailed as bringing deliverance from death. De isos. Monts and Champlain explored the coast of Maine and Massa- chusetts, but found no place of settlement so eligible as the land-locked harbour of Port Royal. They therefore removed thither, carrying even the timbers of the buildings for the con- struction of a new fort. Here the little colony braved the rigours of another winter, while De Monts returned to France to defend his commercial prerogatives against the machinations of jealous rivals. With a company of artisans and labourers, Poutrincourt re- enforced the colony the following spring. With him came icoe. a man of considerable note, as the future historian of New France — a "briefless barrister" and poet of some skill. Marc Lescarbot. The newcomers were hailed with joy by the col- onists who were again reduced to extremities. While Cham- 54 HISTORY OF CANADA. plain explored the Atlantic seaboard for a milder place of settlement, Lescarbot remained in charge of the fort. He in- fused his own energy into his subordinates, and spent the sum- mer in busy industry ; planting, tilling, building, and, with all, finding time to write his rhymes. Champlain's return was wel- comed by a theatrical masque, Neptune and his Tritons greeting them in verses composed for the occasion by the ingenious poet. The dreary winter was enlivened by the establishment of the " Order of the Good Time," the duties of which were, with the aid of Indian allies, to prepare good cheer for the daily 1607. banquet. In the spring came a vessel from France, bear- ins: the tidings of the revocation of the charter, and orders to abandon the settlement. With heavy hearts these pioneers of empire in the New World, forsook the little fort and clearing, the pleasant bay, and engirdling hills of Port Eoyal ; and took leave of the friendly Indians, from whom they had received no small kindness. Undeterred by this disaster. Baron Poutrincourt returned to 1610. Port Eoyal three years after, the King having confirmed the patent granted by De Monts. He found the buildings un- injured, and even the furniture in the deserted chambers un- touched. The Indians welcomed the return of their former friends with delight. The aged chief, Membertou, a patriarch of over a hundred years, with many of his tribe, consented to receive Christian baptism from the hands of Father La Fleche, a zealous priest who accompanied the "colonists. This rite was performed with the utmost pomp, accompanied by the chanting of the Te Deum^ and the roar of cannon, the savage neophytes receiving the names of the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, the Pope, and of members of princely or noble houses. Biencourt, the son of Baron Poutrincourt, was dispatched to Paris with the baptismal registry of the new proselytes, as a proof that the spiritual interests of the natives had not been neglected, as alleged by the enemies of the Baron. On reaching France, Biencourt found that Henry IV., the liberal-minded patron of the colony, had been treacherously assassinated by the fanatical Eavaillac, and that Jesuit influence EARLY COLONIZATIQN. 55 was in the ascendant at the court. A zeal for the conversion of the Indians became a fashion among the great ladies of the time. Prominent among these, was Madame de Guercheville, who purchased, in the interests of the Jesuits, a controlling share in the colony, and despatched thither Fathers Biard and Masse, the first members of this energetic and aggressive or- der who visited New France. Dissension soon broke out be- tween the temporal and spiritual powers at Port Eoyal. The Jesuits excommunicated the civil rulers, and refused, for months, to celebrate mass or perform other functions of their office. The religious strifes of the Old World were renewed in the Acadian wilderness. Famine and anarchy succeeded to the thrift and concord of the settlement of Champlain and Les- carbot. At length the Jesuits abandoned Port Eoyal, and, under au- thority of a royal patent, with a number of colonists, at- leis- tempted to plant a settlement on the island of Mount Desert, in the picturesque inlet on the coast of Maine, which still bears the name of Frenchman's Bay. While they were ploughing and building, a strange vessel, flying the flag of Great Britain, ap- peared in the offing. The French hastened on board their vessel, and made an ineffectual resistance. The EngKsh broad- sides soon reduced it to a wreck, and strewed its gory deck with the dying and the dead, among whom was the Jesuit, Du Thet. Argall, the piratical English adventurer from the new colony of Virginia, landed and pillaged the French settlement, and stole their commission of colonization from- the Kingf. Fifteen of their prisoners he inhumanely turned adrift in an open boat. They were, however, providentially rescued, and found their way to France. The rest of the Frenchmen, Argall conveyed to Virginia, where the Governor threatened to have them executed for piratical invasion of British territor}^, and was only deterred by Argall's production of the stolen commis- sion. This was the first outbreak of the long: strife of one hundred and fifty years, between the English and the French, for the possession of the broad continent. Each country, though occupying only a few acres of an almost boundless do- 56 HISTORY OF CANADA. main, was insanely jealous of the possession of a single foot of it by the other. The following year, Argall again set forth on a career of pillage 1614- and havoc. He completed the destruction of the French settlements at Mount Desert and St. Croix. The Jesuit, Biard, it is said, to gratify his ancient grudge against his countryman, Biencourt, betrayed the existence of the French colony of Port Royal. Sweeping down upon the little settlement, Argall plundered it, even to the locks upon the doors, and razed the fort to the very foundation. Poutrincourt abandoned the un- happy colony in despair, and the following year, fell fighting, sword in hand, at the siege of Mery, in his native land. CHAMPLAIN'S ADMINISTRATION. 57 CHAPTER V. CHAMPLAIN'S ADMINISTEATION. Cliamplain Founds Quebec, 1608 — Sufferings of the Colony — Iroquois War — Place Eoyal (Montreal) — The Impostor, Vignan — Champlain Discovers Lakes Huron, Simcoe, and Ontario — Seneca War — The De Caens — The Company of the Hundred Associates Organized, 1627 — Sir William Alexan- der Obtains Grant of Acadia — The Knights-Baronets of Nova Scotia — Kirk's Conquest of Quebec, 1629 — Quebec Eestored by the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, 1632 — The La Tours in Acadia — Death of Champlain, 1635 — His Character. BAFFLED in his efforts to plant a colony in Acadia, De Monts resolved to attempt a settlement on the St. Law- rence. By tracing its mighty stream, it was thought that a nearer way to China might be discovered ; and that a single, well-placed fort would command the fur trade of the vast in- terior, while faithful missionaries might preach to countless savage tribes, the gospel of Mary and her Divine Son. Ob- taining, for a year, a renewal of his monopoly, De Monts de- spatched Pontgrave and Champlain to the St. Lawrence, bearing the fortunes of Canada in their frail vessels. At Tadousac, a choleric Basque captain defied De Monts' claim to a monopoly of the fur trade, and fired on Pontgrave's ship, killing one man and wounding three others. On the 3d of July, Champlain reached the narrows of the river, where frown the craggy heights of Quebec. Here, be- leos. neath the tall cliff of Cape Diamond, he laid the foundations of one of the most famous cities of the New World.* A Avooden fort was erected, on the site of the present market-place of the lower town, and was surrounded by a palisade, loop-holed for * The name Quebec, Champlain positively asserts, was the Indian designation of the narrows of the St. Lawrence at this point, the word signifying a strait. Canada is the Indian word for a collection of huts, and enters into the com- position of several native names. 8 58 BISTORT OF CANADA. musketry. The whole was enclosed by a moat, and three small cannon guarded the river-front. The colonists were soon comfortably housed, and land was cleared for tillage. The firm discipline maintained by Champlain, provoked a conspiracy for his murder. It was discovered, the ring-leader was hanged, and his fellow-conspirators shipped in chains to France. Cham- plain was left with twenty-eight men to hold a continent. His nearest civilized neighbours were the few English colonists at Jamestown, Virginia. The long and cruel winter was a season of tragical disaster and suffering. Before spring, of that little company, only eight remained alive. The rest had all miser- 1609. ably perished by the loathsome scurvy. The timely arrival of succours from France saved the little colony from extinction. / The neighbouring Algonquins were anxious to secure, as an ally, the pale-faced chief, who was able, like the thunder-god, to destroy his enemy at a distance, by a flash of flame. Eager to explore the interior, Champlain yielded to their solicitations to join a war-party in an attack upon their hereditary foes, the Iroquois, who occupied the lake region of central New York. After wild war-dances, and a gluttonous feast, the forest ex- pedition set forth, accompanied by Champlain and eleveh white men. A hundred canoes, paddled by sinewy arms, glided up the St. Lawrence, crossed Lake St. Peter, and ascended the tor- tuous current of the Richelieu. Here, three-fourths of the war- party, after the fickle manner of the natives, returned, and a tiny fleet of twenty-four canoes, bearing sixty Indian warriors and three white men, held on its way. They soon glided forth on the beautiful lake, to which Champlain has given his name ; the shores of which were so often to re-echo the strife of savage or civilized warfare. Amid the summer loveliness of Lake St. Sacrament, long after memorable as Lake George, they came upon the foe. Before the death-dealing fire of the European weapons, the savages fled, howling with dismay. In spite of his vehement remonstrance, Champlain was compelled to wit- ness the torture of twelve of the enemy, captured by the Al- gonquins. This was an unfortunate expedition, as the Iroquois CHAMPLAIN'S ADMINISTRATION. 59 became, for one hundred and fifty years, the implacable foes of the French, and terribly avenged, by many a murder and am- buscade, the death of every Indian slain in this battle. The following spring they entrenched themselves at the mouth of the Eichelieu, and were routed only after a fierce struggle, in which Champlain himself received an arrow in his neck. After the assassination, in this year, of Henry IV. , the patron of De Monts, the latter was obliged to admit private ad- isio. venturers to share the profits of the fur trade, on condition of their promoting his schemes of colonization. The powerful Prince of Conde, Admiral Montmorency, and the Duke of Yentadour, became successively Viceroys of Canada ; but the valour and fidelity and zeal of Champlain commanded the confidence of them all. Twice, in successive years, he visited the court of France in the interests of the colony, and through successive changes of patrons, he continued to administer its afiairs as their agent, yet bearing the commission of the new King, Louis XIII. With the prescience of a founder of em- pire, he selected the Island of Montreal as the site of a leii. fort, protecting the fur trade, and commanding the two great water-ways of the country, the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The commercial prosperity of the great city which now covers so large a portion of the island, is an ample vindication of his choice. He .erected storehouses at Lachine, which he named Sault St. Louis, and gave the designation it still bears to St. Helen's Island, opposite the city, after the name of his youthful wife, whom he had just espoused. In order to verify the story of a coasting adventurer, as to the existence of a great northern sea, which would prob- lejs. ably give access to China and India, Champlain, with a native interpreter, and a few companions, penetrated up the pictur- esque and rapid Ottawa, over rugged portages, and through tangled forests, past the boiling Chaudiere, and the stately cliif now the site of the capital of Canada, as far as the distant Isle of Allumettes, a region which is to this day a solitude. When even the Indians refused to escort him further on his perilous way, and he discovered the falsehood of his guide, having first go HISTORY OF CANADA. planted the emblems of the faith in this primeval wilderness, he returned, disappointed but undaunted, to Quebec, and thence to France, to urge the fortunes of the colony. With a desire for gain, and for extending the dominions of France in the New World, was blended also, in the purposes of successive Viceroys of the colony, a zeal for the conversion of the savages to the Catholic faith. In this purpose they were 1615. seconded by the piety of Champlain. On his return to Canada, he brought, with the new company of colonists, four Recollet friars, the first of an heroic band of missionaries, who toiled amid the wilderness to win the wandering pagans to the doctrines of the Cross. Clad in coarse serge garments, with girdles of knotted cord, and sandals of wood, the "apostolic mendicants" kneeled on the bare earth, and, amid salvos of cannon from the fort and ship, celebrated the first mass ever said in Canada. Scorning the pleasures of civilized life, they cheerfully espoused privations and sufferings, for the glory of God and the spiritual welfare of the native tribes. On his arrival at Montreal, Champlain found a large council of Algonquin and Huron Indians, discussing the project of an attack upon the Iroquois. Desirous of cementing an alliance with these friendly tribes, he agreed to join the expedition, the savages undertaking to raise a force of twenty-five hundred warriors for the purpose. While Champlain went to Quebec for supplies, his Indian allies, not waiting his return, proceeded with Father Caron and twelve Frenchmen, to the place of ren- dezvous in the Huron country. Accompanied by a small party of Indian canoemen, Champlain followed them. Stemming the rapid current of the Ottawa, and toiling over almost count- less portages ; subsisting on wild berries, and camping on the naked rocks ; crossing Lake Nipissing, and gliding down the rapids of the French River, he gained, at last, the waters of the Georgian Bay, and beheld, stretching to the west, seemingly boundless as the ocean, the blue heaving billows of Lake Huron, to which he gave the name Mer Douce, — the Fresh- water Sea. Coasting down its rugged eastern shore, and through its many thousands of rocky islands, a hundred miles CHAMPLAJN'S ADMINISTRATION: 61 or more, tie reached the inlet of the Matcheclash Bay, where Penetangiiishene now stands. This region, now the northern part of the county of Simcoe, contained the chief settlements of the Huron Indians, a nation yariously estimated at from ten to thirty thousand souls, dwelling in palisaded towns, with large and well-built houses, and subsisting by agriculture as well as by the chase. Over a forest trail, Champlain and his companions passed to the appointed place of gathering of the forest tribes, Cahiagua, on the narrows of Lake Couchiching, near where the pretty village of Orillia now stands. Here he VIEW NEAR OKHXIA. was met by Le Caron, the Recollet friar ; and here, in the soli- tude of the primeval forest, were chanted the Te Deum, and offered the sacrifice of the mass. At Cahiagua, a war-party of two thousand plumed and painted braves were assembled, and several days were spent in feasting, war-dances, and other savage pastimes. At length sailing, with several hundred canoes, through Lake Simcoe and up the Talbot Eiver, and traversing the picturesque Balsam, Sturgeon, Pigeon, and Rice lakes, with their intervening port- ages, they glided down the devious windings of the Otonabee and Trent rivers, and reached the beautiful Bay of Quinte, with 62 HISTORY OF CANADA. its columned forests and verdure-clad, gently* undulating slopes, now adorned with smiling villages and cheerful farms. Emerg- VIEW ON LAKE SIMCOE. ing from the placid bay, the Huron fleet entered the broad and blue Ontario, dimpling in the autumnal sunlight. To this Champlain gave the name, which it long retained, of Lac St. Louis. Having boldly crossed the lake, the war-party reached the country of the Iroquois. Hiding their canoes in the forest, they pressed onward some thirty «leagues, to the Seneca towns near Lake Canandaigua. The Iroquois, attacked in the corn- fields, — for it was the time of the maize harvest, — retired to their town, which was defended with four rows of palisades. On the inside, galleries were constructed, on which were pre- pared magazines of stones and other missiles, and a supply of water to extinguish any fire that might be kindled beneath the walls. The tumultuous attack of the Hurons was ineffective. Under Champlain's direction, a wooden tower was constructed, after the manner 'of mediaeval warfare, and dragged forward so as to overlook the walls. Huge shields or mantlets were also prepared to cover the persons of the warriors advancing to the attack, while from the top of the tower skilled marksmen raked the galleries, crowded with naked Iroquois. But the impetu- CHAMPLAIN'S ADMINISTRATION. 63 ous zeal of the Hurons brooked no restraint. They rushed tumultuously against the walls, and were soon thrown into con- fusion, in spite of the efforts of Champlain, who was himself seriously wounded, to maintain order. Thus, this *' forest paladin " sought to wage war in the heart of the wilderness, after the manner of a European campaign. After an unsuccess- ful attempt to fire the town, the Hurons fell back on their rudely fortified camp. After the manner of their tribe, when baffled in a first attempt, they could not be induced to repeat the attack, but resolved to retreat. This movement was con- ducted with greater skill than the assault. The wounded — among whom was Champlain, chafing with chagrin and pain — were bound on rude litters and carried in the centre, while armed warriors formed front, rear, and flanking guards. Champlain had been promised an escort down the St. Law- rence to Quebec, but, daunted by their defeat, the Hurons refused to keep their engagement. He was, therefore, com- pelled to return with his savage allies. They encamped for thirty-eight days near Mud Lake, northwest of Kingston, waiting for the frost to bridge the rivers and oozy marshes. For four days, he was lost in the woods and well-nigh ex- hausted by hunger, cold, and fatigue. For nineteen days, he traversed on snow-shoes the wintry forest, beneath a crushing load, through what are now the counties of Hastings, Peter- borough, and Victoria ; and on Christmas eve, the baffled war- party reached Cahiagua. Champlain remained four months with his Huron hosts, sharing in their councils, their feasts, and their hunts, and hearing strange tales of the vast lakes and rivers of the Far TVest. His arrival at Quebec, after a icie. year's absence, was greeted almost as a resurrection from the dead. Champlain now devoted himself to fostering the growth of the infant colony. Quebec was as yet only surrounded by wooden walls. To strengthen its defences, the energetic Gov- ernor built a stone fort in the lower town, and on the magnifi- cent heights overlooking the broad St. Lawrence, one of the noblest sites in the world, he began the erection of the Castle 64 HISTORY OF CANADA. of St. Louis, the residence of successive Governors of Canada down to 1834, when it was destroyed by fire. The associated company of merchants were averse to colo- nization, and were anxious only to prosecute the fur trade, and to retain the monopoly exclusively in their own hands. Cham- plain went every year to France to urge the interests of the colony. His patron, the Prince of Conde, disgraced and im- prisoned for his share in the political disturbances during the 1630. minority of Louis XIII., sold the vice-royalty of New France to the Duke of Montmorency, for the sum of eleven thousand crowns. The same year, Champlain brought out his youthful wife, who was received by the Indians with reverential homage, as a being of superior race. Amid the rude surround- ings of her exile, during the four years she remained, the lady devoted herself with enthusiasm to the religious instruction of the Indian children, and won all hearts by her beauty, her kindness, and her piety. The impolicy of Champlain's Indian wars was soon manifested by the first of those Iroquois inva- sions, which so often afterwards harassed the colony. For the present, however, the terror of the French cannon and mus- ketry frustrated the threatened attack. In consequence of disputes in the Trading Company of New France, and its neglect to furnish supplies for the colony, its 1621. charter was suspended, and its privileges transferred to the Sieurs De Caen, uncle and nephew, zealous Huguenots. The elder De Caen soon arrived at Quebec, and attempted to seize the vessels of the old company, then in the river. Many resident traders left the country in disgust, so that, although eighteen emigrants had arrived, the population was reduced to forty-eight persons. Montmorency soon surrendered his vice-royalty to the Duke 1633. de Ventadour, a nobleman who, wearied of the follies of the court, had entered a monastic order, and was full of zeal for the extension of the Eoman Catholic faith in the New "World. He suppressed the Protestant worship in De Caen's ships, especially the singing of psalms, which seems to have been particularly obnoxious, and sent out three Jesuit Fathers, CHAMP LAIN' S ABMINISTRATION. 65 Pferes Brebeuf, and Lalemant, who were afterwards martyred by the Iroquois, and Le Masse, who had survived the disasters of Port Eoyal. The Jesuits, coldly repulsed by De Caen, were hospitably received by the Eecollets, in their convent on the St. Charles, till they had built one of their own. - Amid the religious and commercial rivalries by which it was distracted, the infant colony languished. The Iroquois, grown insolent from a knowledge of its weakness, became more bold in their attacks, and even cruelly tortured a French prisoner. The De Caens furnished inadequate supplies of food, clothing, and ammunition, so that at times the colony was reduced to great extremities. Everything seemed to wither under their monopoly. Cardinal Richelieu, one of the greatest statesman who ever swayed the destinies of France, was now in power. A lear. part of his comprehensive policy for the aggrandizement of his sovereign and country was, the development of the French navy and colonies, and the suppression of the Huguenots. He straightway annulled the charter of the De Caens, and organ- ized the Company of the Hundred Associates, with the abso- lute sovereignty of the whole of New France, from Florida to Hudson's Bay, and with the complete monopoly of trade, except the whale and cod fisheries. It was. required to settle four thousand Catholic colonists within fifteen years, and to maintain and permanently endow the Roman Catholic Church in New France ; and all Huguenots were banished from the country. But before this comprehensive, and,' but for its religious intolerance, wise scheme could be carried into efiect, a new disaster assailed the colony. Before describing this, we must briefly recount the recent fortunes of Acadia. The pirat- ical expedition of Argall in 1614 had furnished the English with an excuse for the occupation of that country, where the French, represented by Biencourt, had again planted a strug- gling colony. In that year, the ' ' Grand Council of Plymouth," an association of English merchants, received from King James a patent, covering all the territory from the fortieth to the QQ HISTORY^ OF CANADA. forty-eighth degree of north latitude, that is, from the parallel of Philadelphia to that of the Bay of Chaleur, and from, the Atlantic to the Pacific. This comprehended the greater part of Canada and Acadia. Among the members of this ' ' Grand Council" was Sir William Alexander, a Scottish gentleman of considerable political infl.uence and of enterprising patriotism. He obtained from King James the concession of the Acadian peninsula (1621, renewed 1625), and undertook the found- ing of a New Scotland, after the analogy of the New France and New England, already planted or projected. Under his authority, a Scottish colony was established, and a fort built at Port Royal, near the previous settlement of the French. King Charles I. renewed the patent of Sir William Alexander, and created a minor order of nobility, called the "Knights-Baro- nets of Nova Scotia." It was composed of one hundred and fifty members, who received that title, together with liberal land grants, on conditions of settling a certain number of immi- grants on their new domains. What is now the province of New Brunswick received the name of Alexandria, and the present peninsula of Nova Scotia, that of Caledonia. It was intended to transfer thither the feudal institutions of the Old World, and to build up a great Scottish province on this rocky outpost of British civilization. At this time Charles I. made an inefiectual attempt to relieve 1638. the Huguenots besieged in Eochelle, and declared war agamst France. Sir William Alexander thought the moment op- portune to secure the conquest of the extensive country, to most of which he had as yet" only a paper claim. Through his influ- ence, David Kirk, a Huguenot refugee, received a royal com- mission to seize the French forts in Acadia and on the St. Lawrence. He organized an expedition of a dozen ships, and, overcoming the small French force at Port Royal, took posses- sion of tiie country for Sir William Alexander. Later in the summer Kirk entered the St. Lawrence, burned Tadousac, and sent a summons to Champlain, at Quebec, to surrender that post. The commandant ostentatiously feasted the messengers — although the town was on an allowance of only CHAMPLAIN'S ADMINISTRATION. 67 seven ounces of bread per day, and the magazine contained but fifty pounds of powder — and returned a gallant defiance to ^ Kirk. The latter, adopting the policy of delays cruised in the Gulf, and captured the transports of the new company, laden with the winter's provision for the colony. In consequence of this disaster, the sufferings of the French were intense. The crops of their few arable acres were unusually scanty. With the early spring the famishing population burrowed in 1639. the forests for edible roots. But the heroic spirit of Cham- plain sustained their courage. Still, the summer wore away, and the expected provision ships from France came not. At length", towards the end of July, hungry eyes discovered from the Castle of St. Louis three vessels rounding the headland of * Point Levi. They brought not, however, the much needed succours ; they were English ships of war, commanded by two brothers of Admiral Kirk. The little garrison of sixteen famine-wasted men surrendered with the honours of war, and Louis Kirk, installed as Governor, saved from starvation the conquered inhabitants, less than one hundred in all. As peace had been concluded before the surrender of Quebec, Champlain urged the apathetic French court to demand its restoration. This demand was made, and, by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed March 27th, 1632, the whole of Canadk, Cape Breton and Acadia, was restored to the French. De Caen was granted a monopoly of the fur trade for one year, to indemnify him for losses during the war ; and the red-cross banner of England, after waving for three years from the Castle of St. Louis, gave place to the lilied flag of France. Meanwhile, the Nova Scotia colonization scheme of Sir Wil- liam Alexander had proved an utter failure. The grand titles of his knight-baronets had not attracted settlers to those rugged shores. He sought, therefore, to detach the French settled within the limits of his grant from their rightful alle- giance. To this end, Claude La Tour, who had held a fort for his king at the mouth of the St. Croix, was won by the flat- teries of Sir William to become a knight-baronet of Nova Scotia, and married an English court lady. He undertook also g8 BISTORT OF CANADA. to bring over his son to the interests of the British, and received a grant of the southern part of the peninsula of Nova Scotia. Young La Tour, however, who held a fort for the French at Cape Sable, proved faithful to his country, and resisted alike the solicitations and the armed assault of his sire, who, with two English ships, attacked the post, which was gallantly defended by his son. Despised by his own country- men, and not venturing to return to either France or England, the renegade La Tour was compelled to accept the protection and hospitality of his son, who would not, however, allow him to enter the fort, but built him a lodging without its walls. By the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Nova Scotia was ceded to the French, and Isaac de Eazill6 was appointed its commandant. It was not till the year after the surrender of 1633. Quebec to the De Caens that Champlain returned to Canada. He was accompanied by two hundred immigrants and soldiers, and brought an abundant supply of provisions, mer- chandise, and munitions of war. With characteristic energy, he established forts at Three Rivers, and at the mouth of the Eichelieu,* to protect the fur trade and check the inroads of the Iroquois, and greatly promoted the prosperity of the colony and the christianizing of the native tribes. The presence of the Jesuits secured the grave decorum of the town, which was more like a mission than a garrison, and their apostolic zeal ' carried the Gospel to the distant shores of Lake Huron. But the labours of Champlain's busy life, spent in the service of his native or adopted country, were drawing to a close. In October, 1635, being then in the sixty-eighth year of his age, he was smitten with his mortal illness. For ten weeks he lay in the Castle of St. Louis, unable even to sign his name, but awaiting with resignation the Divine will. On Christmas Day, the brave soul passed away. The body of the honoured .founder of Quebec was buried beneath the lofty cliff which overlooks the scene of his patriotic toil. The character of Champlain was more like that of the knight-errant of medisBval * This ancient highway, by -which the bark fleets of these eneinies of New France inTaded the colony, was long known as the Elver of the IrocLuoia. CHAMPLAIN'S ADMIN ISTRATIOS. 69 romance than that of a soldier of the practical seventeenth cen- tury in which he lived. He had greater virtues and fewer faults than most men of his age. In a time of universal license his life was pure. With singular magnanimity, he devoted himself to the interests of his patrons. Although traffic with the natives was very lucrative, he carefully refrained from engaging in it. His sense of justice was stern, yet his conduct was tempered with mercy. He won the unfaltering confidence of the Indian tribes ; suspicious of others, in him they had boundless trust. His zeal for the spread of Christianity was intense. The salvation of one soul, he was wont to declare, was of more importance than the founding of an empire. His epitaph is written in the record of his busy life. For well- niffh thirty years, he laboured without stint and against almost insuperable difficulties, for the struggling colony. A score of times he crossed the Atlantic in the tardy, incommodious, and often scurvy-smitten vessels of the period, in order to advance its interests. His name is embalmed in the history of his adopted country, and still lives in the memory of a grateful people, and in the designation of the beautiful lake on which he, first of white men, sailed. His widow, originally a Hugue- not, espoused her husband's faith, and died a nun at Meaux in 1654. His account of his voyage to Mexico, and his history of New France, bear witness to his literary skiU and powers of observation ; and his summary of Christian doctrine, written for the native tribes, is a touching monument of his piety. 70 HISTORY Of CAS ADA. CHAPTEK Yl. ENGLISH C0LO^■IZATI0^' — CANADA UyDEE TEE HTN'DEED ASSO- CIATES. Jamestown Founded, 1607 — Tndian Massacre — Maryland and Xew England Colonies — Monnnagny, Governor of Canada. 1637 — Madame de la Peltrie — Marie de ITncamatlon — Founding of Ville Marie (Montreal). 1642 — In- dian Wars and Treaties — The Jesuit ilissionaries — Isaac Jogues — Bres- sanL IN order to understand the prolonged conflict between France and Great Britain, for the possession of the Xorth Ameri- can continent, it will be necessary to trace brieflv the progress of English colonization. It was not till the rear 1607, one hundred and ten years after the discorer}* of America by Cabot, that a permanent English settlement was made in the Xew TVorld. It consisted of one hundred and live emigrants, of whom forty-eight were '* gentlemen," and only twelve labourers and four carpenters, sent out by a company of London mer- chants, incorporated under royal charter. They entered the magnifi- cent Chesapeake Bay, and began their settlement at Jamestown, on the James Eiver. Indolence, strife, and jealousy plunged the colony into anarchy and despair. Before autumn half of its nimiber had died, ^ and the . rest were enfeebled with ''^ hunger and disease. They were only saved from destruction by the energy and ability of Captain John Smith, the romantic stoiy of whose rescue from death by Pocahontas is one of the most pleasing legends of OEmy JOHs S3IIIH. earlv colonization. With the com- ENGLISH COLONIZATIOy. 71 manding influence of a great spirit, Smith asserted his authority over even his Indian captors. By exhibiting his watch and compass, and explaining some of the wonders of as- <, tronomy, he overawed the minds of the savages, and not only escaped torture hut acquired great influence amonsf them. Successive re-enforcements of the Yu'ginia colony, con- sisting chiefly of broken- down gentlemen, bankrupt tradesmen, and idle and dissolute fugitives from jus- tice, increased the number in three years td four hun- dred and ninety persons, when Joliu Smith, injured by an explosion of gunpowder, was compelled to return to England. In six months vice and famine had reduced the colony to sixty persons, who prepared to abandon the country. Lord Delaware opportunely arrived with supplies ; but in twelve years, after the expenditure of $400,000, it numbered only six hmidred persons. At length, re-enforced by a supe- rior class of immigrants, its population rapidly increased. In the spring of the year 1622, occurred the first of those Indian massacres, which so often crimsoned the hearths of the English settlements, and inau^irated a bitter war of extermi- nation against the red race. It was planned with the utmost secrecy and treachery. *« Sooner," said the Indians, " shall the sky fall, than peace be violated on our part." At noon, on the 22d of March, throughout an extent of one hundred and forty miles, they fell upon the unsuspecting white population, and in an hour three hundred and forty-seven persons sank beneath the tomahawk, or scalping-knife. The colony at first was par- alyzed with fear, but soon a fierce retaliation ensued. In 1644, SMTTH AlfD HIS CAPTORS. 72 HISTORY or CANADA. similar scenes were renewed. They became of gad frequency dm-mg the early colonial days, and gave the name of the Dark and Bloody Ground to the scenes of these sanguinary conflicts. fetiU the colony throve amain, and at Christmas, 1648, thirty- one ships were in Chesapeake Bay, twenty thousand inhabi- tants were dwelling on its shores, and so greatly had their famihes increased, that -the huts in the wilderness were as full as the birds' nests of the woods." In 1632, Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic nobleman re- ceived a grant of the territory which, in honour of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I., he called Maryland. This he held by feudal tenure, paying only a yearly rent of two Indian arrows, and a fifth of all the gold and silver found. Catholics and Protestants alike enjoyed rehgious toleration, and by 1660 Its population had increased to ten thousand souls. Plymouth colony was the offspring of religious impulse A company of English Puritans had sought, in the republic of Holland, that Hberty of worship which they were denied in their own land. " Moved by a hope and inward zeal of ad- vancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ, in the remote parts of the New World," as they devoutly declared, they fitted out two small vessels, the "Speedwell" and the -May- flower," of immortal memory, for the purpose of planting a colony in New England. After disaster and delays, the ' ' Mayflower " alone proceeded on her voyage, on the 6th of September, 1620, bearing into self-sought exile for conscience' sake, one hundred and one persons. They landed first on the barren sand-dunes of Cape Cod, and afterward, on Christmas Day, on Plymouth Rock. The winter was long and severe. Before spring, half of their number had died, and the survivors were scarcely able to bury the dead. Yet, when the vessel that brought them returned to England, " O strong hearts and true ! not one went back with the Mayfloiver" At the beginning of the following winter, came a new arrival of immigrants, but no supplies of food. For four months they lived on clams, mussels, ground-nuts, and acorns. The third ENGLISH COLONIZATIOy. 73 year was also a time of pinching want, but prosperity at length gradually dawned upon the town of Plymouth. Amid such suf- fermgs and privations are the foundations of empire laid. In the year 1628, a Puritan colony, from the shires of Dor- set and Lincoln, England, numbering about a hundred per- sons, animated by intense religious zeal, formed a settlement at Salem, in Massachusetts Bay. The following year, two hun- dred more arrived. But the infant colony was cradled in suf- fering. This year eighty persons died from disease and un- wonted exposure. The next year fifteen hundred arrived, leso. but before December two hundred had died, and another hun- dred, disheartened by disaster, returned to England. The following year only ninety persons arrived. But, amid sickness and sufiering, no trace of repining appears in the lesi. records of the colony. The early settlements were chiefly art Salem, Charlestown, and Boston. Notwithstanding temporary reverses, the population continued to increase, as many as three thousand immigrants arriving in a single year. less. Among the citizens of the new religious commonwealth, were such distinguished divines as Cotton and Hooker ; and Eliot and Mayhew, the apostles to the Indians, who, laying aside the pride of learning, instructed the savage neophytes of the forest in the doctrines of the Gospel ; and such laymen as Governor Winthrop, the sturdy Endicott, the younger Vane, friend of Milton and martyr of liberty, and others of honoured memory. One of these, Roger Williams, became the founder of the province of Ehode Island. Of enlarged and liberal mind, he entertained views on religious toleration, far in advance of his time. Exiled for these opinions from Massachusetts colony, he wandered, in the bitter winter of 1635-36, for fourteen weeks through the pathless forests ; and in the following June, with five companions, planted, " as a shelter for persons distressed in conscience," the settlement, to which, in expression of his confidence in God, he gave the name of Providence. This same year, a Massachusetts colony of one hundred per- sons, settled in the beautiful Connecticut valley, under the 10 74 BISTORT OF CANADA. guidance of the pious divine, Thomas Hooker, and two years 163 after, another, led by John Davenport, its pastor, in New Haven. The previous year (1637) the first New England In- dian war broke out. The outrages of the Pequods compelled the Connecticut settlers to resort to arms. About sixty men, one-third of the whole colony, attacked a fort garrisoned by ten times their number, which they consumed, with its inmates, and utterly exterminated the Pequod nation, a community of over two thousand souls — an act of extreme and unjustifiable severity. Political unity was given to these scattered colonies by a 1643. confederacy, formed by mutual agreement, for defence against the Indians, the French, and the Dutch. The growth of the colonial trade was rapid, and began to awaken the jeal- ousy of the English merchants ; and by the Navigation Act of 1651, extended in 1672, the colonies were excluded from coast- wise and transatlantic commerce, which could only be prosecuted in English vessels. The increase in population also excited the hostility of the native tribes, who were already outnumbered on their own soil,* and were destined to be pushed ever backward before the advancing tide of white immigration and expansion, f We return, to follow more minutely the varying fortunes of 1636. New France. M. De Montmagny,J the successor of Champlain, arrived in Canada in 1636. He was a member of the military-religious order of the Knights of Malta. He en- tered, with hearty sympathy, into the pious enthusiasm of the Jesuits. As with his train of officers and gentlemen he climbed the cliif of Quebec, he prostrated himself before a * In 1675, the white population of New England was estimated at 55,000, and the Indian population at 30,000. t As early as 1615, the Dutch had a trading post at Albany. In 1623, they founded New Amsterdam, now New York, In 1638, the Swedes colonized Dela- ware, but were compelled to cede their territory to the Dutch in 1655. The Dutch, in turn, were obliged, in 1664, to yield their possessions to the English, now supreme from Acadia to Florida, which last, in 1764, the Spaniards ceded in exchange for Havana and Louisiana. I From this Governor is derived the name Onontio, applied by the Indians to all his successors. It is the translation into their language of his name, and siiniifies " Great Mountain." THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. 75 crucifix by the pathway, followed by all his attendants. He stood as godfather at the baptism of a savage proselyte. He held a burning taper at the funeral of another. Side by side with an Indian neophyte, he bore the canopy of the host. The very atmosphere of Quebec was one of religious observ- ance. Morning, noon, and night the sweet clangour of the bells rang out the call to prayer. Soldiers, artisans, and labourers daily thronged the church for mass and vespers. Ab- sence from service, or the sin of blasphemy, was punished by exposure in a pillory at the church door. Yet, amid this spiritual prosperity, the temporal affairs of the colony were much depressed. The Company of the Hun- dred Associates, from which so much had been expected, did little but send a few vessels annually to traffic with the natives. Instead of transporting four thousand colonists in fifteen years, in the thirty-five years of its existence it did not send out one thousand. At Champlain's death, there were only two hundred and fifty Europeans in the colony. In five years more, scarce a hundred were added. In 1648, the European population was only eight hundred, and in 1662, when the company's charter was annulled, it was le«s than two thousand, most of whom had come out without its aid. So slowly, as compared with that of Virginia and New England, did the population of New France increase. Nevertheless, an intense interest in the colony was kindled in the mother country. For forty years, from 1632 to 1672, the Jesuit Fathers sent home to the Superior of the Order, annual " Relations" of the progress of the Indian missions, which cir- culated widely throughout France.* Several families of rank and fortune were induced to immigrate with their servants and dependants, and received grants of land on seigneurial tenure, to be hereafter described Many persons devoted to religion, also, both priests and nuns, eager to engage in missionary toil among the savages, came to Canada. * These -were collected and published in three large 8vo volumes by the Ca- nadian GoTernment in 1858. They are a perfect mine of information on early Canadian history. 76 HISTORY OF CANADA. In the Church of Montmartre perpetual prayer was offered . for the mission, by a succession of nuns lying prostrate, day and night, before the altar. In many a convent cell, gentle hearts glowed with inextinguishable longings, to teach the dusky children of the wilderness the story of the love of Mary and of Christ. One of the most remarkable of these fair devotees was Madame de la Peltrie, a lady of wealth and noble birth, who, left a childless widow at the age of twenty-two, burned, with an ardent passion to found a seminary for Indian girls in Canada. With her came Marie Guyart, better known by her conventual name of Marie de I'lncarnation, who had also been left a widow at tha age of twenty. With several companions, they arrived at Quebec in 1639. As they landed from their floating prison, they kissed the soil that was to be the scene of their pious labours, and were received with enthusiasm by the inhabitants, and with firing of cannon, and the best military parade of the little garrison. The intense religious enthusiasm of the nuns soon found employment in nursing the victims of the loathsome small-pox, which had broken out with extreme virulence in the foul cabins of the natives. In three years, the massive stone convent, on the site still occupied by the Ursuline nuns, was reared, and beneath the shade of the tall ash-tree yet standing, ISlary of the Incarnation instructed the Indian children in the truths of salvation. For thirty-two years, she and Madame de la Peltrie lived and laboured among these savage tribes, and then, almost at the same time, ceased from their pious toil. The Hotel Dieu, a hospital for the sick, was also endowed by the celebrated Duchesse d'Aiguillon, niece of Cardinal Hiche- lieu. The Marquis de Silleri, a Knight of Malta, who had renounced the world and devoted his immense wealth to the service of the Church, had founded, in the little cove four miles above Quebec which still bears his name, a mission, which was early baptized in blood. Le Jeune collected some Indian children, taught them the Lord's Prayer and Creed in Latin, and declared that he would not exchange his position THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. li for a chair in the first university of Europe. Thus, almost before there were inhabitants in Quebec, were provided the charities and institutions of Christian civilization. A notable event now took place, of strange and romantic interest. The annual ' ' Eelations " of the Jesuits created, as we have seen, in religious circles in France an intense enthu- siasm to share the honours and celestial rewards of toil for the salvation of the savages. It is asserted that M. de la Dauver- siere, a receiver of taxes, and Father Olier, a young priest, simultaneously conceived the idea, or rather, as they i64o. believed, the Divine suggestion of establishing on the island of Montreal, although it was yet Mnthout inhabitants, a seminary, a hospital, and a college. The zeal of pious ladies and wealthy devotees ^vas kindled ; the sum of seventy-five thousand dollars was raised, and the Association of Notre Dame de Montreal was formed, consisting of forty-five persons. A grant of the island Avas obtained, and Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maison- neuve, a devout and valiant soldier, received the appointment of Governor. In the venerable cathedral of Notre Dame, by a solemn ceremonial, the mission was consecrated to the Holy Family, under the title of Ville Marie de Montreal. Commer- cial speculation had no part in the undertaking, for the asso- ciates had pledged themselves to refrain from the lucrative fur trade. The inevitable attacks by the savages had no terrors, although the site of the mission was a most perilous outpost — " a hand thrust into a wolfs den." The new settlement was the ofispring solely of religious enthusiasm. Jealous probably of a prospective rival, or apprehensive of the dangers which must be incurred, Montmagiiy endeavoured to induce Maisonneuve to remain at the Island of Orleans, but the latter resolved to brave the perils of the frontier post. " I have come not to deliberate, but to act," he exclaimed, " and I will go to Montreal, though every tree were an Iroquois." In the spring of 1642, the little flotilla bearing the founders of the new mission glided up the river — Montmagny, as re^jre- senting the Hundred Associates, Maisonneuve, the Jesuit Vi- mont, Madame de la Peltrie, Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, and 78 HISTORY OF CANADA. about forty soldiers, artisans and labourers. As tbey landed (May 17th), they fell upon their knees and sang a hymn of thanksffivinff. An altar was soon erected and decked with flowers, and, in that magnificent amphitheatre of nature, Father Yimont celebrated mass and invoked the blessing of Heaven on the new colonists. ' ' You are a grain of mustard-seed," he said, "that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. God's smile is upon you, and your children shall fill the land." Thus piously were laid the foundations of Ville Marie de Mon- treal, the future commercial metropolis of Canada. With the early dawn, the little colony was alert. There was hard work to be done before the settlement could be regarded as at all safe. Seizing an axe, and wielding it as dextrously as he had often wielded his good sword in battle, Maisonneuve felled the first tree. The outline of a little fort was traced, the Governor himself working with spade and mattock in digging the trench. The scene revived in the classic mind of Yimont the traditions of the founding of the storied City of the Seven Hills. But here, his prescient vision beheld the founding of a new Rome, a mother city of the faith, which should nourish and bring up children in the wilderness, extending her j)ower over savage races an.d her protection to far-off missions. In a short time a strong palisade was erected, enclosing a spot of ground situated in a meadow between the river and the present Place d'Armes, near the site of the stately church o^ Notre Dame. The little fort was daily strengthened, a few cannon were mounted, and loop-holes were made for musketry. 1643. The following year the mission was re-enforced, and con- tinued gradually to increase, notwithstanding the frequent attacks of the ferocious Iroquois, by which several of the settlers were slain. The terror of the savages at the firearms of the French was largely overcome by their familiarity with those weapons. Indeed, many of them had obtained carbines from the Dutch traders at Fort Orange (Albany), and had learned to use them with fatal effect. Growing more audacious with success, they formed a concerted plan for the extermina- THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. * 79 tion of the French. Seven hundred savage warriors attacked the fort, planted by Montmagny, at the mouth of the Richelieu. They swarmed up to the palisades, thrust their guns through the loop-holes, fought with desperate courage, and were with great difficulty repulsed. Beneath the very guns of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, they lay in wait for their human prey. No man could hunt, or fish, or fell a tree, or cultivate the meagre lands around the settlements, without the risk of his life. A sudden volley, a fiendish yell, a swift rush, and the naked savages vanished into the wood with their booty of bleeding scalp, leaving their mangled victim dead or dying on the ground. The audacious Iroquois threatened to exterminate the Huron and Algonquin allies of the French. These wretched beings were wasted by famine and pestilence, and were thoroughly cowed by fear. Their hunting-grounds were invaded by their ruthless foe, and they were reduced at times to subsist on the bark of trees and the raw-hide thongs of their snow-shoes. Let one example of the atrocities of savage warfare suffice. A band of Algonquins retreated in midwinter to the forest recesses far up the Ottawa to hunt moose. They were tracked by the stealthy and persistent Iroquois, who burst at midnight upon the encampment. Many of the sleepers were slain on the spot. The survivors were dragged twenty days' journey to the Mohawk towns. On these their captors wreaked their utmost rage. They hacked their bodies with knives and shells, scorched them with burning brands, and after exhausting every mode of inflicting suffering, in their unhallowed frenzy they devoured the quivering flesh. " They are not men but wolves," said a wretched squaw, who, escaping their tortures, found her way to Quebec. A temporary peace was at length concluded with the Iro- quois. The kindly ti^eatment by the French of some Mohawk prisoners, whom they had ransomed from their Algonquin allies — an act as politic as it was Christian — touched with grati- tude even the savage nature of those warriors, who had expected nothing but torture and death. One of these was 80 -- HISTORY OF CANADA. sent home to his tribe, with the promise that the others would be liberated if the Iroquois would make a treaty of peace. 1645. Mohawk envoys accordingly appeared the following summer at Three Elvers, and after much feasting, speech-mak- ing, and many songs, dances, and gifts of wampum, the war- hatchet was buried and the peace-pipe was smoked. *' Let the clouds be dispersed ; let the sun shine on all the land between us," said the Iroquois. " We have thrown the hatchet so high in the air, that no arm on earth can reach to bring it down. The spirits of our braves that have been slain in war have gone so deep into the earth that they can never be heard calling for vengeance." " I place a stone on the graves," replied an Algonquin chief, " that no one may move their bones." The following year this treaty was solemnly ratified, with 1646. many more speeches and wampum-belts. But before long the peace concluded with such imposing ceremony was wantonly broken by the caprice of the Iroquois. Soon the hunters of men were again on the war-path, pursuing their human prey. 1647. The tragic scenes of massacre and burning and cannibal feasting were repeated, with all their sickening atrocities. The fort at the mouth of the Richelieu was pillaged and destroyed, and the settlements on the St. Lawrence were threatened with extermination. Upon the Jesuit missionaries and their Indian converts fell the cruel brunt of this savage war. That subtle and sinister system, which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had belted the world with its missions, and won renown and execra- tion in almost every land, gained some of its grandest triumphs and exhibited its most heroic spirit in the wilderness of Canada. The Jesuits had numbered as converts hundreds of thousands of baptized pagans in India and the Moluccas, in China and Japan, in Brazil and Paraguay. They almost entirely controlled the religious education of youth in Europe ; and kept the con- sciences of kings, nobles, and great ladies, who sought at their feet spiritual guidance and counsel. They had won well-merited fame for attainments in ancient learning, for modem sci- ence, for pulpit eloquence, and for subtle statecraft. Under THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. gj^ the disguise of a Brahmin, a mandarin, an astrologer, a peas- ant, a scholar, they had compassed the world to make prose- lytes to Eome. Deciphering ancient manuscripts or inscriptions, sweeping the heavens with the telescope, or digging the earth with a mattock, editing the classics or ancient Fathers, or teaching naked savages the Ave or Credo, they were alike the obedient and zealous servants of their Order, to whose ad- vancement their whole being was devoted. They were at once among the greatest friends of human learning and the most deadly enemies of civil liberty. But nowhere did the Jesuit missionaries exhibit grander moral heroism, or sublimer self-sacrifice ; nowhere did they encounter greater sufferings, with more pious fortitude, or meet with a more tragical fate, than in the wilderness-missions of New France. They were the pioneers of civilization, the pathfinders of empire on this continent. With breviary and crucifix, at the command of the Superior of the Order at Quebec, they wandered all over the vast country stretching from the rocky shores of Nova Scotia to the distant prairies of the Far West, from the regions around Hudson's Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi Eiver. Paddling all day in their bark canoes ; sleeping at night on the naked rock ; toiling over ruo-- ged portages, or through pathless forests ; pinched by hunger, gnawed to the bone by cold, often dependent for subsistence on acorns, the bark of trees, or the bitter moss to which they have given their name ; * lodging in Indian wigwams, whose acrid smoke blinded their eyes, and whose obscene riot was unutter- ably loathsome to every sense ; braving peril and persecution, and death itself, they persevered in their path of self-sacrifice, for the glory of God,t the salvation of souls, the advancement of their Order, and the extension of New France. '^gj of that fabulous creature. Not till the month of Auo^ust did La Salle return to Niao-ara. Incited by his enemies, his creditors had seized his property for debts, which his seigneury would amply have discharged^ But his great enterprise might not brook delay, and with his usual fortitude, he submitted to the blow. On the 7th of August, the "Griffin," a goodly craft, of forty-five tons burden, spread her wings to the breeze, and, stemming the rapid current, entered Lake Erie. In three weeks, the pioneer mariners of the inland seas, thirty-four in all, reached the Michillimackinac mission, at the entrance to Lake Michigan, having escaped a violent storm on Lake Hu- ron. The strange apparition of the winged vessel, and boom- ing cannon, everywhere produced surprise and consternation. La Salle freighted the ' ' Griffin " with a cargo of furs in order to appease the clamours of his creditors, and sent her back to Niagara. She must have foundered in an autumnal storm, as she was never heard of again. Weary of waiting her return, he resolved to explore the in- terior. With Hennepin, Tonti, and thirty men, by the end of December, after many privations and adventures, he reached Lake Peoria, in the heart of the populous country of the Illi- nois. Here, amid the despondency, mutiny, and desertion of DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST. 137 his men, he built a fort, to which, in allusion to his disasters and disappointments, he gave the name of CreveccEur, — Heart- break. Despatching Hennepin to explore the upper leso. waters of the Mississippi, and having seen well advanced the construction of a vessel of forty tons burden, in which he pur- posed descending the great river to the Gulf of Mexico, and sailing to the West Indies, the intrepid pioneer set out, on the 3d of March, with five companions, through wintry snows and pathless woods, to Fort Frontenac, more than a thousand miles distant, in order to procure stores, anchors, and rigging for his new vessel. The hardships of that terrible journey were almost unpar- alleled. The streams were impeded with floating ice, and the travellers had frequently to break a way for their canoe with axes, or to drag it for leagues through marsh or forest encum- bered with melting snow. They were at length compelled to abandon it altogether, and laden with arms, ammunition, blanket, and kettle, to wade, knee-deep, through slush, or inundated meadows. Game was scarce, and the pangs of hunger Avere added to the sufferings of fatigue. The Indians, too, were hostile. For days. La Salle and his companions were dogged by a war-party, and dared not light a fire at night to dry their saturated clothes. Snow, sleet, and rain, piercing winds and bitter cold, and weary marches through the woods, wore down their failing strength. Fever, cold, and spitting of blood attacked several of the Frenchmen, and even the Indian guide. On Easter Monday, they reached the fort on the Niagara, where the " Griffin" had been launched. La Salle alone, sustained by his indomitable energy, was capable of a further journey. But it was necessary for him to hasten on to Fort Frontenac. Tidino-s of disaster awaited him. Besides the confirmation of the loss of the " Griffin," with her valuable lading, he learned that a ship from France, freighted with his goods, valued at over twenty-two thousand livres, had bsen totally wrecked in the St. Lawrence. His agents had plundered him, his property had been seized for debt, and several of his canoes, with rich lading of furs, had been lost in 18 138 HISTORY OF CANADA. tlie rapids. Still his unconquerable will overcame every obstacle. He obtained in Montreal, the needed supplies and recruits for his great expedition, and was on the eve of setting out from Fort Frontenac on his return to Crevecoeur, when a more crushing blow fell upon him than any he had yet re- ceived. Two voyageurs arrived, bringing a letter from Tonti, his faithful Italian lieutenant, which stated that, shortly after La Salle's departure, the turbulent garrison of Crevecoeur had mutinied, plundered the stores, destroyed the fort, and thrown into the river the arms and goods they could not carry off. They also seized, at Michillimackinac, a quantity of furs belong- ing to La Salle, and plundered his forts on Lake Michigan, and at Niagara. Part of the rascal crew then fled to the English at Albany, and the rest, twelve in number, were advancing to Fort Frontenac to murder its seigneur. La Salle only braced himself for fresh energies. With nine trusty men, he pro- ceeded to intercept the mutineers. After a sharp resistance, in which two were slain, the survivors were captured and conveyed to Fort Frontenac, there to await their trial. La Salle's cherished enterprise seemed now utterly wrecked. Yet, he did not despair. On the 10th of August, he again set out for the country of the Illinois, with a company of twenty- five men. This time, he went by a new route. He ascended the Humber, from Lake Ontario, and, crossing a portage to the Holland Eiver, reached Lake Simcoe, and then descended sthe Severn to Lake Huron. Skirting the Manitoulin Islands, he hastened on with seven men, by way of Lake Michigan, and the Joseph, Kankeekee, and Illinois rivers to Crevecoeur, leaving the rest of his force to follow. Here a scene of horror awaited him. The great Illinois town of seven or eight thou- sand inhabitants, near which the fort was built, was a desolation of blackened embers, hideous with charred bodies, rifled from the Indian graves, and half devoured by wolves and buzzards, — on every side was evidence of massacre and havoc. The fort was utterly demolished, although the vessel still lay upon the stocks ; but no signs of Tonti, or of his companions, could DISCOVERT OF THE GREAT WEST. I39 be found. La Salle, therefore, disheartened, but not despair- ing, retraced his steps to his fort of St. Joseph, where he gath- ered his men about him and awaited intelligence of his lost lieutenant. The story of that hero's adventures is one of tragic interest. After the flight of the mutineers, he, with his little band of Frenchmen, seven in all, removed to the Indian town, in order to conciliate its inhabitants. An unexpected storm of savage fury burst upon this forest community. The ferocious Iroquois, having well-nigh exterminated the Hurons, Eries, and An- dastes, sought new tribes to conquer. Five hundred painted warriors made their way through pathless forests, from the lovely lakes of central New York, to the fertile prairies of the Illinois. They burst like a hurricane upon the hapless town and soon made of a populous country a solitude. Having con- quered the Illinois warriors, the Iroquois completed their vic- tory by the wanton butchery of women and children, and the desecration of the graves. Tonti, after futile efforts to medi- ate, in which he was nearly slain, was only able to save his little company by retreat to Green Bay. Indeed, even retreat did not save them all, for Father Ribourde, the only heir of a rich Burgundian house, retiring to the forest to recite the office of his breviary, was cut off by a band of prowling savages. But what, meanwhile, had become of Father Hennepin, whom, as we have seen, La Salle had sent to explore the Upper Mississippi? The unquestioned courage and energy of that distinguished pioneer, were unhappily equalled by his vanity and mendacity. Bating all exaggerations, however, it appears that he, with his two companions, followed the course of the mighty river almost to its source, far beyond the beautiful Falls of Minnehaha, which he named after St. Anthony of Padua. The (iaring explorers were captured by the Sioux, Avho mani- fested the same intractable spirit that still characterizes that tribe. After many hardships, they made their escape, and returned, by way of the Wisconsin and the lakes, to Canada, to tell their remarkable story. With consummate tact and eloquence and skill in the man- 140 HISTORY OF CANADA. agement of the red race, La Salle organized a confederacy of western tribes, as a bulwark against the invading Iroquois, and as the allies of the colony and trading-post, which he purposed 1681. planting on the Illinois. To appease his creditors, and to collect means for carrying out his project, he must again visit Canada. Paddling a thousand miles in a frail canoe, he reached Fort Frontenac. Obtaining fresh supplies of goods, arms, and ammunition, by mortgaging his already heavily en- cumbered seigneury, he returned to the country of the Illinois. 16S2. With his faithful lieutenant, Tonti, twenty- three French- men, and eighteen Indians with their squaws, he started upon his eventful voyage of discovery. Having abandoned, for a time, the idea of building a vessel, he resolved to trust to canoes. It was midwinter, and the canoes and stores had to be dragged for some distance on sledges over the snow. At length, after floating down the tranquil waters of the Illinois, on the 6th of February the frail barks were launched on the broad bosom of the Mississippi. For sixty days they glided down the giant stream, leaving behind the icy realm of winter^ and entering the genial domain of spring. Savage tribes were awed by displays of pov/er, or conciliated by the bestowment of gifts. On the 6th of April, the broad, blue, heaving billows of the Gulf of Mexico burst upon their view. With feudal pomp and religious ceremony, La Salle proclaimed the sovereignty of Louis le Grand over the vast country of Louisiana, — a country embracing the whole mid-continent, from the sources of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico ; from the Alleghanies to the Eocky Mountains. The gallant explorer joined in the grand Te Deum and Vexilla liegis, and volleys of musketry, and shouts of Vive le Jioi, confirmed the annexation of half a con- tinent to the domain of France.* La Salle now set his face northward, eager to dispatch the new^s of his discovery to Canada, and to France. But an in- vasion of the Illinois country by the Iroquois was imminent. He therefore tarried to build, with vast toil, a new fort, St. •f * The Ohio aucl the Mississippi received the names respectively of Eiver St. Louis and Eiver Colbert. DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST. 141 Louis, at " Starved Rock," * an isolated cliff, with steep escarp- ments, overhanging the Illinois River. But Frontenac had been re-called from the government of Canada, and the in- trigues of La Salle's enemies, led by La Barre, the new Gov- ernor, were unrestrained. His discoveries were discredited, his character was maligned, his seigneury was seized, his authority was superseded, he was summoned to Quebec, and an officer was sent to assume command of his new fort, St. Louis. La Salle hastened to France to defend himself as-ainst the accusations of his enemies, and to solicit the aid of the Crown in carrying out the grand emprise, in which he had exhausted his private fortune. In his memorial to the King, he modestly sets forth his claims for assistance. "To acquit himself of the commission with which he was charged," he says, writing of himself in the third person, " he had neglected all his pri- vate aflfairs, because they were alien to his enterprise ; he had omitted nothing that was needful to its success, notwithstand- ing dangerous illness, heavy losses, and all the other evils he had suffered. During five years, he had made five journeys of more, in all, than five thousand leagues, for the most part on foot, with extreme fatigue, through snow and through water, without escort, without provisions, without bread, without wine, without recreation, and without repose. He had trav- ersed more than six hundred leagues of country, hitherto un- known, among savage and cannibal nations, against whom he must daily make fight, though accompanied by only thirty-six men, and consoled only by the hope of succeeding in an enter- prise which he thought would be agreeable to his majesty." f Nor were these statements, as we have seen, exaggerations. He had expended on this enterprise one hundred and fifty thou- sand crowns, and was now so impoverished that, unless subsi- dized by the King, his lofty projects for the glory of France, and extension of her dominion, must fail. He therefore asked * So named from being the last refuge of a party of Illinois, who were starved to death by their enemies. t Quoted from a contemporary document by Parkman, " Discovery of the Great West," p. 302, note. 142 HISTORY OF CANADA. for one vessel and two hundred men for one year, in "vvhich time he proposed to fortify the mouth of the Eiver Colbert or Mississippi, thus controlling eight hundred leagues of inland navigation ; to organize a force of fifteen thousand savages ; 1684. and to attack the Spaniards and seize the rich mines of Mexico. Dazzled by this gigantic scheme, -which La Salle must have known, greatly transcended his ability to execute, the King placed at his disposal four vessels, with a military force, and re-instated him in possession of his Canadian seign- eury, which, it will be remembered, had been seized by La Barre. On the 1st of August, the ill-fated expedition, numbering, including soldiers, sailors, and settlers, two hundred and eighty in all, set sail from Eochelle. Beaujeu, who was invested with the naval command, entertained an intense jealousy of La Salle, and did all in his power to thwart his designs. Many of the recruits for the colony were beggars and vagabonds from the streets of Eochelle and Eochefort, and prov^ed turbulent and mutinous. When the fleet reached St. Domingo, fifty men, on board the " Joly," the principal vessel, were sick, La Salle among the number. Tossing in the delirium of fever, in a wretched garret, under a tropical sun, he well-nigh lost his life. The control of his firm hand removed, the turbulent col- onists became utterly demoralized ; and the carping, mousing, ineflScient Beaujeu employed himself in writing censorious letters to the minister of marine, maligning the sick man, whose true greatness he was incapable of comprehending. After a month's delay, pale and haggard and weak, La Salle was able to sail again. By a fatal mistake, the little fleet missed the mouth of the Mississippi, and sailed some two hun- dred miles to the west of it. In attempting to enter Matagorda Bay, on the Texan coast, the " Aimable," his principal store- ship, was wrecked. La Salle thought by design, on a sand-bar, with the loss of nearly all the provisions, arms, ammunition, tools, medicines, baggage, and other goods — a blow of crushing calamity to the infant colony. The base-souled and treacherous Beaujeu, to whose machinations the disaster was probably due. DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST. 143 now set sail and abandoned the disheartened settlers to their fate. A rude redoubt and a few hovels were built of drift- • wood and fragments of the wreck upon the wild, inhospitable shore, named, in feudal fealty, St. Louis. The neighbouring Indians proved hostile, prowled around the frail fort, and stole some of the goods rescued from the ^\Teck. In attempting to recover them, two of the Frenchmen were slain. Another was bitten by a snake and died. Two men, preferring the risk of starving on the prairie to the hard- ships of the camp, deserted. Others attempted to escape, but were caught, and one was hanged. La Salle set out to explore the country. A conspiracy to murder Joutel, his lieutenant, was discovered and crushed. La Salle returned to report the disastrous intelligence that they were far from the Mississippi, the goal of their hopes. Gloom, and almost despair, settled upon every soul but that of the unconquerable commander. During the summer, more than thirty of the colonists died, and many of the survivors were smitten with mortal illness. It was absolutely necessary to find the Mississippi. La Salle, therefore, on the 1st of November, set out in quest of that "fatal river." Five weary months dragged on, when, one day, seven or eight travel-worn men, with patched and tattered clothing, appeared before the fort. They were La Salle igss. and his companions in misfortune. He had failed in the object of his search, and the " Belle," a little vessel on which he had depended for the transport of his colony to the Mississippi, was wrecked, with the' loss of many lives, and of all his papers, and the bulk of the stores, ammunition, and tools rescued from the " Aimable." La Salle now made the desperate resolve to attempt an over- land journey to Canada, for succours for his iU-starred colony. Having patched their ragged clothing with deer or buffalo skins, after mass and prayers, the forlorn hope, each man bearing his pack and weapons, set forth on their long and perilous route. Six months more dragged their weary length along, when La Salle once more appeared at his Texan fort, wasted with fever, worn with fatigue, and again baffled in his attempt to reach the 144 HISTORY OF CANADA. " fatal river," as by common consent the Mississippi was called. Of twenty men who had gone out with him, but eight returned. Four had deserted, the rest had succumbed to the perils of the journey. The condition of the colony was now desperate. Of over two hundred settlers only forty remained alive, several of whom were women and children, and most of the men were com- pletely demoralized by treachery, mutiny, vice, or disease. La Salle alone, by his unconquerable will and audacity of hope, curbed their turbulent spirits and saved them from despair. A dreary Christmas and Twelfth Mght, were celebrated with fes- 1687. tive cups filled with water instead of wine. A journey to Canada was clearly the only resort. The sails of the "Belle" were cut up to make clothing for the travellers, and after midnight mass, and bitter parting of sighs and tears, and last, long embraces, La Salle and twenty men started on the fatal journey, soon to end, for him and others, in disaster and death. Among his followers, were some turbulent spirits, — ex-buc- caneers, and the like, — who ill-brooked the restraints of his rigorous discipline, and resented his stern and haughty manner. A nephew of the great explorer, a hot-headed youth, also pro- voked their malice by his imperious and inconsiderate conduct. It was resolved by the mutineers to murder both uncle and nephew, and their most attached followers ; and, throwing oif the restraints of civilization, to join some Indian tribe, and share their savage life. La Salle seemed to have a presentiment of his fate. " On the day of his death," writes the K^collet friar, who witnessed his assassination, "he spoke to me of nothing but matters of piety, grace, and predestination ; enlarging on the debt he owed to God, who had saved him from so many perils during more than twenty years of travel in America." His nephew and two faithful servants had been already murdered while out hunting, and he, proceeding to ascertain their fate, walked into an ambuscade and was treacherously slain bj a musket-shot. " There thou liest, great bashaw ! " cried one of the murderers DISCOVERT OF THE GREAT WEST. I45 in cruel exultation over his corpse. With unutterable baseness, they stripped the body naked, and left it unburied on the prairie, to be devoured by buzzards and wolves. The animating spirit of La Salle was not the religious enthusiasm of the Jesuit missionaries, nor the patriotic devotion of Champlain, but rather a vast ambition, a passion for dis- covery, an intense energy of character, which courted difficulty and defied danger. The story of his life is one almost unbroken Iliad of disaster. He failed in that magic gift of successful leadership, that disarms jealousy and inspires enthu- siasm equal to its own. He was the victim of unscrupulous rivals, and of craven-hearted traitors. His splendid services to France and civilization merited a better fate than liis tragic and treacherous death, at the ^arly age of forty-three, upon the Texan plains. The assassins soon quarrelled among themselves, and, for the most part, perished by mutual slaughter, or were murdered by the Indians. The Kecollet friar, Jean Cavelier, a Sulpitian priest, and elder brother of La Salle, with five others, made their way, with incredible hardship, by route of the Mississippi and Illinois, the great lakes, and the French and Ottawa rivers, to Canada, and proceeded to France, where the tragic story awoke much commiseration. The brave Tonti, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, set out from Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois, to succour the wretched rem- nant of the Texan colony. The mutiny and desertion of his followers, floods, fever, and semi-starvation prevented the accomplishment of his generous purpose ; and he subsequently died in obscurity, more fortunate in this than nis unhappy chief. Two years later, a Spanish force from Mexico, sent to ex- terminate the French intruders, discovered the ill-starred Texan fort. But no sentry challenged their approach, no banner waved above the frail redoubt, the silence of death reigned over all. They entered, and beheld a scene of ravage and ruin. On the prairie without lay three dead bodies, one that of a woman. From a painted and wandering savage, once a French- 19 146 HISTORY OF CANADA. man, and follower of La Salle, now lapsed to barbarism, they learned the massacre of the wretched remnant of the colonists, wasted by small-pox, sick at heart of hope deferred, and per- chance welcoming death, as a release from theii sufierings. Thus ended, in disappointment, disaster, and death. La Salle's vast and towering schemes of conquest and commerce and colo- nization. THE 4.GONT OF CANADA. 147 CHAPTER XI. "THE AGONY OF CANADA." Civil Disputes — Frontenac's Conflict with Perrot and Laval — Frontenao re. called — La Barre, Viceroy, 1682 — Iroquois War Eenewed — Disaster of Famine Cove, 1684 — Denonville, Viceroy — Seizes Iroquois Chiefs — Defeats Senecas — Plants Western Forts — Iroquois Ravage Frontier — Treachery of Le Eat (Kondiaronk) — Massacre of Lachine, the "brain-blow" of Canada, 1689. 'TTT'E must now return to trace the internal history of Can- V V ada, from which we have been diverted by the consid- eration of La Salle's eventful career. During the ten years of Frontenac's first colonial administra- tion, his haughty and overbearing manners involved him in perjietual disputes with the Bishop, the Intendant, the Council, the Jesuits, — in fact, with all who opposed his often arbitrary will. M. Perrot, the Governor of Montreal, being accused of traffic with the Indians, contrary to the ordinances of the King, he was summoned to Quebec by Frontenac, and by a violent exercise of power, imprisoned in the Castle of St. Louis. Perrot, who held his commission from the King, declined to recognize the authority of Frontenac, and remained in durance for a whole year. The Abbe Fenelon, parish priest of Montreal, and brother of the celebrated Archbishop of Cambray, in his Easter sermon, strongly inveighed against the arrest of Perrot, and was cited before the choleric Count for this breach of priv- ilege, as it was considered. He denied, as an ecclesiastic, the jurisdiction of the Council, and wore his hat in the presence of the Governor. He, also, was imprisoned, and with Perrot was, shortly, after, sent under arrest to France. They were both, however, reinstated by the King, to the intense chagrin of Frontenac. The Governor shared all the despotic instincts of his sover- eign, and -sought to centre in himself all authority. The In- 148 HISTORY OF CANADA. tendant, Duchesneau, as fond of power as Frontenac, claimed the presidency of the Council, and did his utmost to thwart the policy of the Governor. Through these rivalries, the council chamber became the scene of unseemly dissension and bicker- ings. The fiery Count was also involved in bitter controversy with Laval and the Jesuits. Both the latter strenuously opposed the liquor traffic as demoralizing to both Indians and white men. The Governor considered it necessary for the successful prose- cution of the fur trade, and asserted that its evils were greatly exaggerated. But the cause of justice and humanity triumphed over that of selfish policy, and the King prohibited the sale of liquor to the Indians. Frontenac, however, continued to main- tain his position chiefly through his relationship to Madame de Maintenon, and through the influence of his wife, a reigning beauty, at the court of Louis XIY. At length, wearied with complaints, the King re-called both Governor and Intendant, in 1682, and appointed M. de la Barre and M. de Meules as their successors.* La Barre was a naval officer of considerable reputation, but lacking the prompt decision and energy of character that the exigencies of the times demanded. On his arrival in Can- ada, he found the country threatened with the outbreak of an- other Iroquois war. The English colonists had increased to tenfold the number of the French, and their fur traders were everywhere endeavouring, by intrigue, by persuasion, by un- derselling their rivals in the luxuries of savage life, to divert the profitable traffic in peltries from Montreal and Quebec to Albany and New York. Colonel Dongan, the Governor of New York, notwithstand- ing the friendly relations between his sovereign, Charles 11. , and Louis XIV., fomented the ancient antipathy of the Iro- quois to the French. These astute forest politicians,, courted and flattered by the English, were not slow to perceive the ad- vantage to be derived from alliance with this growing power, * In this year, a disastrous fire, the first of several such, destroyed a large part of Quebec. THE AGONY OF CANADA. I49 which they seem to have foreseen, was destined to be the victor in the conflict with the French for the mastery of the 'lesa. continent. It was their policy, liowever, to prolong the con- test. For they could not but perceive that the supremacy of either would be followed by the subjugation of themselves. This was the explanation of the seemingly strange vacillations of the Iroquois, — now fighting in the interest of the English, and then, in the very hour when victory seemed within their grasp, making peace with the French. La Barre assembled . a council of the principal men of note in Canada, military and civilian, clerical and lay, to take measures for the defence of the country. The Iroquois had recently, as we have seen, invaded the territory of the Illinois, then allies of the French, and massacred or captured several hundreds of victims. A Seneca war-party had also waylaid and plundered a company of French traders. An appeal was therefore made to the King for a re-enforcement of three hun- dred soldiers, and thirteen hundred labourers to cultivate the fields, that the Canadians, accustomed to bush-fighting, might be organized for active service. Only two hundred troops could be spared, and of agricultural immigrants, none. Al- though thousands of intelligent and industrious Huguenots were being driven out of France by persecution, to enrich with their skilled labour the rival countries of England and Holland, they were not allowed to pollute with their heresy the soil of Canada, jealously guarded by the King as a preserve for Cath- olic orthodoxy. The English Governor at New York, though interdicted by his sovereign from the commission of any overt hostility, and maintaining courteous correspondence with La Barre, did not scruple secretly to stimulate the outrages of the Iroquois. The French first attempted to weaken the confederacy of the Five Nations, by making separate treaties with the Cayugas, Oneidas, and Onondagas, who amused the credulous Governor with promises which they had no intention of keeping. The attacks of the Iroquois on the French forts in the west, now compelled La Barre to assume the ofiensive. But instead of 150 HISTORY OF CANADA: striking a sudden blow, he wasted time ii attempting to pro- cure!' the co-operation of Dongan, the last thing he was likely to get. At length, mustering a force of a thousand militia-men and 1684. Indians, with a few regulars, he set out from Montreal to invade the Seneca country, by way of the Niagara Hiver. Two weeks had been spent in negotiations with Dongan ; as much more was consumed at Fort Frontenac. The provisions were fast being consumed. Through the incompetence and delays of La Barre, his command endured extreme privations for want of food. Disease and death wasted them away while lingering at Famine Cove, near Oswego, — so named on account of their sufferings. Here a deputation from the con- federate tribes haughtily dictated terms of peace with the French, on the promise of their immediate evacuation of the Iroquois territory. To the demand of La Barre, that the peace should also include the Illinois, five hundred of whom were within a day's march, on their way to help the French, the Iroquois scornfully replied, "Not while a warrior of either tribe remains alive ! " Intensely chagrined, the luckless commander accepted the disgraceful terms. On reaching Quebec, he was more morti- fied to find that a re-enforcement of soldiers had arrived. De- spatches also awaited him, urging the utter extirpation or severe chastisement of the revolted tribes; and, "as the Iroquois were stout and strong, and would be useful in the Kings's gal- leys," that the Governor should make prisoners of a large num- ber and have them shipped to France as galley slaves. La Barre was not in a position to comply with either of these 1685. requests, and was shortly after recalled in disgrace. He was succeeded by the Marquis de Denonville, a dashing cavalry officer. The Chevalier de Callieres, also a brave soldier, was, at the same time, appointed Governor of Montreal. Denonville, who was shortly followed by six hundred regu- lars, after a few hours' rest at Quebec, pushed on to Fort Fron- tenac. This place he greatly strengthened, and proposed the establishment of a fort and garrison of five hundred men at THE AGONY OF CANADA. 151 Niagara, as a check to the interference of the British in the Northwest fur trade. His lucid reports on the state of the country, sent to the King, are valuable historical documents. Colonel Dongan meanwhile, alarmed at this vigorous policy, assembled the principal Iroquois chiefs at Albany, and lese. urged them to break entirely with the French, to expel their priests and receive English Jesuit missionaries, and, above all, to extend the English fur trade to the Northwest tribes. He, for his part, pledged his assistance if they should be attacked by the French. Without entirely committing themselves to these plans, the politic chiefs streng-thened their alliance with the English. Denonville, deeply incensed, determined on a vigorous war- policy toward the Five Nations, notwithstanding the igst. promised aid of their English allies. He was guilty, however, of an act of treachery, which left a stain upon his name, and greatly embittered the Iroquois. Through the influence of the Jesuit missionaries, he induced fifty of their chiefs to meet him for a conference at Fort Frontenac. To gratify the whim of the King, he seized their persons, and shipped them in irons to France, to toil in the royal galleys. Though deeply incensed, the Iroquois, with a magnanimity shaming the perfidy of the Frenchman, spared the lives of the unwitting instruments of this cruelty, the Jesuit priests, and sent them unharmed out of the country. In June, 1687, with eight hundred regulars, a thousand militia, and three hundred Indian allies, in two hundred bat- teaux, Denonville left Montreal to attack the Senecas. At the mouth of the Genesee Eiver he was joined by four hundred Illinois Indians. The advance guard fell into an ambuscade, but wdth the aid of their red allies, the French defeated the Senecas with great loss. Denonville spent ten days in ravaging the country, burning the villages, and destroying an immense stock of maize, — over a million bushels, says one account, — and a prodigious number of hogs. Proceeding to the Niagara, he rebuilt La Salle's fort and garrisoned it with a hundred men. He also planted palisaded posts at Toronto, Detroit, Sault Ste. 152 HISTORY OF CANADA. Marie, Michillimackinac, and on the Illinois River, as a barrier against the encroachments of the English or their Iroquois allies. The whole Five Nations now united to avenge the slaughter 1688. of the Senecas. They attacked and razed Fort Niagara, whose garrison, reduced by famine and disease to ten men, fled. They prowled like famished wolves all along the frontier. They lay in wait near every settlement, thirsting for Christian blood. They ravaged the country, killed the cattle, burned the stacks and houses with flaming arrows, and menaced the river seigneuries, and even the garrison of Fort Frontenac. During this fatal year, over a thousand of the colonists fell by the scalping-knife or tomahawk of their relentless foe, and as many more by the dreadful small-pox which devastated the country. In this extremity, negotiations for peace were opened under the menace of a thousand Iroquois warriors, assembled in force at Lake St. Francis. These, under the malign influence of the English, demanded the restoration of their betrayed chiefs, now toiling in the royal galleys in France, and the destruction of forts Frontenac and Niagara. While the negotiations were pending, a crafty Huron chief, Kondiaronk, or " The Eat," a forest Machiavelli, offended at the prospect of a treaty with his hered- itary foe, by a deed of double treachery, effectually "killed the peace," as he boasted, and revived, with intense violence, the horrors of savage war. Learning that an Iroquois embassy would descend the Oswego River, he placed an ambuscade at a portage, which they would have to pass, and killed or captured the entire party. "\¥hen his prisoners indignantly remonstrated at this violation of the truce, the crafty Kondiaronk, with well- feigned surprise, declared that he was unaware of the nature of their mission, and that he had been set on by the French in making the attack. He expressed extreme regret and abhor- rence at the act of treachery of which, he avowed, he had been made the unwilling agent. As a pledge of his sincerity, he set his prisoners free, with the exception of one, whom he retained for adoption, in f)lace of a Huron who had been killed. "With this destined victim of his cruel cunning, he hastened to Michillimackinac and delivered his prisoner up as a captive, THE AGONY OF CANADA. 153 taken in war. The French commandant, iniaware of the truce which had been proclaimed, ordered, after the savage custom of the time, the execution of the Iroquois. In vain the un- happy man asserted his character as an ambassador of peace, and appealed for confirmation to Kondiaronk. That crafty and cruel wretch shook his head, and declared that the man's mortal terror must have turned his brain. No sooner was the hapless victim slain than Le Eat, with envenomed tongue, protested to an old Iroquois chief, held in bondage, his indignation at the outrage committed in the miu'der of an envoy of peace ; and loosing his bonds, he bade him to fly and warn his tribesmen of the treachery of the French. Such double-dyed duplicity can hardly be matched in all the annals of crime. The culminating act in this bloody drama, was the massacre of Lachine, in 1689. On the night of August 5th, twelve hun- dred painted warriors landed, amid a shower of hail, on the Island of Montreal. Before daybreak they lay in wait around every dwelling in the doomed village. At a given signal, the dreadful war-whoop awoke the sleepers to a death-wrestle with a pitiless foe. Men, women, and children were dragged from their beds and indiscriminately butchered with atrocious cruelty. OLD STONE TOWERS, MONTREAL. The houses were fired, and two hundred persons perished in the flames. As many more were carried off for the nameless horrors of deliberate torture. For two months the victors ravaged the island, the besieged inhabitants of Ville Marie 20 154 HISTORY OF CANADA. cowering in mortal fear behind their palisades.* On the first assault, M de Kobeyre, a gallant officer, threw himself, with a small body of soldiers, into Foi-t Eoland, an exposed post. He continued to hold it, against fearful odds, till his last man was slain, and he himself was mortally wounded, — a deed of valour rivalling the heroic achievement of Dulac des Ormaux. This ' ' brain-blow " seems to have staggered the colony. Fort Frontenac was blown up and abandoned. The dominion of France in the New World, was practically reduced to the forts of Quebec, Three Elvers, and Montreal. At this hour of its deepest deiDression, Denonville was recalled, and the fiery Frontenac was re-appointed Governor. ANCIENT FOUND AT HAIEERT MONTREAL. * Among the most interesting relics of the early- history of Montreal are the two old stone towers shown on the preceding page. They date back to the period of the Indian wars above described, and were erected as defences against the attacks of the savages. One of them was long used as a chapel, and contains an altar and several interesting mortuary inscriptions. One of these comniemorates a Huron chief, baptized by Br^beuf, who died, aged about a hundred years, in 1690. " II fut," says his epitaj)h, " par sa piet6 et par sa probit€ I'example des Christiens et I'admiration des infidels." We visited the tower in May, 1878. The ancient halbert shown in the engraving is another relic of the old regime. It was found while excavating in one of the old suburbs, and may have done doughty service against the Indian assailants of the mission for- tress. FRONTENAC'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 155 CHAPTER Xn. FEONTENAC'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. Frontenac Ee-appointed Governor, 1689 — Abenaqnis Eavages — French Inva- sion of New England — Massacres of Corlaer, Salmon Falls, and Casco Bay, 1690 — First American Congress at New York — Sir Wm. Phips Captnres Port Eoyal — Is Eepulsed at Quebec — Iroquois Eavages — Bounty on Scalps — Frontenac Burns Iroquois Towns — St. Castine — Fall of Fort Pemaquid — Col. Church Attacks Villebon on the St. John — Is Eepulsed — D'Iberville in Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay — Treaty of Eyswick Eestores Eespective Possessions of France and England, 1697 — Death of Frontenac, in Ms Sev- enty-eighth Year, 1698. THE veteran soldier, now near seventy years of age, was hailed as the deliverer of Canada. His faults were for- gotten or forgiven, and his chivalric valour was remembered as the bulwark of the country. He arrived at a critical period. The peril of the colony was increased by the declaration of war between France and England, in consequence of the Eevolution of 1688, whereby James H. was driven from his throne by his son-in-law, "William IH., Prince of Orange. The Governor had brought with him the chiefs so treacherously captured by Denonville ; and having won their good-will during the voyage, he sent them to their tribes, to conciliate, if possible, their favour. M. de Callieres, the Governor of Montreal, had already urged an attack upon the English colonists, whom he accused, and not without reason, of inciting the Iroquois to war. He proposed making an attack, with a strong body of troops, by way of the Eichelieu and Lake Champlain, on Albany, a town of about two hundred and fifty houses, which was defended only by an earthen fort with wooden palisades, and garrisoned by a hundred and fifty soldiers. He further designed, after reducing Albany, to descend the Hudson and attack New York. This was then an open town of some two hundred houses, defended by about four hundred men, which, it was thought, would sue- 156 BISTORT OF CANADA. Climb to a sudden assault. The British possessions in Hud- son's Bay were also to be simultaneously attacked. This plausible, but perilous enterprise, however, was set aside in favour of a naval attack on New York. Two large war-ships, with several smaller vessels, were equipped and placed under the command of M. de la Caffiniere, Avho was to blockade the harbour and bombard the town. But naval de- lays, boisterous weather, and then dense fogs, frustrated the design, and caused its abandonment. The Abenaquis Indians, on the Maine frontier, were the allies of the French, and among them were several Jesuit mis- sions. In retaliation for the massacre of Lachine, they at- tacked the New England fort at Pemaquid, on the seacoast, between the Penobscot and the Kennebec, and other frontier posts. All the horrors of Lachine were renewed. Some two hundred persons are said to have been slaughtered. The blow struck terror to the heart of every New England frontier vil- ^es. In these border raids, the worst passions of human nature were let loose. Aimless butchery ravaged the frontier, unre- lieved, save by the heroism of brave men dying for their hearth- stones : and of even weak women avenging the murder of their mangled babes, or with unwearying mother-love escaping with their orphaned children through the trackless wilderness. Again, in 170S, De Eouville, not yet weary of slaughter, with a hundred picked Canadians, and a troop of savages, set cut from Montreal to ravage the Xew England villages. They ascended the St. Francis and penetrated the passes of the "White Mountains, traversing six hundred miles of tangled forest or rugged rocks, and reached the little town of Haver- hill, beside the placid Merrimac. At day-break they fell upon the sleeping hamlet. The tragedy of Deerfield was repeated. Before the dew was dry upon the grass, those happy homes were a heap of smouldering ruins, and the village green was sodden with the blood of the faithfril pastor and his wife, of brave men, and fair women, and mansled babes. The loud noise of the QUEEX Ayxrs ^^AR. 175 fii'ing, and the smoke of tlie iDurning houses, aroused the country far and 'wide. Snatching from their support., aljove the fire-place, the gun and poTvder-horn, the sturdy farmers hasted to avenge or rescue their killed or captured neigh- bom-s. Though but a handful, they hung upon the rear of the flying foe, and many of the French returned from their himtin;r of human j^rey no more. The English mourned the dead, sought to ransom the living, and to avert the recm-rence of such wanton massacre. '•' I hold it my duty to-wards God and man," remonstrated honest Peter Schuyler of Albany, to the Marquis de Yaudreuil, the French Governor, ■'•'to prevent, if possible, these barbarous and heathen cruelties. My heart swells with indignation, when I behold a war between Giristian princes, degenerating into a savage and boundless butchery." The French had again made PortEoyal the capital of Acadia. The fort was re-built, and strengthened with earthwork bas- tions, faced with sods, — a very effective defence against cannon- balls. Bruillan, the Governor of Placentia, had succeeded Yillebon in command, but his choleric and despotic disposition jprovoked the jealousy and animosity of his subordinates. He commissioned privateers to prey upon the commerce of Xew England. Indeed, La Heve became little better than a nest of pirates, of astonishing audacity. They even dashed into Boston harbour, and cut out vessels lying at anchor. "With the goods thus plundered, they instigated the savages in their murderous raids upon the English, settlements. In retaliation, Colonel Giurch resumed his old work of de- struction. With fifteen transports and thirty whale- ito4. boats, filled with armed men, he ravaged the shores of the Bay of Fundy, breaking the dykes, kilHng the cattle, burning the houses, and plimdering the inhabitants. Three years later, a fleet of five-and-twenty vessels, conveying a force of nearly two thousand- Kew Englanders, appeared before Port Eoyal. The garrison, re-enforced by St. Castine with sixty Indians, strengthened the works under the fire of the enemy, and offered such a spirited resistance that, after an unsticcessful assault, on 176 ' HISTORY OF CANADA.' the sixth day, the attacking force sailed away completely baffled. A second attack, the same year, fared no better. The following year, the British were almost entirely driven out of Newfoundland, — their sole remaining possession being Car- bonear. The New England colonists now determined on the conquest 1709. of Canada, and appealed for help to the mother country. A fleet and army, it was arranged, were to be sent from Eng- land for the reduction of Quebec, while a colonial force was to co-operate by land. Colonel Nicholson, with a force of two thousand men, advanced, by way of Albany, to Lake Cham- plain. The Iroquois had promised to make war against the French, but failed to keep their engagement, unwilling that the English should gain a dangerous preponderance. A serious epidemic broke out in Nicholson's camp, caused, it was thought, by the treacherous Iroquois poisoning the stream that supplied the army, by throwing into it raw hides. He learned, also, that the English fleet and army, instead of co-operating with the movement, had been despatched to Lisbon to aid the Portu- guese against Spain. He therefore burned his block-houses, and, with sadly diminished numbers, made a hasty retreat to Albany. The following year, the long-delayed succours arrived, and 1710. Queen Anne defrayed, from her private purse, the cost of equijDping four New England regiments. Too late to act against Canada, a fleet of fifty vessels, with three thousand five hundred colonial militia, under command of General Nicholson, sailed from Boston for the capture of Port Royal. After a vigorous resistance, M. Subercase, its commandant, obtained favourable terms of capitulation, and, with his famished gar- rison of one hundred and fifty-six men, marched out with the honours of war ; and ever since the red-cross flag has waved over the noble harbour, then named, in honour of the reigning sovereign, Annapolis. The inhabitants were conveyed to Ro- chelle. Colonel Vetch, with four hundred and fifty men, occupied the fort. Vaudreuil, the Governor of Canada, com- missioned the younger St. Castine, son of the old Baron, to QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. 177 hold Acadia for the French, and if possible, to drive out the English. He carried on a harassing, petty war, cutting off detached parties, and even attacking the fort. General Mcholson again proceeded to England, to urge the conquest of Canada. The legislature of New York deputed Colonel Schuyler of Albany, to present the same request. He was accompanied by five Iroquois chiefs, who, dressed in a court costume, were presented in state to Queen Anne. Giving her belts of wampum, as pledges of their fidelity, they engaged that their tribesmen would grasp the hatchet and fight, on behalf of the English, for the conquest of Canada. The plan of the campaign was devised by the brilliant Boling- broke, who expressed " a paternal concern for its success"; but in the choice of leaders, he was hampered by court favour- itism aild back-stairs influence. The command of the military forces was given to General Sir John Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, the confidante of the Queen. The naval command was assigned to Sir Hovenden Walker,— an utterly incompe- tent officer. On the 30th of July, the fleet, numbering over eighty ships of war and transports, with five of Marlborough's i7n. veteran regiments, and two regiments of colonial militia, sailed from Boston for the attack on Quebec. Four thousand militia and six hundred Iroquois, under General Nicholson, advanced simultaneously from Albany to Lake George. The colonies created a large issue of paper money to meet the expenses of the expedition. Behind the walls of Quebec, which mounted a hundred guns, five thousand French, chiefly militia, awaited the attack ; and at Chambly, three thousand men, under De Lon- gueuil, guarded Montreal. Walker sailed slowly up the St. Lawrence, intending to winter in the river, and wondering how he would protect his ships when it should be frozen to the bottom ; he thought he would place them in cradles on the shore ! On the 23d of August, the fleet was enveloped in a fog, and amid the darkness drifted upon the reefs of the Egg Islands. Before morning, eight of his vessels were shattered, and eight hundred drowned sailors and soldiers were strewn upon the 23 178 HISTORY OF CANADA. sliores, together with broken bales and boxes, ana fragments of the wrecks. Yet Sir Hovenden found compensations even in this disaster. " Had we arrived safe at Quebec," he wrote, "ten or twelve thousand men must have been left to perish of cold and hunger. By the loss of part, Providence has saved all the rest." He tranquilly abandoned the enterprise, subsequently so heroically achieved by Wolfe, against greater difficulties, and sailed for Great Britain. General Nicholson was compelled, by this dis- aster, to retreat from Lake George, and the beleaguered fortress had another respite from conquest. The following year, the infant settlement of Detroit, garri- 1712. soned by only a score of men, was attacked by six hundred of the Fox tribe of Indians, instigated by the English. The Indian allies of the French, however, rallied for its de- fence, and the besiegers, taking refuge in an entrenched camp which they had constructed, were themselves besieged in turn. Deprived of water and of food, they were reduced to the utmost extremity, and were almost exterminated by their ruth- less foe. On the 13th of March, 1713, in the Dutch town of Utrecht, the treaty was signed which gave peace, not only to the war- worn nations of Europe, but also to the scattered colonists in the wilds of the New World. England obtained Acadia and Newfoundland, the two seaward bulwarks of the French, to- gether with the unexplored regions around Hudson's Bay, and the protectorate of the Iroquois nation. France, of all her vast colonial possessions, retained only Canada, Cape Breton, the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, and certain fish- ing rights on the shores of Newfoundland, together with the undefined territory of Louisiana. The peace between Great Britain and France continued for over thirty years, and gave an opportunity for the development of the natural resources of the colonies. Vaudreuil began forthwith, in anticipation of the final struggle, to strengthen the defences of New France, and to extend the chain of forest forts, connecting it with the Mississippi valley. A town was QUEEX ANNE'S WAR. I79 begun at Louisburg, Cape Breton, now called Royal Island, wbicb became the home of many French refugees, from the ceded provinces of Acadia and Newfoundland ; and a fortress of immense strength was constructed as the seaward bulwark of the St. Lawrence, at the cost, when complete, of five millions of dollars. A system of defensive works was constructed at Quebec, and Montreal was surrounded by a stone wall. Re- j "TS'l TTJ ^ — ' I J. J® — "* «»■*•« 5JS1 '"" ^J??^ * T' OLD CITY WALL, MONTREAL. mains of both of these are still visible. Fort Frontenac was strengthened, and, notwithstanding the remonstrance of Gov- ernor Burnet of New York, a new stone fort was erected at Niagara, controlling the navigation of Lake Erie. But the growth of peaceful industry was a surer means of promoting national prosperity. The fur trade, the chief in- dustry of the country, was relieved of some of its hampering restrictions, and an annual fair was established at Montreal. The English, however, drew off much of the trade to Albany and New York, offering for peltries three times the price given by the French. English goods, in consequence, were largely smuggled into the country. Ship-building was encouraged, and Quebec laid the foundation of her distinguished reputation for this industry. Iron was manufactured at St. Maurice, and salt at Kamouraska. The interdiction was removed from the manufacture of woollen and linen cloth. Besides furs , — timber, staves, tar, tobacco, flour, pease, and pork were exported in increasing quantities to France and the "West Indies. The 180 BISTORT OF CANADA. cliief imports were manufactured goods, sugar, rum, and mo- lasses. A considerable trade, in one year amounting to lialf a million of francs, sprang up with China, in ginseng root, to which the Chinese attributed marvellous medicinal virtues. Tea was also introduced from that comitry. After the infusion was drunk, the leaves were eaten, in order that nothing might be lost. Judicial reforms were also introduced, tending to repress the litigious disposition of the people. A letter-post was estab- lished, the country was divided into eighty-two parishes, and roads were made between the settlements to supplement the water communication. The absence of a local legislature, and the lack of secular education, left the general population in a torpid intellectual condition. At the same time, the lack of capital prevented the growth of manufactures ; and the seign- eurial tenure of the land, and its minute subdivision, through inheritance, by diminishing the stimulus to effort, tended to perpetuate poverty, and prevented the growth of that intelli- gent industrial population, which became the strength of New England. The fascinations of the adventurous fur trade were also especially unfavorable to agricultural prosperity.- This trade, successive edicts in vain attempted to repress, for with it every family in the colony was in some way connected. The English colonists, on the contrary, devoted themselves almost exclusively to agriculture, conquering yearly a broad domain of forest, and extending the frontiers of civilization ; the fur trade was only a very subordinate industry. The coureur de bois liad no English counterpart, although he may have had a few English imitators. In 1720-1722, Pere Charlevoix, the learned and accom- plished Jesuit missionary, traversed Canada and Louisiana, and wrote a voluminous and valuable history of the country. Quebec had then a population of seven thousand. Its society, which was largely military, he describes as very agreeable, and much more brilliant than that of Boston. " The English," he said, '*knew better how to accumulate wealth, but the French had the more elegant manner of spending it." But QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. 181 l)cneatli tliis gay exterior, tlie reflex of the salons of Fon- tainebleau, was concealed a general poverty. Montreal had about two thousand inhabitants, and the entire Province about PfeRE CHARLEVOIX. twenty-five thousand. Proceeding westward, he found the whole country a wilderness, whose solitude was relieved only by a few fortified stations, — Cataraqui, Niagara, and Detroit, — and a few missions or trading-posts, on the upper lakes and in the country of the Illinois, — a region now populous with life, and busy with active industries. With their increase of population, the New England Colonies extended their settlements along the Atlantic sea-coast, toward the St. Croix, and into the adjacent interior. The Abenaquis had long claimed this region as an ancestral possession, under the protectorate of the French. For more than a quarter of a century. Father Easles, a Jesuit priest, had maintained a mis- sion at Norridgewock, on the banks of the Kennebec. He had a well-cultured mind, and wrote Latin with classical purity. 182 niSTORT OF CANADA. A rigorous ascetic, he used little food but pounded maize ; his only drink was water. With his own hands, he built his cabin, and erected a forest sanctuary of more than wonted magniii- cence, hewed his wood and tilled his garden. In order to at- tract the attention of his savage catechumens by an appeal to their senses, he exhausted his artistic skill, which was not small, in painting sacred pictures on the walls of his chapel, and carving an image of the Virgin. He trained, also, a choir of forty Indian neophytes, arrayed in cassock and surplice, to chant the hymns and assist in the daily religious service. To counteract the religions influence of Rasles, the English of Massachusetts sent a Puritan minister among the Abenaquis ; but the system of Calvin presented less attraction to the savage mind than that of Loyola. The English, by stratagem, seized several Abenaquis chiefs and held them as hostages, even after the payment of a stipulated ransom. The tribesmen of the captives demanded their release, and the evacuation of the Abenaquis territory, under threat of active reprisals. A border war, with all its inhuman atrocities, now broke out. The English seized the young Baron St. Castine, who, by descent, on his mother's side, was an Indian war-chief, and held also a commission as a French officer. They raised a formidable force of a thousand fighting men, and urged the Abenaquis to surrender Father Easles, who was especially obnoxious as the directing spirit of the tribe. The Indians were hunted like wolves ; and the mercenary revenge of private individuals, was stimulated by the bounty of a hundred pounds ofiered for each scalp.* The Abenaquis, in retaliation, burned the town of Bruns- wick, and overshadowed, with a cloud of terror, the entire frontier. Father Kasles clearly foresaw the inevitable result. He was urged to take refuge in Canada, but, although a price of a thousand pounds was placed upon his head, the brave * In February, 1725, John Lovewell, "with, forty men, surprised a camp of sleeping Indians. At one Yolley every one was slain. For their ten scalps, the victors received, in Boston, the suhstantial reward of £1,000 sterling. — Drakes Boole of the Indians, iii., 121. ' QUEEN ANNE'S WAR. 183 soul replied, "I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish Tfith joy the ministry which I have received." ^ An ai-med expedition penetrated the Penobscot as far as the site of Bangor. Here was a stockaded fort, seventy yards by fifty, with a large chapel, and a score of well-built houses. The in- habitants had fled, and the whole was given to the flames. , In August, 1724, a force of two hundred English ascended the Kennebec, and, unperceived, reached the Norridgewock mission. A deadly volley, poured into the unai-med village, was the first announcement of the presence of the foe. Fifty warriors seized their arms, not to fight, but to protect the flight of their wives and children. Eighty were slain or drowned while seeking, beneath a shower of bullets, to swim the rapid stream. The chapel and houses were first pillaged and then bm-ned, and the invaders returned from then- work of blood. The surviving Indians, groping amid the ashes of their homes, found the scalped and mangled body of their beloved missionary, his skull and the bones of his legs broken, his mouth and eyes filled with mud. With tears and kisses, and bitter lamenta- tions, they washed his body and buried it beneath the altar, at which he had so often ministered. His countrymen regarded him as a blessed martyr ; the EngUsh considered him the incen- diary of a savage war. More than two hundi-ed years after his death, in 1833, a monument was erected to the memory of the murdered missionary, on the scene of his apostolic toil. It is a plain granite obeUsk, surmounted by an iron cross, as shown in the accompanying engi-aving. For three long years of horror and bloodshed, the hideous border war went on, when, by a treaty signed at Boston, the Indians east of the Kennebec owned the sovereignty of Great Britain. In 1725, after a skilful and prudent administration, for nearly a quarter of a century, of colonial affairs, Vaudreuil died, beloved and regretted by those over whom he ruled. The same year, another serious disaster happened to Canada. The ship "Le Chameau," of the royal navy, conveying M. Chazel, the neAvly appointed Intendant, together with the Gov- 184 HISTORY OF CANADA. ernor of Three Rivers, and a company of military officers and ecclesiastics, was wrecked on the coast of Cape Breton, and not one of the passengers or crew escaped alive. For days RASLES' MONUMENT AT NGRRIDGEWGCK. afterwards, broken bales of merchandise, and drowned bodies, were strewn along the inhospitable shore. Yaudreuil was succeeded, as Governor of Canada, by the Marquis de Beauharnois, a natural son of Louis XIY. Gov- ernor Burnet of New York, a son of the distinguished Bishop of Sarum, jealous of the existence of Fort Niagara, established a fort, in defiance of the remonstrance of Beauharnois, at Oswego, in order to divert the Indian trade, by way of the Mohawk and Hudson, to New York. The French, in retalia- tion, greatly strengthened Fort Niagara, and shortly after built Fort Frederic, at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, near the 1731. British frontier, — a position of great strategic impor- tance, commanding the "gate-way" of Canada, and destined to be the scene of many a bloody conflict. An Indian outbreak in Illinois was suppressed by an expedi- tion from Montreal, by way of the Ottawa and Nipissing,, — an QUEEN. ANNE' S^WAR. 185 exhibition of vigour which increased tne authority of France among the western tribes. A long period of peace now ensued. The population of Canada slowly increased, and its internal development made considerable progress. The cultivation of the soil was, how- ever, greatly neglected for the seductive fur trade,* which pos- sessed for the adventurous voyageur and coureur de hois a strange fascination. Assuming the garb, these often assumed, also, the social habits of the red men, — living in their wigwams, marrying their daughters, and rearing a dusky brood of half- breeds, in whom the savage predominated over the civilized nature. The daring sjiirit of exploration was not yet extinct. As early as 1717, a trading-post and fort had been planted at the mouth of the Kamanistiquia, in Thunder Bay, Lake Superior, where Fort William was afterwards built. In 1731, M. Veren- drye, having formed a partnership with a company of Montreal merchants, for the purpose of trade in the great Northwest, set out, "udtk Pere Messager, a missionary priest, and a party of attendants, to take possession of those vast regions for the King of France, and with the object of ultimately reaching the Pacific Ocean overland. They proceeded by way of the Kamanistiquia and Kainy Lake and Eiver, and Lake of the Woods, — these latter names are but translations of those given by the original French explorer, — to Lake Winnipeg. They then ascended the Saskatchewan as far as the forks of that river. At the ° junction of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, where Fort Garry was afterwards erected, and at other important points, forti- fied posts were planted. In one of their expeditions, on an island in the Lake of the Woods, in 1736, a son of M. Veren- drye, with the Jesuit, Pere Auiieau, and twenty others were slain by a band of Sioux. In 1742, the explorers reached the upper waters of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, and on * The profits of the fur trade were enormous. It is stated, that iu 1754, at a "western post, beaver-skins were bought at four grains of pepper each ; and eight hundred francs were realized from selling a pound of Termilion, which was in. great request for war-paint. 24 186 HISTORY OF CANADA. Jan. 1, 1743, the brothers Yerendrye, sons of the veteran pioneer, reached the foot of the Eocky Mountains. That giant barrier prevented their further progress, and not till sixty years after, 1805, did those daring travellers, Lewis and Clarke, pen- etrate its passes, and, descendhig the Columbia Eiver, reach the Pacific Ocean. LOVISBURG — DU QUESNE. 187 CHAPTER XIV. LOUISBUEG — DU QUESNE. War of the Atistrian Succession, 1744— Pepperell's Conquest of Louisburg, 1745 — The Disastrous Attempt of the French at its Recapture, 1746 — Death of D'Anville and D'Estournelle — The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle restores Louis- hurg to France, 1748 — France claims the Ohio Valley — Halifax Founded, 1749 — The Acadian " Neutrals "— The Abb6 de Loutre- Blood Shed at Beau S^jour — Jouqui^re's Avarice and Bigot's Fraud — Fort Du Quesne Planted — Collision in the Ohio Valley, 1754 — The Death of Jumonville " kindles the World into a Flame." THE question of the Austrian succession now involved both Europe and America in the throes of war.* The emperor Charles VI., by ample cessions of territory to several princes, procured a general acknowledgment of the "Pragmatic Sanc- tion," whereby his daughter, Maria Theresa, was guaranteed the succession to the crown. Upon the death of the emperor, in 1740, Spain, Prussia, and Bavaria laid claim to a portion of the inheritance. Charles Albert, of Bavaria, was elected emperor, and the heroic and beautiful Maria Theresa placed herself and her infant son under the protection of her Hun- garian nobles, whose enthusiasm soon procured a re-action in her behalf. England, Sardinia, Austria, Holland, and Saxony declared in her behalf. France espoused the cause of Charles Albert, and proclaimed war against England. The i7«. Stuart Pretender deemed the moment opportune for raising a Scottish revolt. The conflict soon extended to America. Louisburg became a rendezvous for French privateers, which preyed upon the commerce of New England. Du Quesne, the Governor of Cape Breton, organized a strong force for the capture of the British settlements at Canso and Annapolis. The former was burned, and its garrison and settlers made prisoners of war. The latter offered a stout resistance, notwithstanding the dilapi- dated condition of its fortifications and the reduced state of its 188 HISTORY OF CANADA. garrison, and completely baffled every effort of the French to reduce it, by stratagem or by assault. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, now resolved to attempt the daring feat of the capture of Louisburg, which was a stand- ing menace to New England. He apj)ealed for help to Great Britain, and to the neighbouring colonies. In a few weeks, four thousand colonial militia were collected, and William Pep- perell, a merchant and militia colonel of Maine, who had been an active spirit in organizing the exjjedition, and who was afterwards knighted for its success, was appointed to its command. The celebrated r^^ George Whitefield, the elo- quent Methodist preacher, who was then in New Ens:- land, was asked to furnish a motto for the regimental flag, and gave the inscription, " Nil desperandum, Christo duce." Indeed, in the eyes of the more zealous Puritans, the expedition possessed quite the character of a crusade against the image-worship of the Catholic faith. On the 29th of April, 1745, a hundred vessels, large and small, among them ten large ships of the royal navy, carrying five hundred guns, under Commodore Warren, having been detained many days by the thick-ribbed ice off Canso, sailed into the capacious harbour of Louisburg. This was one of the strongest fortresses in the world. It was surrounded by a wall forty feet thick at the base, and from twenty to thirty feet high, and by a ditch eighty feet wide. It mounted nearly two hun- dred guns, and had a garrison of two thousand men. The assailants had only eighteen cannon and three mortars. With a rush and a cheer, they charged through the surf, and repulsed the French, who lined the steep and rugged shore. A detach- SIK WILLIAM PEPPERELL. LOUISBURG — DU QUESNE. 189 CAPTURE OF LOUISBTTRG, 1745. meiit of troops fired a number of warehouses filled with uaval stores — pitch, tar, and tur]3entmc. The dense smoke, driven by the wind, so stifled and terrified the garrison of a detached battery, that they spiked their guns, and fled into the main fortress. The battery was promptly seized, the touch-holes of the cannon drilled out, and a damajr- ing fire opened on the to During fourteen nights, — only time they dared attempt the task, — the English sail- ors dragged their siege guns and am- munition on sledges through a marsh, and thus gained the land- ward and weaker side of the fort. Trenches and parallels were opened and pushed within two hundred yards of the walls. Great breaches were made, which were as promptly repaired by the garrison. It was intended that the fleet should bombard the town, while the land force should attempt to enter it by assault. In the meantime, a French man-of-war, ' ' La Yigilante," of seventy-four guns, with five hundred and sixty men, was captured by the English fleet in sight of the beleagured town. Her rich freight of military stores was a great gain to the besiegers, and a great loss to the besieged, as they were much needed by both. This disaster, together with the erection of newbatteries by the British, and the preparations for a general assault, so disheartened Ducham- bon, the French commander, that on the 16th of June, after a gallant resistance for six weeks, he yielded to a summons to sun-ender, and the New England militia marched into the works. As they beheld their extent, they exclaimed, " God alone has delivered this stronghold into our hand," and a sermon of thanksgiving was preached in the French chapel. The garrison of two thousand veteran troops and militia, and 190 HISTORY OF CAXADA. the inhabitants of the town, as many more, were conveyed to France. Two French East Indiamen, and a South American si3ice-ship, were decoyed into the harbour and captured, and their cargoes, worth one million jjounds, confiscated.. The weather, which, during the siege, had been fair, now became ' very stormy, and, but for the surrender, would have inevitably produced a great mortality, among the civilian soldiers, who were very imperfectly sheltered, and were quite unaccustomed to military service. The fall of the strongest fortress in the New World — the Dunkirk of America — before a little army of New England farmers and fishermen, caused the wildest delight at Boston, and the deepest chagrin at Versailles. Beau- harnois was recalled, and the Marquis de la Jonquiere was appointed Governor-General of Canada. Shirley and Pepperell now determined on attempting a still greater enterprise, — no less than the conquest of Canada — and sought the assistance of the mother country in the undertak- ing. But an imminent danger threatened New England itself. 1746. A great fleet of fifteen ships of the line, twenty-four frigates, and thirty transports and fire-ships, with a military force of three thousand men, was assembled in the harbour of Kochelle, for the purpose of recapturing Louisburg and Anna- polis, ravaging the New England coast, and destroying the town of Boston. When the news of this formidable fleet reached New England, solemn services were held in the churches, to pray for deliverance from the danger. The French fleet was followed by disaster from the very out- set. It was scattered by storms, two ships were captured by the English, some were wrecked, others driven back to France, and it was three months before the Due D'Anville, the admiral of the fleet, with only two ships, reached the place of rendez- vous, Chebucto (now Halifax) harbour, to find only a solitary vessel awaiting him. His disappointment was intense, and, in a few days, he died suddenly, apparently from apoplexy, al- though it was whispered that he had taken poison. On the day of D'Anville's death, arrived Vice- Admiral D'Estournelle, with three ships. He urged the abandonment of the enterprise, as LOUISBURG — DU QUESXE. jgj^ most of the soldiers were on board tlie missing ships. This, Governor Jonquiere, who was on his way to Canada, opposed^ and a council of war decided on attacking Annapolis. D'Es- toumelle fell into a fever, attended with delirium, the result, it was thought, of mental excitement, and, falling upon his sword, he was found in his cabin, weltering in his blood. Other vessels of the fleet continued daily to arrive, but the long confinement on shipboard produced an epidemic of scurvy and dysentery among the soldiers and sailors, attended with frightful mortality. They were, therefore, put on shore to recruit, but, in a month, eleven hundred were buried. The infection spread also to the Indian allies of the French, the Micmacs, of Nova Scotia, one-third of which tribe are said to have perished. In the middle of October, the camp was broken up, and the fleet, now consisting of less than forty vessels, sailed for Anna- polis, to attempt the capture of that fort. It encountered, however, such a severe tempest off Cape Sable, that Jonquiere, now chief in command, ordered a return to Prance. This frus- tration of the threatened invasion by the power of the elements rather than by that of man, was the occasion in New England of devout thanksgiving for what was considered a signal inter- position of Providence. Undeterred by disaster, the French, the next year, fitted out two squadrons, one against the British East Indies, the other to recover Louisburg. Admirals Anson and "Warren, however, intercepted and defeated both off Cape Finisterre, capturing many vessels, five thousand men, and a great quantity of booty. Among the prisoners was Jonquiere, thus again prevented from assuming the government of Canada. The Count de la Galis- soniere was appointed acting Governor till Jonqui6re could be exchanged. In the autumn of the same year, a convoy of ten French men-of-war was encountered off Belle Isle by Sir Edward Hawke, with fourteen sail of the line and five smaller vessels. Six of the largest of the French ships were captured, but the merchant fleet escaped. For two years longer, a cruel border warfare continued to 192 BISTORT OF CANADA. rage. Tlie Frencli and their Indian allies, in no less than twenty-seven successive raids, ravaged the New England fron- tier, and captured several fortified posts. From Boston to Albany, a wide region was abandoned by its inhabitants, flying from the tomahawk and torch of the midnight assassin and incendiary. At length, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to hostil- 1748. ities, and restored to each nation the possessions held before the war. To the intense chagi-in of the New England colonists, the fortress of Louisburg, conquered by their valour, was restored to France, in exchange for her East Indian con- quest of Madras. Great Britain reimbursed the expenses of the colonies, but the control of Louisburg by the French, made it again a standing menace to their commerce and their prosjDerity. The peace was only accepted by both nations as a breathing- spell to prepare for the coming struggle for the possession of the continent. The great want of Canada was population. This essential element of prosperity numbered only about sixty thousand, while that of the English colonies was twenty-fold greater, and their realized wealth was still more disproportion- ate. The French laid claim, on the plea of first discovery, to the vast interior of the continent, and sought to restrict the British to the Atlantic seaboard ; and Galissoniere, the acting Governor of Canada, a man of intrepid s]3ii'it though of de- formed person, urged the immigration of ten thousand French peasants to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and thus prevent the threatened intrusion of British settlements. The home-loving instincts of the Gallic race, however, were averse to coloniza- tion. The active Governor, therefore, took measures to form- ally assert the sovereignty of France over those vast regions. He despatched an officer with three hundred soldiers, to de- posit in the earth, at the foot of certain marked trees, at inter- vals along a line reaching from Detroit to the Alleghanies, leaden plates, on which were engraved the amiorial bearings of the King of France. He officially notified the Governor of Pennsylvania of this fact, and forbade the English traders to LOUISBURG — DU QUESNE. I93 trespass on the territory thus claimed by the French, under pain of confiscation of their goods. He also projected and '^^partly established a chain of forts from Montreal to the Ohio and the Mississippi, — as at La Presentation (Ogdensburg), one of stone at Toronto, one at Detroit, and others further "west Nearly half a century had passed since the cession of Acadia to Great Britain by the peace of Utrecht, jQt not a step had been taken towards its settlement. Two small garrisons were main- tained at Annapolis and Canso, — this, and nothing more. An energetic movement was now made for the colonization 1749. of the country, under the auspices of the Board of Trade and Plantations, of which Lord Halifax was the President. The close of the late war set at liberty a large number of persons who had been engaged in military or semi-military occupations. Liberal inducements were offered intending settlers. A free passage, maintenance for a year, and gi'ants of land, varying from fifty to six hundred acres, according to rank, were guar- anteed. The Imperial Government voted the sum of £40,000 to defray these exiDenses. In five years this was increased to the enormous sum of over £400,000. On account of its mag- nificent harbour, one of the finest in the world, Chebucto, or Halifax, as it was henceforth to be called, in honour of the chief projector of the entei-prise, was selected as the site of the new settlement. The Honourable Edward Cornwallis was appointed Governor, and the protection of British law and representative institutions was promised. In the month of July, 1749, Governor Cornwallis, in H. M. ship *' Sphynx," followed hj a fleet of thirteen transports, con- veying nearly three thousand settlers,— disbanded soldiers, re- tired officers, mechanics, labourers, and persons of various rank, — reached Chebucto Bay. A civil govei-nment was promptly organized, the first meeting of the Council being held on ship- board in the harbour. On a rising groimd, overlooking the noble bay, the woods were cleared and the streets of a town laid out. In busy emulation, the whole company was soon at work, and before winter three hundred log-houses were con- 25 194 HISTORY OF CANADA. structed, besides a fort, store-houses, and residence for the Governor, — the whole surrounded by a palisade. The Governor and Council took prompt measures to proclaim ' the sovereignty of Great Britain over the entire province. Deputies were summoned from the French settlements, and commanded to take the oath of allegiance to King George, as the condition of enjoying the protection of his government. The deputies wished to make the reservation, that they should not be compelled to bear arms against the King of France ; but the Governor insisted that the oath should be one of absolute and unconditional allegiance. These vigorous measures soon aroused the jealousy of the French in Canada, and led to serious acts of insubordination on the paii; of some of the old Acadian colonists. The Abbe de lioutre especially, a violent partisan of the French, abused his authority and influence as a priest to prevent liis country- men from submitting to the King of England. He is also accused of ha\dng instigated the ]\Iicmac Indians, and certain restless spirits among the Acadians, to attack the infant settle- ments of Halifax, Dartmouth, on the opposite side of the har- bour, and the new German settlement of Lunenburg. These marauders even attacked the English vessels in Chebucto Bay, and killed or wounded part of their crews. Over these, the Governor of Louisburg — to whom remonstrance was made on account of these outrages — disavowed any control, as the aggressors were living within British territory. General Corn- wallis, Governor of Halifax, was therefore obliged to reduce the marauders by force. They refused to take the oath of allegiance, and claimed a position of political neutrality. The Chevalier de la Corne, an impetuous officer, was de- spatched from Quebec with eleven hundred French and Indians to ofuard the ill-defined frontier. He built a fort at Beau Sdjour, commanding the isthmus which connects Nova Scotia with the main-land, on ground which he claimed as a portion of Canada, and made it a rendezvous for malcontent and refugee Acadians. Cornwallis sent Colonel Lawrence, vntli four hun- dred men, from Halifax to watch his movements. On his LOUISBURG — DU QUESNE. 195 approach the Acadian «' neutrals," at the mstigation of then- priests, burned the settlement of Beaubassin, within 1750. the British territory, and retired to the protection of the French fort. Lawrence returned for re-enforcements, and later in the season landed, though stoutly opposed, and built a fort in close proximity to Beau Sejour, on the opposite side of the Messagouche, which was, for the time, accepted as the boundary line. This was the first blood shed between France and England after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. La Jonquiere, liberated by the peace, had superseded Galis- soniere as Governor,* and timidly followed the policy of his predecessor. He was consumed by an ignoble avarice, and used every means to enrich himself at the expense of the colony; yet even in his last hours, he denied himself the com- forts of life. Fraud and peculation impoverished the people, who demanded his recall; but he died before the arrival of his successor, Du Quesne. Bigot, his Litendant, was, 1733. if possible, even more corrupt than the miserly Governor, and added the vices of licentiousness and extravagance to those of meanness and avarice. He mocked the misery of the people by his ostentatious profligacy, and aped the sensualism of the court of Louis XV. at his palace in Quebec, and at his chateau at Beauport. By his extortion and peculation as a civil admin- istrator, he had already won an evil reputation in Louisiana and Cape Breton, but was destined to reach the culmination of his infamy in Canada. Do Quesne, the new Governor, entered upon a vigorous aggressive policy. He organized and drilled the militia, gar- risoned the western forts, and established new posts at Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, and at Le Beuf and Venango, in the Ohio valley. Dinwiddle, the Governor of Virginia, sent, as 1753. an envoy, to warn the French from the occupation of territory claimed by the British, George Washington, then in his twenty- fii-st year. The youthful ambassador found the intruders * Galissoni&re returned to France, served on the Boundaries Commission, rejoined the navy, and, after defeating the unhappy Admiral Byng at Minorca, died in 1756. 196 HISTORY OF C.iX.iDA. sti'ongly entrenched at Venango and Le Beuf. "lam here," said the French commandant, "by the orders of m}- general, to vrhich I shall conform "with exactness and resolution. He has instructed me to seize every Englishman in the Ohio vaUey, and I shall do it." Thi'ough wintry weather and jDathless woods, Washington returned over the moimtains to Yirginia. Twice on the route he nearly lost his life, once by the point-blank fire of a Im'king Indian, and once by the swollen and ice-bm'dened torrent of the Alleghany Eiver. The " Ohio Company," composed of London and Vu-ginia mer- its*, chants, now began a settlement and fort at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, where Pittsbm-g now stands. A strong force of French, under M. Contrecoeur, seized the fort, and having completed its defences, gave it the name of Du Quesne. Governor Dinwiddle had, meanwhile, despatched a force, under George "Washington, now a lieutenant- colonel, to hold the fort for the Enghsh. Contrecoeur sent M. Jumonville, with a small party of soldiers, to warn him off what was claimed as French territory. "Washington, aware of their approach, apprehending that theu' purpose was hostile, and eager to distinguish himself, surprised them, at break of day, encamped in a narrow valley. The French sprang to arms. " Fu-e I " cried Washington. " That word," says Ban- croft, "kindled the world into a flame." It precipitated the earth-shaking conflict on the plains of India, on the waters of the Mediterranean and the Spanish Main, on the Gold Coast of Africa, on the ramparts of Louisburg, on the heights of Quebec, and here in the valley of the Ohio, which led to the utter de- feat of the French, and the destruction of their sovereignty on this continent, and prepared the way for the independence of the United States. In the very beginning, as well as at the end, Washington was a prominent actor in the eventful drama, which became the epoch of a great nation. A sharp engagement of a few minutes ensued, in which Jumonville and ten Frenchmen fell, and twenty-one were captured. The French denounced the attack on Jumonville, while in the character of an envoy, as LOUISBURG — DU QUESNE. I97 murder ; but there is no evidence that "Washington was aware of his commission. "Washington threw up entrenchments at Great Meadows, which he named Fort Necessity, and with four hundred men held his ground for a month. Attacked by a force of nine hundi-ed French and Indians, commanded by a brother of the slain Jumonville, and occupj-ing an untenable position between two hills, he capitulated, after ten hours' resistance, leaving the entire Ohio valley in the possession of the French. 193 HISTORY OF CANADA. CHAPTER XV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1755. Convention of Britisli Colonists at Albany — WiUiam Johnson — British Naval Victories — Braddock, Commander-in-Chief — His Arbitrary Character — His Defeat at the Monongahela — The Expedition against Fort Niagara a Failure — Johnson Defeats Dieskau at Lake George — Capture of Beau S^jour — The Acadian Neutrals — Micmac Outrages — The Tragedy of Grand Pr6 — Expulsion of the Acadians. IT was now felt that war was inevitable. A convention of deputies of the English colonies was forthwith held at Albany, to concert measures of defence. The astirte Franklin proposed a federal union, after the manner of the league of the Six Nations. * ' It would be a strange thing," said that philosophical poli- tician, *' if a community of ignorant savages should be capable of forming such a union, and maintaining it un- broken for ages, and yet, if a similar union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous.'* The mutual jealousies of the different colonies, and of the mother country, however, prevented its consummation. It was only at a later day, and as the result of a fierce struggle, that the political organization was formed, which has had such an eventful and prosperous history during the last century. A prominent character in colonial history comes now into view. William Johnson, afterwards knighted for his services, was the younger son of an Irish gentleman of good family. Crossed in a love affair, he came to America in his nineteenth year, and assumed the charge of a large tract of laud in the FRANKLIN, CAMPAIGN OF 1755. 199 SIB VTT.T.IAM JOHNSON. province of New York, the property of his uucle, Admiral Sir Peter "Warren. He settled in the Mohawk valley, and lived in a sort of feudal state, alternately at Johnson Castle and Johnson Hall, two strongly forti- fied buildings, the latter of which is still standing. He carried on a prosperous trade with the Indians, and by his integrity of character gained a remarkable influence over them. This he increased by marrying, after the forest manner, Molly Brant, a sister of the celebrated Mohawk chief, Tyendenaga, or Joseph Brant, afterwards famous in border warfare. Johnson was adopted by the Mohawks as a member of their tribe, and chosen as one of their great sachems. The French endeavoured to detach the Iroquois from their allegiance to the English. For this purpose, they founded a mission and school at La Presentation, and acquired over them a remarkable influence. They purposed, also, to establish a mission at Lake Onondaga ; but Johnson purchased the lake and all the land for two miles around it, and continued, during the war, the bulwark of British authority upon the troubled frontier. The British ministry, on hearing of the collision in the Ohio valley, determined on a vigorous campaign, and de- 1735. spatched General Braddock, with two royal regiments, to assume supreme military com- mand in the colonies. The choice was an unfortunate one. Braddock was a brave sol- dier, but a martinet, — arrogant, perverse, obstinate. The Duke of Cumberland, the British commander-in-chief, estranged the sympathy of the colonists. "He had no confidence," he declared, " except in regular troops ; " and ordered that the generals and field-officers of the provincial forces, should have no rank when serving with officers bear- ing the royal commission. Colonel Washington, resenting this indignity, retired from the service, and his regiment was GENERAX, BRADDOCK. 200 HISTORY OF CANADA. disbanded ; but even Braddock's perversity did not prevent him from perceiving the impolicy of this order, and several of the colonial officers received appointments on his staff. The French also strengthened their forces in Canada by sending out Baron Dieskau, an officer of distinction, who had served under Marshal Saxe, with several veteran battalions, numbering in all about three thousand men. Admiral Bos- cawen, with eleven ships of the line, intercepted a portion of the fleet bearing Dieskau's forces, off the Banks of Newfound- land. *' Are we at peace or war? " inquired the French com- mander. A broadside from the Englishman was the answer, and the French frigates, "Alcide" and *'Lys," soon struck their colours. Under cover of a fog, Dieskau, with the rest of his squadron escaped, ^nd safely reached Quebec. British privateers now swept the seas, and during the year, captured three hundred French vessels and eight thousand sailors. With the fleet that brought Dieskau and his soldiers, came also the new Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Yaudreuil- Cavagnac. He was a native of Quebec, being the son of the former Governor, De Yaudrueil, whose memory was cherished with respect, and for whose sake his son received a cordial welcome. The Marquis Du Quesne, preferring the French naval service, had already resigned the vice-royalty. The plan of the campaign of 1755, as devised by the British ministry, comprehended a simultaneous attack on the French, at Fort Du Quesne, in the Ohio valley, at Niagara, at Fort Frederic or Crown Point, and at Fort Beau Sejour, in Acadia. The main enterprise, that against Fort Du Quesne, was assigned to General Braddock. He attempted to wage war amid the wilds of America after the manner of a European cam- paign. He treated with disdain the provincial troops, and rejected the counsels of "Washing- ton and other backwoods fighters. He was full of confidence as to his easy success in this unfamiliar forest warfare. "Fort Du Quesne," he said, to Franklin, " can hardly detain me above three or four days, and then I CAMPAIGN OF 1733. 201 see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara." "The Indians are dexterous in laying and executing ambuscades," Franklin replied. "The savages maybe formidable to your raw American militia," Braddock haughtily answered; "but upon the King's regulars and disciplined troops, it is impossible _ that they should make any impression." He was destined to be soon undeceived. Twenty-seven days were consumed in the march from Alex- andria, on the Potomac, to Fort Cumberland, on the head- waters of that river. Here several weeks were spent in camp, drilling a contingent of raw militia, and preparing a wagon- train.* Early in June, the little army of twenty-three hundred men left Fort Cumberland. A hundred expert axe-men went ahead, and the crash of falling trees heralded the advance of the expedition. With infinite toil a path was hewed through the wilderness, and over the mountains, and every creek was bridged. An un wieldly baggage and artillery train, extending several miles, was dragged over the rugged road by straining horses. Learning that Fort Du Quesne was being re-enforced, Braddock, with twelve hundred picked men, pressed on with the lighter baggage and artillery, and left the rest of the army, under command of Colonel Dunbar, to follow with the heavy wagons. On the 9th of July, the advance body had reached the neigh- bourhood of the Monongahela. The march was conducted in a most unvigilant manner. "Washington, who commanded some companies of Virginia militia, and was attached to Braddock's staff, so urgently warned the headstrong general of the peril of Indian attack, that he was ordered, in a moment of irrita- tion, to assume the inglorious duties of rear-guard. They were now within nine miles of Fort Du Quesne. Contrecoeur, the French commandant, was about to give it up for lost ; but Beaujeu, a captain of the garrison, proposed to waylay and attack the British in the woods, and with a party -of French and Indians, sallied forth for that purpose.. Meanwhile, Braddock's command, on that brilliant midsum- mer day, forded the river and entered the forest beyond. It 26 202 HISTORY OF CANADA. •was a gallant sight, — the bannered array, the scarlet uniforms, the gleam of bayonets, as the little army, with flying colours, unconsciously pressed on to its fate, — the fife and drum corps making the forest ring with the inspiring strains of " The British Grenadiers." As they entered a narrow defile, sud- denly the deadly war-whoop rang, and a murderous fire was poured into their ranks by unseen enemies, lurking amid the shadows of the primeval forest. For two hours, the deadly conflict continued. The British regulars were thrown into confusion, and, huddled together like sheej), fell by scores, their solid platoons being mowed down by the fire of the concealed French and Indians, till, panic- stricken, they broke and fled. In vain their officers sought to rally them. Braddock had five horses shot under him, and fell mortally wounded by a ball that shattered his arm and pene- trated his lung. The colonial troops, under Colonel Washing- ton, displayed a steadiness that put the regulars to shame, fighting skilfully, after the bush manner, behind the trees ; but scarce one-fifth of their number left the field alive. Of the English, seven hundred and fourteen, or more than half the entire command, were killed or wounded. The fugitives fled through the night, and paused not till they reached the baggage camp, forty miles back. They communicated their panic to Dunbar's troops, who broke up camp in dismay, burned their baggage, provisions, and stores, to the value of £100,000, and precipitately retreated to Fort Cumberland and Philadelphia. Braddock was borne, in a dying condition, with his flying army. " Who would have thought it ! " he murmured, rousing himself from a lethargy ; "we shall better know how to deal with them another time." But his dear-bought experience came too late ; that night he died. The French, who were only some two hundred and fifty in number, attempted no pursuit ; and their six hundred savage allies reaped a rich harvest of scalps, and booty, and brilliant British uniforms. Fifteen cannon, and Braddock's military- chest, containing the dispatches of the British ministry, which revealed their design with respect to Canada, became also the CAMPAIGN OF 1755. 203 spoil of the conqueror. The assailants lost only forty men. This disastrous rout, brought on the Pennsylvania and Virginia settlements all the horrors of a merciless border warfare. The western tribes seized their tomahawks and turned into one wide scene of havoc the entire English frontier. The expedition against Fort Niagara, failed even to reach its destination. Disheartened by Braddock's defeat, the militia deserted by scores ; and the Iroquois, wavering in their alle- giance, disputed its right of way through their territory. Reach- ing Lake Ontario, in August, Shirley, its commander, left seven hundred men to garrison Oswego, and returned with the remainder to Albany. For William Johnson, the colonial militia officer, was re- served the honour of redeeming the reputation of the British arms, tarnished by the disastrous defeat of Braddock, the vet- eran European soldier. Early in July, the hardy New Eng- land and New York militia, to the number of five thousand men, assembled at Albany, for the purpose of making an at- tack on Crown Point, which was strongly garrisoned by the French. This force, led by General Lyman, advanced forty miles up the Hudson River, and constructed ^ort Edward, as a depot for provisions, and point of support in case of defeat. Towards the end of August, John- son joined the untrained army and conducted it across the portage of twelve miles, to the southern extremity of the lake, called by the French, Lake of the Holy Sacrament. "I found," said Johnson, "a mere wilder- never was house or fort erected here ness before." He re-named this beautiful expanse of waters, Lake George, and constructed on its shore, a camp for five thousand men. Here ■LAKE GEOEGE. much time was spent in languid preparation for the attack on Crown Point. Meanwhile, Baron Dieskau had been more active. He had been despatched from Quebec to attack the British garrison at 204 HISTORY OF CANADA. the mouth of the Oswego Eiver ; but learning the peril that menaced Crown Point, Vaudreuil had directed him to proceed to the support of that fort. He advanced rapidly, with seven hundred regular troops, fifteen hundred Canadian militia, and seven hundred Indian warriors to the menaced fortress. Leav- ing part of his force at Crown Point, he pressed on, with six hundred Indians, as many Canadians, and two hundred picked regulars, intending to fall on Fort Edward. Johnson, obtam- ing intelligence of this movement, sent a thousand men to intercept him. They fell into an ambuscade of French and Indians, were badly cut up, and retreated on the main body, hotly pursued by Dieskau. Johnson prepared for an attack. Although this was his first campaign, he had planted his camp with great skill, — flanked by marshes on the right and left, and partially protected by a breastwork of trees in front. The French advanced to the charge under a murderous fire of the New England sharpshooters. Most of the French regulars were killed or wounded. After a fierce contest of four hours, they were compelled to retreat precipitately, closely pursued by the British, to their entrenched camp at Ticonderoga, at the, northern end of the lake. They lost nearly as many as had the English in Braddock's defeat, and from the same cause, — the rash confidence of the commander in the tactics of regular troops, as opposed to the skilled wood-craft of militia-men. Dieskau, being severely wounded, was made prisoner. John- son, who had lost three hundred men, prudently declined the risk of leading his raw troops against the ramparts of Ticon- deroga. Having built and garrisoned Fort William Henry, on the site of the conflict, he fell back on Albany, where his forces were disbanded. He received a grant of £5,000 and a knighthood for his achievement. In the spring of the year, Colonel Moncton, with forty-one vessels and two thousand men, had sailed from Boston to re- duce Fort Beau Sejour, in the Acadian isthmus, to which the French still laid claim. Ill-manned by a few hundred refugees and a handful of soldiers, it capitulated, after four days' invest- ment, and was re-named Fort Cumberland. Captain Kous, CAMPAIGN OF 1755. 205 who bad charge of the naval part of the expedition, now sailed to the mouth of the St. John to attack the fort recently con- structed there by the French. On his arrival, he was saved that trouble, as its occupants hastily abandoned it, having dis- mantled, and, as far as possible, destroyed the works. The Acadian peasants, on the beautiful shores of the Bay of Fundy, were a simple, virtuous, and prosperous community. Their civil disputes, when any arose, which was rare, were all settled by the kindly intervention of their priest, who also made their wills and drew up their public acts. If wealth was rare, poverty was unknown ; for a feeling of brotherhood anticipated the claims of want. Domestic happiness and public morality were fostered by early marriages ; and homely thrift was rewarded by almost universal comfort. Such is the delightful picture painted by the sympathetic ]3en of the Abbe Eaynal, — a picture that almost recalls the innocence and hap- piness of the poets' fabled Golden Age, " Thus dwelt in love, those simple Acadian farmers." With remarkable industry, they had reclaimed from the sea hy dykes, many thousands of fertile acres, whieh produced abun- dant crops of grain and orchard fruits ; and on the sea meadows, at one time, grazed as many as sixty thousand head of cattle. The simple wants of the peasants were supplied by domestic manufactures of flax or woollen, or by importations from Louis- burg, So great was their attachment to the government and institutions of their fatherland, that during the aggressions of the English, after their conquest of the country, a great part of the population, — some ten thousand, it has been said, although the nmnber is disputed, — abandoned their homes and migrated to that portion of Acadia still claimed by the French, or to Cape Breton, or Canada. Some seven thousand still remained in the peninsula of Nova Scotia ; but they claimed a political neutrality, resolutely refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the alien conquerors. *' Better," said the priests to their obedient flock, " suiTender your meadows to the sea, and your houses to the flames, than peril your souls by taking 206 HISTORY OF CANADA. that obnoxious oath." They were accused, and probably with only too good reason, of intriguing with their countrymen at Louisburg, with resisting the English authority, and with inciting and even leading the Indians to ravage the English settlements The cruel Micmacs needed little instigation. They swooped down on the little town of Dartmouth, opposite Halifax, and within gunshot of its forts, and reaped a rich harvest of scalps and booty. The English prisoners they sometimes sold at Louisburg for arms and ammunition; the French Governor asserted that pure compassion was the motive of this traffic, in order to rescue the captives from massacre. He demanded, however, an excessive ransom for their liberation. The In- dians were sometimes, or indeed generally, it was asserted, led in these murderous raids by French commanders. These viola- tions of neutrality, however, were chiefly the work of a few turbulent spirits. The mass of the Acadian peasants seem to have been a peaceful and inoffensive people, although they naturally sympathized with their countrymen, and rejoiced at the victory of Du Qiiesne, and sorrowed at the defeat of Lake George. The Governor of the jDrovince was embarrassed by the peculiar situation of this nonjuring population, and scarce knew what course to adopt toward them. They could scarcely be considered rebels, for they had never sworn allegiance to the British Crown. Neither were they prisoners of war, since, for nearly half a century, they had been permitted to retain possession of their lands. Their evident sympathy with their countrymen and co-religionists in Canada and Cape Breton, alarmed Governor Lawrence and the Council at Halifax, and it was decreed that the whole French population should be dis- armed, and that their boats should be seized, in order to pre- vent them from aiding the enemy. Vexatious requisitions were made in a manner which rendered them doubly offensive. They were informed by British officers, that unless they furnished the military posts with fuel, their houses would be used for that purpose. If they failed to provide the supplies demanded, CAMPAIGN OF 1755. 207 without stipulating any terms as to payment, they were threat- ened with immediate military execution.* As there were continued and frequent violations of their professed neutrality, on the part of the Acadians, and as three hundred of them had been found in arms against the British, at the taking of Beau S(5jour, it was resolved by the Council at Halifax, that they must take the unconditional oath of alle- giance to the King of England. Deputies were summoned from the Acadian settlements to Halifax, to express the decision of their compatriots. They absolutely declined to take the ob- noxious oath, unless accompanied by the exemption from bear- ing arms. This exemption was refused, and the deputies were imprisoned and warned of the serious consequences of their act. They still refused to violate what they seem to have regarded almost as a religious principle. They were now de- clared rebels and outlaws, and the Council at Halifax, confound- ing the innocent with the guilty, decreed the expulsion of the entire French population. lu order to prevent their strength- ening the French, in Cape Breton or Canada, it was decided to distribute them among the several British colonies of North America. Circulars were therefore addressed to the colonial Governors of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsyl- vania, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, stating the reasons for this wholesale expatriation, and urging them to prevent the re-union of the exiles, or their subsequent mo- lestation of the country, from which they were about to be driven. The execution of this stern purpose was committed chiefly to New England forces, under the command of Colonel "VVinslow. A number of transports were collected in Boston harbour, and the utmost secrecy was observed till they were anchored off the French settlements, on the Bay of Fundy, * Conncil Records at Halifax, as quoted in Haliburton'a History of Nova Scotia, Tol. I., p. 169: — " No excuse shall be taken for not bringing in fire- wood, and if they do not do it in proper time, the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel." ..." They are not to be bargained with for the payment, but you will furnish them with certificates, which will entitle them to such payments at Halifax, as shall be thought reasonable." 208 HISTORY OF CANADA. • and in the Basin of Minas. The unsuspecting Acadians had been allowed to gather in their fruitful harvest, and their barns were bursting with plenty. On one and the same day, the 5th of September, the entire male population, over ten years old, were ordered, under heavy penalties, to assemble in the several settlements. Let one example of this cruel expatriation suffice. At Grand Pre, four hundred and eighteen persons assembled in the village church, when the British officer read from the altar the decree of their exile. Their lands, houses, cattle, and crops were pronounced confiscated. Their money and house- hold goods they might carry with them, as far as possible with- out overcrowding the vessels. Loud was the outcry, and bitter the denunciation of the cruel mandate. But resistance was impossible ; armed soldiers guarded the door ; the men were encaged in prison, and were confined under guard for four days. Ori the fifth day, they were marched, at the bay- onet's point, amid the wailings of their relatives, to the shore, and placed on board the transports. The women and children were shipped in other vessels. Families were scattered ; hus- bands and wives separated, — many never to meet again. The night that followed was made lurid by the flames of burning homesteads, well-filled barns, and stacks of corn, while herds of afirighted cattle and horses rushed wildly over the meadows.* It was three months later, in the bleak December, before the last of the exiles were removed. For a long time afterwards, advertisements for the strayed and missing, in the colonial newspapers, attested the efforts of those banished ones to re- unite the scattered links of the broken family circle. At Annapolis, a hundred householders, unwilling to abandon their homes, fled to the woods, and were hunted like beasts of prey. Others found refuge among the Indians, or escaped * The number removed from Grand Pr€ was nineteen hundred and twenty- three persons. In the District of Minas alone, two hundred and fifty-five houses, two hundred and seventy-six barns, one hundred and fifty-four out- houses, eleven mills, and one church were burned. Thousands of cattle were confiscated by the English. CAMPAIGN OF 1755. 209 through the wilderness to Canada. A number, estimated at from seven to eight thousand, were dispersed along the Atlantic seaboard, from Maine to Georgia. The colonial Gov- ernors were required to detain the exiles as prisoners. Twelve hundred were carried to South Carolina. A few planted a new Acadia among their countrymen in Louisiana. Some tried to return to their blackened hearths, coasting in open boats along the shore. These were relentlessly intercepted when possible, and sent back into hopeless exile. An imperishable interest has been imparted to this sad story by Longfellow's beautiful poem, " Evangeline," which describes the sufferings and sorrows of some of the inhabitants of the little village of Grand Pre. It is a page in our country's an- nals that is not pleasant to contemplate, but we may not ignore the painful facts. Every patriot must regret the stern military necessity, — if necessity there were, — that compelled the in- conceivable suffering of so many innocent beings. Save the expulsion of the Moriscoes from Spain, and of the Huguenots from France, history offers no parallel to this unhappy event. 27 210 HISTORY OF CANADA. CHAPTER XVI. CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AND 1757. The Seven Years' War Begun, 1756 — Eespective Condition of tlie Frencli and English in America — Bradstreet's Gallant Exploit — Montcalm Captures Fort Oswego — Immense Booty — London's FutUe Attempt against Louis- burg — Montcalm IJedTices Fort William Henry — Indian Massacre of Twelve Hundied British Prisoners — Exhaustion of Canada — Famine — Extortion and Profligacy of Bigot and His Associates. NOTWITHSTANDING the hostile demonstrations of the year 1755, including the fierce fights of Fort Du Quesne and Lake George, war was not formally declared till the follow- ing spring (1756). France, Austria, and Russia were com- bined against England and Prussia, for the prolonged and bitter struggle of the Seven Years' War. It seemed at first as though the combination must be fatal to Britain and her ally. But the political sagacity of William Pitt, and the military genius of Frederick the Great, with the lavish expenditure of treasure and blood, humbled their enemies, and raised their respective countries to the summit of glory. The ' ' Great Commoner " made good his proud boast, that "England should moult no feather of her crest." Clive's stupendous victory on the plains of Plassey, gave her her Indian Empire, and Wolfe's heroic death on the heights of Quebec, was the price of the conquest of this great continent. The campaign of 1756 opened with the best prospects for the French. They were supreme in the Ohio valley, and throughout the Great West. They held three forts on Lake Ontario, — Frontenac, Niagara, and Toronto; the only rival to their undisputed control of its waters, being the British fort at the moutbof the Oswego, which was destined shortly to fall into their hands. Their flag floated defiantly at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, which commanded the gateway of Canada, by way of Lake Champlain. CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AND 1757. 211 The French military officers, too, were far superior in dash and daring to their opi3onents. Montcalm, the commander-in- chief, who* arrived at Quebec early in the sprmg, had acquired experience and skill in Italy and Germany, and was audacious in battle even to the verge of rashness. De Levi and St. Veran, his colleagues, were also able officers. The military strength of the French, however, was far inferior to that of the British. The number of regulars was increased to about four thousand, bat the total available colonial forces amounted to only twice that number. The whole French population was scarcely eighty thousand, and it was ground down by feudal exactions, knavish commercial monopolies, and fraudulent public servants. The crops of the previous year, moreover, had been a failure, and the impoverished people were often in want of food, the scarcity of which was still further increased, by the demand for supplies for the military, and for the starving Acadian exiles. The British colonies, on the other hand, numbered three millions of inhabitants. Fostered by freedom and intelligence, these had become rich and i^rosperous. Though not deficient in valour, they possessed less of the military instinct, and were more addicted to peaceful industry, than their northern neigh- bours. The Earl of Loudon, a man utterly without military genius, was appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces and Governor of Virginia. He was preceded by General Abercrombie, with two veteran regiments. A judicious plan of operations was devised by a council of colonial Governors, at New York. It comprehended expeditions against forts Frederick, Niagara, Du Quesne, and Quebec, by an aggregate force of twenty-five thousand colonial militia and royal troops. The House of Commons had voted £115,000 to aid the colonies in their operations. But delay and indecision frustrated these purposes, while promptness and vigour characterized the oper- ations of the French. The British fort at Oswego had been the object of an attack by Dieskau the previous year, when he turned aside to succour Crown Point, threatened by Johnson, and by the side of the beautiful Lake George, met his early fate. In order to keep 212 HISTORY OF CANADA. up communications with Lake Ontario, the British had estab- lished a chain of forest forts, extending from Schenectady to Oswego. Early in the spring, Vaudrueil dispatched a force of three hundred and fifty French and eighty Indians, to de- stroy these forts. One of them, Fort Bull, was taken, and a large quantity of military munitions destroyed. Meanwhile, Abercrombie, deeming the strength of his com- mand insufficient for an attack on Crown Point, was loitering away the weeks at Albany, waiting for re-enforcements. In the month of June, Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet, with a force of Irish recruits, guarded up the Mohawk and down the Oswego rivers a large convoy of provisions and stores, — sufficient for a garrison of five thousand men for six months, — and Buccess- fully conveyed them to Fort Oswego. On his return, he was intercepted by Captain de Villiers, with a body of seven hun- dred men, French and Indians, from Fort Frontenac. Fearing an attack, Bradstreet had divided his force into three divisions, and was ascending the Oswego with the first, when he was assailed by far superior numbers. He bravely held his own against tremendous odds, till he was supported by the second and third divisions. A desperate conflict then ensued, in w^hich the French were completely routed, a hundred of their number slain and seventy captured. Bradstreet, however, lost sixty of his stout-hearted Irish recruits. He hastened to Albany, and conveyed to Abercrombie the startling intelligence, that Oswego was threatened by a large French force. Still no efficient efforts were made for the relief of the menaced fortress ; although Abercrombie had ten or twelve thousand colonial and British soldiers at his disposal. Meanwhile, Montcalm, by his eager energy, was infusing new vigour into the military operations of the French. Travel- ling night and day, he hastened from Quebec to Fort Carillon, at Ticonderoga. He took active measures for improving its defences, and left M. do Levi in command, with three thousand men, half of whom were regulars. With characteristic energy, he next resolved on the capture of Oswego. He collected a force of three thousand regulars, Canadian militia, and Indians CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AND 1757. 213 at Fort Frontenac. Moving only by night, and hiding their batteaux beneath heaps of brush-wood by day, the expedition reached Fort Oswego by the 10th of August, while Montcalm was thought to be still at Carillon. The main fort was a large stone structure, mounting thirty guns and howitzers. For its support, Fort Ontario, a much smaller construction, had been created on the opposite and left bank of the river. The whole was garrisoned by seventeen hundred men, under Colonel Mercer. Montcalm opened his trenches within two hundred yards of Fort Ontario, during the night of August 12th, and next day kept up a brisk fire. In the evening the garrison of Fort Ontario, having exhausted their ammunition, spiked their guns and retreated to the main fort, across the river. Montcalm promptly occupied the aban- doned fort, and turned its guns on Fort Oswego, which it was constructed to protect. Colonel Mercer was soon killed, and the garrison, despairing of receiving re-enforcements from General Webb, who, with a force of two thousand men, was posted at no great distance, raised the white flag of surrender. A hundred and fifty English were killed or wounded during the brief siege, besides thirty massacred by the Indians after the capitulation. The loss of the French was less than half as great. The booty was immense, comprising seven armed vessels, two hundred batteaux, one hundred and seven cannon, a vast quantity of stores, and a large sum of money. These were all dispatched to Montreal, together with sixteen hundred prisoners, and to allay the jealousy of the Iroquois, as well as fi-om inability to garrison it, the fort was razed to the ground. General Webb hastily retreated, felling trees to obstruct pursuit, and conveyed the disastrous intelligence to Albany. Montcalm's victory was stained by the atrocities of his savage allies, who even scalped the sick in the hospital of the fort, although he used his utmost efforts to put a stop to the mas- sacre. The success of the French arms confirmed the growing reputation of Montcalm, and created great joy throughout Canada. It seems, at the same time, to have paralyzed the activity of the British. The French were allowed to construct 214 HISTORY OF CANADA. strong fortifications at Ticonderoga, and the British, forces, which might have penetrated to the heart of Canada, were sent into winter quarters, — the colonial militia to their homes, while the regulars were billeted on the inhabitants of Albany and New York, much to the disgust of their hosts. Of the projected attacks on Crown Point, Niagara, Fort Du Quesne and Quebec, not one was carried into execution. With the exception of Bradstreet's gallant exploit at the beginning of the season, the record of the campaign had been one of disaster and defeat. During the winter, a force of fifteen hundred French and Indians advanced, on snow-shoes, camping at night amid the snow, from Montreal, to attempt the capture of Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake George, a distance of nearly two hundred miles. Unable to surprise the fort, they burned all the outworks, together Avith the adjacent mills, four armed brigantines, three hundred and fifty batteaux, and im- mense stores of provisions and war materiel, and carried con- sternation even within Abercrombie's entrenchments at Albany. Marauding parties of French and Indians ravaged the English frontier with fire and sword, swooping down on lonely settle- ments, in midnight attacks, and murdering and scalping the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex. The harvest of the half-tilled acres of Canada had been a comparative failure, and a great dearth of provisions prevailed. The presence of several hundreds of famishing Acadian refugees made matters still worse. They implored the privilege of fiofhtino: for the Kin";, but the number of combatants was already greater than there was food to maintain. But for the provisions captured at Oswego, it would have been impossible to re-victual the forts at Frontenac, Niagara, and on the Ohio. Still, the rapacity of Bigot, the Intendant, and his minions of the Grand Company, was unrestrained. Provisions and stores, sent from France for the succour of the starving colonists, were sold at famine prices, and the enormous profits passed into the hands of this gang of thieves. The allowance of bread, at Quebec, was reduced to four ounces a day. The ravages of small-pox were also added to those of famine. CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AXD 1757. 215- The following year, 1757, Lord Loudon resolved to make Louisburg the chief point of attack. In July, he assembled at Halifax, a fleet of twenty ships of the line, carrying over twelve hundred cannon, and ninety transports, with eleven thousand soldiers, chiefly veteran troops. Here he wasted a month in mock battles and sieges. Learning that Louisburg was garrisoned by ten thousand men, and guarded by a fleet as strong as his own, he abandoned his design. One of his vessels was wrecked on the rocky coast of Cape Breton, and half of her crew jDerished in the waves. Eleven ships were dismasted, and obliged to throw their cannon into the sea. The remainder of the fleet, in a shattered condition, with difficulty made its way to England. Meanwhile, the indefatigable Montcalm took advantage of the diversion of attention toward Louisburg, to strike a fatal blow at Fort William Henry, on Lake George. In July, he assembled at Ticonderoga, a force of six thousand regulars and militia, and sixteen hundred savages of thirty different tribes. Early in August, the fort, now garrisoned by twenty- seven hundred men, under Colonel Munroe, was invested by the French, whose main body advanced, on a stormy night, down Lake George in two hundred and fifty batteaux, the rest of his force having proceeded by land. For five days, a fierce bombardment woke the wild echoes of the mountains, and by night illumined the engirdling forest and placid lake, while hundreds of yelling savages scoured the woods, cutting off and scalping all stragglers. At Fort Edward, within fifteen miles, lay the craven General Webb, with four thousand troops ; but instead of endeavouring to relieve the besieged, he sent an exaggerated account of the number of the French, and a recommendation to surrender. *'I shall defend my trust to the last extremity," exclaimed the gallant Munroe, and, spurn- ing the coward counsel, he held out till half his guns were burst and his ammunition was nearly exhausted, and over three hundred and fifty men were killed and wounded, before he surrendered. On the 9th of August, a capitulation was signed, which 216 BISTORT OF CANADA. allowed the British to march out with the honours of war, with flying colours and beating drums, and guaranteed an escort to Fort Edward. The English engaged not to serve against the French for eighteen months. On the surrender, a tragedy ensued which stained with the blood of its victims the laurels of the victors. As the garrison, with its camp-following of women and children, was dfefiling through the woods, the blood-thirsty savages, balked of their anticipated harvest of scalps and plunder, and maddened by liquor, which the British had neglected to destroy, fell in ruthless massacre upon the panic-stricken throng. The scanty escort in vain endeavoured to restrain the frenzied wretches in their work of slaughter. Montcalm threw himself between the savages and their victims. "Kill me," he exclaimed, *'but spare the English; they are under my protection." De Levi and other officers interposed, with daring and devotion, to stop the massacre, and to rescue the prisoners from their savage allies ; and several of them received serious injuries from the Indians, while protecting the English from their rage. Six hundred wretched fugitives esca^^ed through the woods to Fort Edward. The French sent thither, under a strong escort, four hundred prisoners whom, not without personal danger, they had rescued. They after- wards ransomed two hundred others, who had been carried cap- tives to Montreal. The remaining twelve hundred, there is reason to fear, were massacred or enslaved by the Indians. Montcalm disavowed all responsibility for the act ; but the inhu- man practice of engaging lawless savages as allies in the wars of civilized men, was the fatal cause of this and other like atrocities. Montcalm razed Fort "William Henry to the ground, and, deterred from a further advance by short allowance of food, the French returned to reap the scanty harvest of their Cana- dian fields. Naught remained to mark human habitation on the shores of the lonely lake, save the charred ruins of the fort, and the graves of the dead on the hillside. The fall of Fort William Henry created dismay in the English camp at Albany, and at Fort Edward. At the latter place, the CAMPAIGNS OF 1756 AND 1757. 217 craven-hearted Webb, with five thousand men, was in daily- expectation of attack, and was eager to retreat to the fast- nesses of the highlands on the Hudson. "Exert yourself to sn,vo a province," Captain Christie, the officer commanding at Albany, adjured Governor Pownall of Massachusetts; "New York itself may fall." The following day, he wrote still more importunately: "Save the country. Prevent the downfall of the British Government upon this continent." A storm of indignation was excited in England at the dis- astrous results of the camj)aign, from which so much had been exj)ected. Not less than twenty thousand troops had wasted the season of the year, during which alone action was possible, in disembarkations, parades, sham-fights, and retreats, and had lost possession of a fort, constructed and filled with stores at immense cost. Twenty magnificent ships of the line had sailed proudly forth from British harbours, and without firing a gun for the honour of Old England, had been compelled to return, shattered and maimed, to the ports whence they came. The loss ^of ships, of treasure, of lives, of glory, precipitated the fall of the incompetent Newcastle ministry, and led to the res- toration to power of William Pitt, — the only man who seemed capable of raising England from the abyss of disaster, if not of degradation, into which she had sunk. Notwithstanding the successes of the French in the last two campaigns, the condition of Canada was one of extreme exhaus- tion. During the weary months of winter, a severe f^ine prevailed. The cultivation of the fields had been itss. abandoned to women and children, every able-bodied man being enrolled in the army. The meagre crops that had been sown were almost a total failure. In many parishes, scarce enough grain was reaped to supply seed for the next sowing. The soldiers and citizens were put upon short allowance of horse-flesh and bread. The daily rations were continuously reduced till, in April, the allowance of bread was only two ounces. Men fell down from faintness in the streets of Quebec. Three hundred Acadian refugees perished of hunger. During this period of general distress, Bigot, the Intendant, 28 218 BISTORT OF CANADA. and his partners in crime and extortion, — Cadet, Yarin, De Pean and others, — battened like vampires upon the life-blood of their unhappy country. Bigot, the chief criminal, was mean in stature, repulsive in countenance, odious in life. His rapacity was almost incredible. He seized, in the King's name, all the grain, cattle, and horses on which his minions could lay hands, and resold them, through his agents, at a tenfold increase in price. He actually, in this time of famine, ex- ported large quantities of breadstuff's to the West Indies, and ' made enormous profits from the enhanced cost of food at home. He, with his creatures, monopolized the commerce of the colony and the army contracts ; defrauding both the King, the people, and the soldiers, by false entries, exorbitant charges, wholesale embezzlement, wretched supplies, and the most flagrant bribery, corruption, extortion, and robbery. He destroyed the financial credit of the colony, by the lavish issue of paper money, under his own signature, made payable at the Eoyal Treasury of France, which soon became utterly worthless. While the country languished, this gang of thieves amassed princely fortunes. Their houses were the scenes of the most unblushing profligacy, gambling, and licentious riot and excess. " It would seem," wrote Montcalm, " that all are in haste to be rich before the colony is altogether lost to France." They seemed even desirous to precipitate that loss, in order that they might cover their own misdeeds. The mother country was herself exhausted by the exactions of a world-wide war, and her civil and military administration was corrupted and enfeebled by the profligacy of the court. She could send few re-enforcements of men or money, military stores or food, to the colony ; and most of the victualling ships sent out in the spring of 1758 were -captured by the British. CAMPAIGNS OF 17i3 AND 1759. 219 CHAPTER XVn. THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. Pitt, Prime Minister of England — Fall of Lonisburg — Abercrombie's Defeat at Ticonderoga — Bradstreet Captures Fort Frontenac — Fort Du Quesne Eednced — Ee-named Fort Pitt — Hapless Condition of Canada — The Toils of Fate Closing — British Victories around the "World — The Hero of Louis- burg — Fall of Fort Niagara — Amherst Eeduces Ticonderoga — Exploit and Suiferiugs of Major Eogers. THE disasters of tlie English only served to arouse their intenser energy and firmer determination. The iinfor- tmiate Newcastle ministry resigned, and William Pitt, for a time excluded from the Cabinet, by the unanimous voice of the country was summoned to the chief place in the great Council of the nation. In a venal age, he had proved himself an incor- ruptible statesman. He had no private ends to serve, and sought only the glory of England, and the humbling of her enemies. "I am sure that I can save the country," he ex- claimed, to the Duke of Devonshire, "audi am certain that no one else can do it." His lofty courage, noble patriotism, and honest administration were the guaran- tee of success. He resolved on the abso- lute conquest of Canada, even at the cost of Ens'Lind's "last shillins: and last man." He had a difficult task before him. ' ' The French are masters to do what they please in America," wrote Lord Chesterfield ; "we are no longer a nation ; I never yet saw so dreadful a prospect." Yet Pitt william pitt. raised England from this' Slough of Despond, to the pinnacle of glory. He infused his own energy into every branch of the public service. On the plains of Plassey, in the trenches of Louisburg, on the heights of Abraham, his influence was felt. From the admiral of the fleet, to the sailor before the mast ; 220 BISTORT OF CANADA. from the genercO.! of the army, to the private soldier, every one caught the inspiration of his intrepid spirit. Pitt selected his agents, not by the principles of favouritism, but for their ability to do the work required of them. Lord Loudon was therefore recalled, notwithstanding his elevated rank. Colonel Amherst, an officer of energy and prudence, was raised to the rank of major-general, and received command of the projected expedition against Louisburg. Under- him were Whitmore, Lawrence, and Wolfe, as brigadier-generals, — officers whose brilliant career amply vindicated their selection. To the Plon. Edward Boscawen was given the command of the fleet. Lord Abercrombie, who was personally unknown to Pitt, was left in command of the army destined to attack Crown Point ; with the brave but ill-fated Lord Howe as his second in authority. Expeditions against forts Du Quesne, Niagara, and Frontenac were organized, and assigned to able officers. The supreme attack was to be made upon the heart of Canada, at Quebec and Montreal. The military forces were increased to fift}^ thousand men, twenty thousand of whom were British regulars. The French girded themselves for what they felt to be the death-wrestle. " We will bury ourselves, if need be," wrote Montcalm, *' beneath the ruins of the colony." The first blow was struck at Louisburg. Its fortress had fallen greatly into decay since the siege of 1742 ; but it was garrisoned by three thousand five hundred men, and supported by ten ships of war. Early in June, Admiral Boscawen, with thirty-seven ships of war, and one hundred and twenty trans- ports, conveying twelve thousand troops, arrived at daybreak off Louisburg. Amherst had intended, if possible, to surprise the fort, and had issued orders for the concealment of all lights on shipboard, and for the observance of perfect silence during the landing. For six days, however, a rough sea, dashing in heavy breakers on the iron coast, prevented debarkation ; the French, meanwhile, actively throwing up earthworks all along the shore. Early on the seventh day, Wolfe, with a strong force, gallantly landed through the surf. The French swarmed CAMPAIGNS OF 175S AXD 1759. 221 on the shore, and poured a heavy fire into the boats. Still, not a shot was returned, till, struggling to the land, the soldiers gave a hearty British cheer, and jDromptly dislodged the enemy from their earthworks, and drove them flying over the plain. A hundred boats had been swamped or wrecked in the debarka- tion, with the loss of several lives ; and for two days the fury of the waves prevented the landing of siege guns, tents, and necessary stores. The siege was vigorously pressed by day and night, for seven weeks. The resistance was brave but ineffectual. Several sorties were made, not without serious damage to the besiegers. Madame Drucourt, the wife of the Governor, encouraged the garrison by her heroism. During the bombardment, she often appeared among the soldiers on the ramparts, and even fired the great guns, and encouraged with rewards the most expert artillery-men. With her own hands, she dressed the wounds of the injured, and, by the exhibition of her own courage, enbraved the hearts of the defenders of the fort. Every effort, however, was in vain. The walls crumbled rapidly under the heavy fire of the besiegers. Several vessels had been sunk at the harbour's mouth, to prevent the entrance of the British. A live shell set fire to a French seventy-four gun ship in the harbour. Its magazine exploded and set fire to two other ships. Two 3^oung oflicers, Captains La Torey and Balfour, rowed into the harbour on a dark night, with the boats of the fleet, cut out one of the remaining vessels, and burnt the other. Three gaping breaches now yawned in the walls. The British batteries were pushed up to the ramparts. Four-fifths of the guns were dismounted. The town and fortress were well-nigh demolished by shot and shell. The French fleet was destroyed, and the offing was white with the blockading British squadron. Yalour could do no more, and on the 26th of July, Drucourt capitulated. Fifteen thousand stand of arms, two hundred and forty pieces of ordnance, and immense quantities of stores, fell into the hands of the British. Eleven stand of colours, as trophies of the conquest, were presented to the sovereign, and then solemnly 222 HISTORY OF CANADA'. dejjosited in St. Paul's Cathedral. The inhabitants of Louis- burg v/cre conveyed to France, and the garrison and sailors, over five thousand in number, were sent prisoners to England. TIio fortress, constructed at such cost, and assailed and defended with such valour, soon fell into utter ruin. "Where giant navies, rode, and earth-shaldng war achieved such vast exploits, to-day the peaceful waters of the placid bay kiss the deserted strand,' and a small fishing hamlet and a few mouldering ruin-mounds! mark the grave of so much military pomp, and power, and glory. After the reduction of Louisburg, "Wolfe was despatched upon the uncongenial task of destroying the French settlements at Miramichi, the Bay of Chaleurs, Gasp6, and the lower St. Lawrence. This stern military necessity, as it was conceived to be, was promptly executed. All the Acadian villages were laid in ruins, and hundreds of their inhabitants were made prisoners, or driven from their devastated homes, to find refuge in the wilderness. The intendant of Mont Louis, a flourishing fishing station, offered a ransom of one hundred and fifty thou- sand livres, if the village and the property of the inhabitants should be spared ; but a stern retaliation for ravages on English! territory, and the resolve to jjrevent, as far as possible, the revictualling of Quebec, consigned immense stores of grain and fish to the flames. Similar destruction of public and private property, took place on the -Bay of Fundy, and on the Eiver St. John. It is one of the terrible retributions of war, ' that even the chivalric nature of Wolfe was unable to divest of its harshness a movement by which so many innocent persons were made to suflfer for their fidelity to their country, and their rightful sovereign. The victory of Louisburg was soon followed by a terrible defeat. In the month of June, the largest army ever yet seen on the American continent, was assembled at Albany, under the command of Lord Abercrombie. It was composed of a strong force of royal artillery, six thousand three hundred and fifty regular troops, and nine thousand provincial militia. The object of the expedition was the destruction of Ticondcroga CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. 223 and Crown Point. The formidable force reached Lake Georire o without misadventure, and encamped on the ground still en- cumljcred by the blackened ruins of Fort William Henry. On a brilliant July morning, the fifth day of the month, the whole force embarked in over a thousand barges and batteaux, and in bannered pomp and splendour, with blare of music, flash of oars, and gleam of arms, sailed down the lovely lake, accom- panied by a number of rafts, armed with artillery, designed to overcome any oppo- sition to their landing. As night fell, the army debarked and encamped for a few general abercrombie. hours, amid the picturesque loveliness of Sabbath-day Point. At midnight they hastily re-embarked, leaving the bivouac fires brightly burning, in order to deceive the watchful scouts of the enemy. At five o'clock in the morning, they reached the nar- roAvs, where Ticonderoga, or Carillon, as the French called it, guarded the entrance to the river, leading to Lake Champlain. The British advance-guard, of two thousand men, under General Bradstreet, landed without opposition, and,the whole army soon followed ; and began to advance in four columns. "These peoj)le march carefully," said Montcalm, who was soon informed of their movement; *'but if they give me time to occupy the position I have chosen, on the heights of Carillon, I will beat them." The British columns soon became entan^-led in the forest, and suddenly the right wing, under Lord Howe, came upon a detachment of three hundred French, who had also lost their way. A sharp skirmish ensued, in which the French were nearly all captured or killed, but almost at the first fire, the young and gallant Lord Howe, the favourite of the army, fell at the head of his column. All energy and spirit seemed to pass away from the expedition, with his death. He hud judiciously trained his troops in the tactics necessary for the rugged service of forest warfare, and had cheerfully endured the same privations and fatigue that were encountered by the private soldiers. 224 HISTORY OF CANADA. That niglit the army bivouacked upon the scene of the conflict, and the next day Abercrombie, who seems to have completely lost his head, ordered a retreat to the point of embarkation. Bradstreet, however, with a strong force, was sent forward to occupy a position at some saw-mills, within two miles of Mont- calm's lines, where he was joined by the bulk of the army. Montcalm, who had with him nearly four thousand of his best troops, had strengthened a naturally formidable position by an earthwork, half a mile in front of the fort, before which, for a hundred yards, sloped a steep glacis, covered with an impen- etrable abattis of felled trees, the sharpened stakes pointing outward. Both ends of this line could have been turned with slight difficulty, as Montcalm had been unable to complete his design of covering his flanks by entrenchments. This fact, however, was not discovered till too late. Early on the morning of the 8th of June, Abercrombie reconnoitred this position, and fearing the re-enforcement of the enemy, rashly resolved on an attack in column, without waiting for cannon. The assault was gallantly made. For nearly six hours, under a burning sun, again and again the columns were hurled against the terrible abattis, and as often staggered and recoiled, before a withering point-blank fire of cannon and musketry. The brave Highlanders especially, — lithe, active, and lightly clad, — hacked their way through with their claymores, or clambered over the abattis, and many of them died on the very ramparts of Montcalm's entrenchments. That gallant officer, by reckless daring and personal exposure, animated his men, while the British general issued his ill-judged commands, leading only to disaster and defeat, from a safe distance in the rear. Upon a rude barrier, which the artillery, close at hand, could have swept away in an hour, the flower of the British troops were sacrificed, through the incompetence, obstinacy, and presumption of their general. Baffled and broken, with the loss of two thousand men, the more than decimated army retreated panic-stricken to their batteaux, and speedily placed the length of the lake between them and the victorious enemy. Abercrombie, bitterly chagrined, threw up!. CAMPAIGN'S OF 175S AND 1759. 225 an entrenched camp on the site of Fort "William Heniy, and sent his artillery to Albany, and thence to Xe^v York, for safety. The loss of the French was three hundred and seventy-six killed and wounded. Montcalm modestly wrote to Yaudrueil : "The only credit I can claim, is the glory of commanding such valorous troops. The success of the affair is due to the incredible bravery of both officers and men." Without detract- ing from the valour of the French, who fought under cover, althouofh asfainst jrreat odds, we think that of the British troops, marching unfalteringly to death, against that terrible abattis, and under an iron hail, was still more heroic. The disgTace of this disaster was partly retrieved, a few weeks later, by the capture of Fort Frontenac, the French naval depot at the foot of Lake Ontario, by General Bradstreet. With twenty-eight hundred men he advanced, by way of the Mohawk and Oswego, and crossing the lake in open boats, invested the fort, which was guarded by only one hundred and sixty men. After two days' bombardment it surrendered, and was burned to the ground, together with an immense quantity of stores, and seven armed vessels. Thus, without the loss of a man, was destroyed the French naval supremacy on Lake Ontario. The loss of the stores seriously crippled the opera- tions of the French, by preventing the replenishment with supplies of the "V\'e stern forts. Yaudreuil ungenerously en- deavoured to exculpate himself for his neglect to re-enforce Fort Frontenac, by laying the blame of its surrender upon De Xoyau, its commandant. The French, meanwhile, harassed the outposts of Aber- crombic's army, and cut off stragglers and convoys. Li the month of July, they surprised and massacred, near Fort Edward, two bodies of provincials and wagoners, numbering over a hundred and fifty men. !Major Eogers, already famous in border warfare, was dispatched with seven hundred men to punish the marauders.- His force was soon reduced by hard- ships and desertions, to five hundred, when he encountered a body of the enemy, of about equal strength. A fierce contlict ensued, in which the French were soundly beaten, leaving a 29 226 BISTORT OF CANADA. hundred and ninety men, dead or wounded, on tlie field. The loss to the British amounted to forty men. In order to maintain communication with Lake Ontario, by way of the Mohawk Eiver, and to confirm the Iroquois in their allegiance, Brigadier-General Stanwix was despatched, with a strong force, to construct a fort at the portage between the Mohawk and Oneida Lake. This important, but unostentatious service, he successfully accomplished, and the ruins of the fort which he built, whose site is now occupied by the town of Kome, still bear his name. In the West, General Forbes, with a force of fifteen hundred regulars, and five thousand provincial militia, advanced against Fort Du Quesne. Stricken with mortal illness, he was borne, a dying man, across the Alleghanies in a litter. When he had arrived within ninety miles of Lu Quesne, Forbes dispatched Colonel Bouquet, with two thousand men, to take post at Eoyal Hanna, while the main army labouriously constructed a new road through the wilderness, avoiding the ill-fated route, by which Braddock had marched to his death. Bouquet, fired with military ambition, detached Major Grant, with a force of eight hundred Highlanders, and a company of Virginia militia- men, to reconnoitre the fort. Grant, deceived as to the strength of the garrison, divided his troops so as to form an ambuscade, and at daybreak, on the 14th of September, beat a march on his drums as a challenge to the enemy. The French, who had been re-enforced, and were now superior in number to the assailants, poured forth, with their Indian allies and beat, in detail, the separate divisions of Grant's troops, capturing three hundred of the Highlanders, together with their commander. Forbes advanced with the main body of the army, as fast as the difficult nature of the country would permit, but not till the 5th of November, did he effect a jiuiction with Bouquet, at Eoyal Hanna. The season being so far advanced, it was at first determined to proceed no further ; but intelligence being received of the weakness of the fort, it was resolved to press on. Colonel Washington commanded the advance-guard. In- fusing his own energy into his troops, although they were CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. 227 ill-fed and ill-clothed, he conducted them through fifty miles of wilderness, over hills already white with snow. The French commandant, being disappointed in receiving military stores, in consequence of the fall of Fort Frontenac, fired the works, and by the light of the conflagration, the disheartened garrison, five hundred iu number, retreated down the Ohio. On the 25th of November, Washhigtou had the honour of planting the red- cross flag on the ramparts of Foi-t Pitt, as it was thenceforth called. The name of the Great Commoner is inscribed forever on the gateway of the Ohio valley, in the designation of the city of Pittsburg, which occupies the site — of disastrous memory — of Fort Du Quesne. This event closed the campaign for the year 1758. Never- theless, the toils were gathering around the doomed colony of Canada. A fervent appeal was made to the mother country for assistance. But the exhaustion produced by the European Avar, and by the prodigality of the court, jjrevented the sending of re-enforcements. " When the house is on fire," said the min- ister, "one does not mind the stables." The colonists rallied for a supreme effort for the defence of their hearths and homes. Famine stared them in the face. The half-tilled acres brought forth but meagre crops, and the shameless exactions of Bigot were more grinding than ever. The entire population, from sixteen to sixty, was summoned to the field, but though every sixth soul in the colony responded, they mustered only fifteen thousand, of whom many were unavailable for service. The chief dependence was upon ten skeleton regiments of regulars, in which ghastly gaps were worn by siege and sortie, by famine and disease. To these the British opposed fifty thousand well- armed troops, and copious reserves. The French clergy ex- horted the people to repentance and increased religious devo- tion, and invoked the aid of Heaven as their only succour. Differences of opinion arose, too, between Montcalm and Vau- dreuil, the Governor, as to the plans of defence. The former desired his recall, but at the command of duty remained, to lay his life an offering upon the altar of his country. " Canada must be taken in this or the next campaign," he wrote, with a 228 nisTORT OF Canada. prescience of approaching destiny, "without unexpected good fortune, or great fault of the enemy." Yet, he relaxed no effort for the securing of victory ; but rather redoubled his diligence in preparing for the mevitable struggle. Stores of provisions and military materiel were collected at the j)rincipal strategic points. The fortifications were strengthened, and vessels were constructed for maintaining the control of Lake Chami^lain. On the part of Great Britain, tremendous efforts were made for what was felt to be the supreme struggle with the French jDower in America. England, like a rampant lion, was rousing herself for conquest. The House of Commons voted £12,- 000,000 sterling for the campaign of 1759. Pitt infused his owii spirit into every branch of the service. The world was ringing w^ith British victories. In India, a merchant's clerk, with a handful of men, hud conquered an emi^ire, where the foot of Alexander had faltered. Senegal, Goree, Guadaloupe, her fairest tropical possessions, were wrested from France. On the bloody plain of Minden, her choicest troops were crushed before the British lines. At Quiberon Bay, her fleet, destined for the invasion of England, was shattered by the gallant Hawke. Alike on the banks of the Ganges, and on the banks of the Ohio, on the forts of the Gold Coast, and on the ramparts of Louisburg, the red-cross banner waved triumph- antly, and it was destined soon to crown the heights of Quebec. In the Indian Seas, on the Spanish Main, on the Atlantic, and on the Pacific, Britain's fleets were every^vhere victorious. Pitt chose his instruments well. With the instinct of genius, he discerned the surpassing merit of the young hero of Louis- burg, and entrusted to him the conquest of Quebec. "Wolfe was bom in the village of Westerham, in Kent. His military instincts were hereditary, his father having served with distinc- tion in the continental wars of Marlborough. Though only thirty-three years of age when assigned the task which he accomplished at the cost of his life, Wolfe was already a veteran soldier, having been eighteen years in the army. At twenty- two, he was a lieutenant-colonel, and at Dettingen, Fontenoy, CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. 229 and Culloden, by his almost reckless bravery, he had won dis- tinguished honours. Though raised so rapidly to the rank of general, even envy breathed no word of detraction against his name, and he commanded the love and admiration of the entire army. " Wolfe," says an accurate description of his person and character, "was a plain man. His features were sharp, his forehead some- what receding, his hair sandy, or red, and, contrary to the fashion of the time, was not powdered. His skin was coarse, fair, and freckled ; but his mouth wore a smiling and gentle expression, and his eyes were blue and benignant. He was delicate from early youth, and the seeds of fatal disease were implanted in his constitution. At first his address and wolfe. manner were unengaging, but he invariably endeared himself to all with whom he became fimiiliar. All his thoughts and actions were influenced by deep religious feeling. He was assiduously and conscientiously attentive to his profession, and was constitutionally and steadily daring. His mind was clear and active, his temper lively and almost impetuous. He was independent without pride, and generous to profusion. His disposition was candid, constant, and sincere. His letters breathed a spirit of tenderness and gentleness, over which ambition could not triumph." Such is the attractive portrait painted of Canada's darling hero, the conqueror of Quebec. To Amherst, who superseded Abercrombie as commander-in- chief, was assigned the reduction of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the capture of Montreal ; and to Prideaux, the destruction of Fort Niagara. These various movements were sustained by forces amounting to twenty-five thousand men, which were to concentrate at Quebec for the last act of the drama. The French had rebuilt Fort Frontenac, strengthened the garrison at Niagara, and occupied the passes of Carillon and the St. Lawrence. Bourlemaque, an accomplished officer, was 230 BISTORT OF CANADA. to hold the forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, as long as possible ; but if overpowered, he was to retire to Isle-aux-Noix, at the head of Lake Champlain, and there, aided by the ship- ping, to prevent, by his utmost efforts, the advance of Amherst's forces to join the army of Wolfe, which was expected to attack Quebec. The Chevalier de la Come entrenched himself above Montreal, with eight hundred regulars and militia, to resist any atterhpt to descend the St. Lawrence, by a British force from the lakes. The diminished forces of the French were to act strictly on the defensive, retiring, in case of defeat, on Quebec, where the final stand was to be made. The first blow fell on Niagara. General Prideaux, with four thousand regulars and militia, and a large body of Iroquois, under Sir William Johnson, advanced, by way of the Mohawk and Oswego, to Lake On- tario. Leaving a force of occupation at Oswego, he advanced in many batteaux to Niagara, and early in July, 1758, invested the fort situated at the mouth of the river, which was garrisoned by about six hundred men. Trenches were opened and daily pushed nearer the works, and a brisk fire was kept up ; but General Prideaux, being killed by the bursting of a mortar, the command devolved on Sir Wil- liam Johnson. M. Pouchot, the French commandant, had summoned to his aid the garrisons of Detroit, Presque Isle, and the Western forts. His defensive works were almost destroyed, and the bastions were strengthened with packages of peltries. The fire of the British increased in violence, and the garrison was almost exhausted by incessant and harassing service ; and was greatly reduced by deaths. Meanwhile, M. D'Aubrey was hastening to the relief of the beleaguered fort, with a force of twelve hundred Frenchmen and fourteen hundred Indians. Sir William Johnson, who, through the vigilance of his scouts, was informed of their approach, made preparations for their reception. Leaving a sufficient force in the trenches to keep up the bombardment, and to resist any sortie that might be FORT NIAGARA. CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. 231 made from the fort, he led the bulk of his army to inter- cept the re-enforcements of the enemy. A strong force he concealed behind a rampart of felled trees, to the left of the road leading to the Falls, by which D' Aubrey must approach ; while the advance guard was strongly posted in the woods. The French were at no great distance, and thus the two armies bivouacked, that warm midsummer night, which was to many, on both sides, their last on earth. On the morning of July 24th, the leading files of the French were seen advancing through the woods, supported by large bodies of Indians. The British outposts fell back steadily on their reserves. Sir William Johnson's Iroquois warriors at- tempted to parley with the Indian allies of the French, and to prevent them from engaging in the conflict, but without success. D' Aubrey now brought up the main body of his force, and prepared for the engagement, on which depended the control of the great lakes, the Ohio valley, and the far "West. The Indian allies of the French rushed to the attack with the utmost impetuosity, yelling their terrible war-whoop. But it no longer caused such dismay, as when it struck terror to the hearts of Braddock's grenadiers. The English lines stood firm as on a dress-parade, and with a few steady volleys, not only withstood the fierce onset, but so completely swept away their Indian assailants, that they rallied no more, but fled panic-stricken through the woods. The Iroquois now fell on the flanks of D' Aubrey's command, and the British veterans rushed to .the charge with resistless force. The French, out- numbered, abandoned by their allies, and attacked on all sides, broke into precipitous flight, and were pursued by the Iroquois, eager as hounds slipped from the leash, for the congenial task of ruthless slaughter, and the forest glades were filled with dead or dying men. M. Pouchot, with his beleaguered garrison, had awaited with the utmost anxiety the result of the conflict, the distant sounds of which were borne to their ears. With D' Aubrey's defeat, the last hope of succour disappeared. All the honours of war were granted to the garrison, which had made such a gallant 232 HISTORY OF CANADA. defence, and at midday, on the 26th of July, with colours flying, drums beating, and bayonets fixed, they marched out of the crumbling fort, and laid down their arms on the shores of the neighbouring lake. They were conveyed as prisoners to New York, and the women and non-combatants were sent safely to France. The control of the great lakes passed away from the French forever, and General Bouquet speedily re- duced all the "Western forts, except that of Detroit which, for sometime longer, continued to hold out against the British. During the same month of July, an attempt was made by M. de la Corne, with a force of nearly two thousand French and Indians, to capture, by surprise, the British fort at Oswego. The vigilance of Colonel Ilaviland, the officer in command, however, frustrated that design, and the assailants were driven off with severe loss. The chief command of the British forces in America, had been assigned, as we have seen, to General Amherst. The movements of that officer must now engage our atten- tion. Early in May, he reached Albany, the appointed rendezvous for the provincial and regular troops. The whole month was LORD AMHERST, employed in organizing and drilling the colo- nial regiments, and constructing boats for their transport on Lake George. An epidemic of desertion among the troops, threatened seriously to cripple the efficiency of the army. Even the infliction of the death-penalty on four of the deserters, by sentence of court-martial, did not altogether prevent this un- soldierly conduct. The French continued to harass the English colonists, by scouting-parties, composed largely of blood-thirsty savages, who murdered and scalped men, women, and children indis- criminately. To prevent these outrages, General Amherst forwarded a dispatch to the Governor of Canada, to the efiect that he was determmed, " should the enemy continue to murder and scalp women and children, who are the subjects of the King of Great Britain, to revenge it by the death of two men CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AXD 1759. 233 of the enemy, for every woman or child murdered by them." The barbarizing effects of the employment of Indian allies in this cruel war, was felt by both nations. Even civilized men, both French and English, acquired a fatal dexterity in the savage practice of tearing the reeking scalps from the skulls of their victims, as the proof of victory. Not only were men in arms and bastioned foi-ts the objects of attack, but helpless non-combatants were ruthlessly slain, and peaceful hamlets and smiling cornfields were given to the flames. And over these scenes of slaughter and desolation, waved the lilied flag of France, or the red-cross banner of Britain, in sanction of the unchristian and unnatural strife. It is a crimson page in our country's history, the like of which, let us hope, shall never more be seen. On the longest day in the month of June, General Amherst, with the bulk of his army, numbering about six thousand men, of all arms, advanced from Fort Edward to Lake George. Here, on the ruins of Fort William Henry, the general con- structed a small fortification, to which was given the name of Fort George. Another month was employed in bringing up additional troops, stores, boats, and materiel of war, and in preparing a floating battery on the lake. Frequent skirmishes took place with the French and Indians, generally resulting in loss to the British. On the 21st of July, the army, numbering over eleven thou- sand, about equally divided as regulars and colonial militia, with a strong force of artillery, advanced in four columns down the lake. Mindful of Abercrombie's disaster, Amherst observed exceeding caution on approaching Carillon. A brief skirmish with the enemy took place, after landing, in which the French gave way, and the British took up a strong position at the saw-mills, memorable in Abercrombie's defeat. But the genius of Montcalm was absent, and De Bourlemaque, abandoning the lines, crowned with the victory of the previous year, retired within the fort, which was garrisoned with three thousand four hundred men. The British grenadiers immediately occupied the deserted lines, and the rest of the army encamped in the 30 234 HISTORY OF CANADA. rear. From the fort, the French kept up a strong fire on the position of the British, but the latter were completely sheltered by the breastworks thrown up by the enemy for their own defence. Perceiving that Fort Carillon was no longer tenable against the superior force and steady determination of the British, Bourlemaque resolved to abandon it. He therefore silently withdrew his garrison to Fort Frederick, at Crown Point, leaving four hundred men to keep the foe at bay as long as possible. In order the better to mask the retreat, this gallant little band made a vigorous sortie, and attacked the besiegers in the advanced line of trenches, and for three days longer held in check an army of eleven thousand men. Having obtained the range of the British camp, their active fire did considerable damage. Among others, Colonel Townshend, ' ' the Lord Howe of Amherst's army," was killed by a cannon shot in the trenches. Late, on the night of July 26th, a deserter from the French informed the besiegers that the fort was completely abandoned, having been previously mined, and the magazine and double- shotted guns connected with a lighted fuse. A tremendous explosion, shaking the ground like an earthquake, confirmed the story, and a volcano of fire and burning embers illumined the midnight heavens. The barracks, stores, and wooden ramparts now caught fire, and their lurid blaze, with the flash of exploding cannon, made luminous the forest, far and near. Amherst promptly occupied the smoking ruins, extinguished the flames, and set vigorously to work to rejjair the defensive works of the fort. Having secured his position, he sent a force to reconnoitre, and feel the strength of the enemy at Fort Frederick ; but it was found to have been already abandoned. Amherst, with the main body of his army, soon took possession, and wasted much time in the construction of a new fort, which the conquest of Canada would render useless, to which the name of Crown Point was given. Thus, at last, was secured, with a comparatively slight loss, the strongholds which com- manded the gateway of Canada, the attempt to reduce which had proved so disastrous to Abercrombie, with a much superior force. The British expended on the reconstruction of these CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759. 235 forts the enormous sum, for those days, of £200,000. Their ravelins and demilunes, curtains and casemates have lonff since crumbled to de- cay. The summer tourist, wandering amid their grass- grown trenches and ramparts, beholds slight trace of thoso deeds of violence and blood of which they were the scene. Bourlemaque had taken up a strono' kthns of ticonderoga. position at Isle-aux-Noix, at the northern end of Lake Cham- plain, commanding the navigation of the Eichelieu Eiver. Here, he strongly entrenched himself, and determined to hold his position to the last extremity, and to prevent the advance of Amherst to the St. Lawrence. He mustered a force of three thousand five hundred men, and the possession of four well- armed and well-manned vessels, gave him the command of Lake Champlain. Amherst, more cautious than enterprising, instead of attempting to force the position of Bourlemaque, spent the summer in constructing vessels to cope with the little French fleet upon the lake. AVhen at length the vessels and a floating battery were ready, it was the middle of October. Several inefi(ectual naval skirmishes with the enemy took place on the unfamiliar waters of the lake, resulting in the beaching of several vessels of both fleets. The bleak storms of autumn now prevented further active operations. The army, held in check on the very threshold of Canada, was compelled to go into winter quarters at Crown Point. Similar tardiness characterized the action of General Gage, who had superseded Sir William Johnson, in command of Prideaux's army, after the victory of Fort Niagara. He had been ordered by Amherst to make a demonstration from Oswego against La Presentation (Ogdensburg), where the French had 236 BISTORT OF CANADA. established a strong post. The difficulties of the undertaking were considerable, but instead of making a vigorous effort to overcome them, he allowed the harvest-time of opportunity to pass by unimproved, and the reduction of the post did not take place till the following year. One of the most daring and difficult exploits executed during this campaign, was Major Eogers' expedition against the In- dians on Lake St. Francis. These Indians had detained as prisoners, an English officer and his party, who had been sent with a flag of truce to convey a proffer of amity and alliance, from General Amherst. Early in October, Major Eogers set out from Crown Point, with two hundred men, to punish the perfidy of this tribe. His route lay through a tangled and almost impenetrable wilderness. The hardships and privations of the three weeks' march, reduced the force by more than one- fourth. At length they came, undiscovered, upon the object of their search. The Indians were engaged in one of their glutton feasts and war-dances. When sunk in the profound torpor that follows these excesses, the British soldiers burst upon the sleepers, and scarce one of the savage warriors escaped. Two hundred were slain, and the English captives were rescued from slavery. In the meanwhile, a party of Frenchmen, superior in numbers, captured the boats of the English, and threatened to cut off their retreat. Eogers' only plan of escape was to break up his force into small parties, which should retrace their way as best they could through the wilderness of mountains and forests, to the English settlements. They suffered in- credible hardships in the attempt. They were reduced to the utmost extremity of privation. They devoured the leather straps and covers of their cartouch-boxes. They were at one time four days without food. Many perished of hunger, others went crazed with suffering and despair, and even devoured, in their frenzy, the flesh of some of their murdered companions, cut off by the Indians. At length, in the bleak November weather, looking more like spectres than like human beings, they reached the abode of civilized men. Such was one of the tragic episodes of the conquest of Canada. CONQUEST OF CANADA, 237 CHAPTEE XVm. THE CONQUEST OF CANADA, 1759-1760. The Expedition against Quebec — Wolfe occupies the Island of Orleans — Mid- night Alarm — The Fire-rafts— Point Levi occupied — The Siege opened— Straits of the Inhabitants — Heights of Montmorenci occupied — Wolfe and Admu-al Rons above Quebec — The Attack at Montmorenci — Terrific Can- nonade—A gallant Assault and disastrous Defeat — Wolfe's Illness— An audacious Design — The Eve of the Battle— The British gain the Heights above Quebec — The Battle of the Plains of Abraham — The Death of Wolfe and Montcalm — British Occupation of Quebec— A severe Winter — De Levi attempts the Eecapture of Quebec — Battle of Ste. Foye — French Siege of Quebec — English Fleet arrives — Siege raised — Amherst's advance down the St. Lawrence — Capture of La Presentation — Disaster at Cedar Eapids — Surrender of Montreal and Capitulation of Canada. THE last act of this historic drama, the conquest of Quebec, must now be described. Simultaneously with the opera- tions of Prideaux and Amherst upon the outposts of it59. Canada, Wolfe was attacking its heart and menacing its very- life. About the middle of February, a powerful British fleet of twenty-two ships of the line, five frigates, nineteen smaller vessels, and a crowd of transports, under the command of Admiral Saunders, a brave and judicious officer, sailed from England for the St. Lawrence. Louisburg was the appointed place of rendezvous, but on account of the ice the fleet was compelled for some time to take refuge in the safe and commo- dious harbour of Halifax. Admiral Durell was despatched "udth a small squadron to intercept an expected convoy of provi- sion and store ships destined for the relief of Quebec. He was only pai-tially successful, capturing two vessels, but with them, the important prize of French charts of the St. Lawrence, which were of great service to the British fleet in the somewhat difficult navigation of the river. It was not till the first week in June that Saunders' fleet cleared from Louisburg, convejdng a force of eight thousand regular troops under the command of Wolfe. On the twenty- I:ov5 mSTORT OF CiXJDA. fiftli of the month he anchored off the Island of Orleans, a short distance below Quebec. The French had relied much on the dangerous passage of '*the Traverse," as impeding the progress of the fleet ; but, by means of the charts and careful soundings, it was safely overcome. Durell, who led the van. carried French coloui's at his masthead till he reached Bic. in order to prevent op]30sition from the habifans. Pilots hastened on board to offer their assistance, and messengers were despatched to Quebec conve^'ing intelligence of the anivrJ of anticipated succours from France. Great was the disap- pointment when the union-jack was run up to the peak. It is said that a Canadian priest, who was watching the vessels through a telescope, was so overwhelmed with the mental shock that he instantly fell down dead. As the snowy sails of the hostile fleet were seen roimding the Island of Orleans, the in- habitants of Quebec thronged the churches to offer up their prayers for the preservation of their country. The British troops promptly occupied the fair and fertile island, with whose CITT OF QITEBEC. loveliness they were delighted, after their long confinement on shipboard. TTolfe hastened to the upper end of the island to get his first view of Quebec. Before him rose the rock)- height, crowned COXQUEST OF CAXADA. 239 vr'ith. massy walls and ramparts, and bristling witli gims, — the Ehrenbreitstein or Gibraltar of America, and one of the stron- gest natural positions in the world. As he viewed the steep escarpment and the frowning batteries that lined the river-front, the position of the French seemed almost impregnable. IMontcalm had strongly fortified with redoubts and earthworks the precipitous banks, from Cape Eouge, eight miles above Quebec, to Montmorenci, as far below, and had mustered a force of some thirteen thousand men of every age, from boys of thirteen to veterans of eighty. De Bougainville* commanded the riirht wim? of the armv to the west of the city, De Levi the left on the extreme east, and Montcalm held the centre with the bulk of the army, while Indians scoured the woods on the flanks and in the rear. A strong boom, sunken ships and floating batteries, closed the mouth of the St. Charles ; and shoal water and mud-flats, along the Beauport shore, made landing almost impossible. '\"\Tiile AVolfe was gazing on the fortress whose conquest was to give him an early grave and undying fame, a violent thun- der-storm burst over his head, and a hurricane swept over the river. Some of the transports dragged their anchors, and were driven ashore. The ships of war, with difficulty, kept their moorings, and several of their boats were swamped. As the storm passed away, night came on, still and dark and starless. At midnight, as the British sentries paced their round on the rocky shores of the island, they noticed certain dark objects drifting down the river with the ebbing tide. It was soon apparent that they were six fire-ships, prepared by Mont- calm for the destruction of the British fleet. T^Tiile the sentries gazed on these strange objects, a deadly exj^losion of artillery flashed from their black hulks, crashed among the trees, and ploughed seething furrows in the water. SheEs and gi'enades burst in the vicinity of the astonished guard. Falling back on * It is a some^liat curious coincidence that James Cook, tlie distinguislied navigator, and Bougainville, the first French circumnavigator of the globe, Trere engaged in the service of their respective countries in this memorahle siege. 240 HISTORY OF CANADA. tlieir supiiorts they became inextricably confused in the woods. The roll of drums roused the sleeping camp, and the soldiers, anticipating an attack of the enemy in force, turned out under arms. Meanwhile, the fire-ships had burst into a blaze, the bright red flames leaping from shroud to shroud, defining in tracery of fire, each rope and spar, against the sable sky, and waving in broad banners from the burning sails and masts. The rushing river, the silent fleet, the English camp, the distant city were lit up almost as with the light of day. As the flames spread, with a burst like thunder, vessel after vessel exploded, and drifted i)erilously near the anchored fleet. As the burning T\Tecks approached, boats, well-manned by British tars grap- j)lcd them with iron hooks and towed them ashore, or sent them drifting harmlessly down the river. But for the premature exjolosion of the fire-ships serious damage might have been done the British fleet by this well-planned attack. The panic in the camp did not yield to the usual order and confidence, till daylight showed that no enemy was near. Wolfe now issued a proclamation to the people of Canada, ofiering safety of person and property and freedom in religion, and enjoining strict neutrality on civilians. It proved, how- ever, of little avail, as the French clergy exhorted their parish- ioners to resist to the utmost the invaders, as the enemies both of their religion and their race. Montcalm also commanded their services under penalty of death. They, with their Indian allies, proved only too skilful adepts in the art of forest war- fare, and in cutting ofi" stragglers, murdering and scalping the wounded, and mutilating the dead. In vain Wolfe remon- strated against these barbarities. In retaliation, therefore, and as a measure of military necessity, we must suppose, — for he was a man of humane instincts, — he ravaged the country and burned the villages both above and below Quebec. He for- bade, however, personal violence to prisoners and non-comba- tants, on pain of death. Admiral Saunders had been taught by the storm that the anchorage ofi' the Island of Orleans was by no means safe, and COXQUEST OF CANADA. 241 resolved to move his fleet into the basin in front of Point Levi. Brigadier-General INIonckton, with a strong force, was, there- fore, ordered to take possession of Point Levi, a somewhat strong position, which had been occupied by the French. The advance-