Part 1 (2/2)

They have heads, Cartier says, with no very great accuracy, ”of the style of a greyhound,” they are of spotless white and are found, he was told (incorrectly) only here in all the world. He anch.o.r.ed at Isle aux Coudres where he saw ”an incalculable number of huge turtles.” He admired its great and fair trees, now gone, alas, and gave the island its name--”the Isle of Hazel Nuts”--which we still use. For long years after Cartier, Malbaie remained a resort of its native savages only.

Perhaps an occasional trader came to give these primitive people, in exchange for their valuable furs, European commodities, generally of little worth. In time the Europeans learned the great value of this trade and of the land which offered it. So France determined to colonize Canada and in 1608, when Champlain founded a tiny colony at Quebec, the most Christian King had announced a resolution to hold the country. Ere long Malbaie was to have a European owner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAP a L'AIGLE FROM THE WEST Sh.o.r.e OF MURRAY BAY

”A great headland sloping down to the river in bold curves.”]

As Champlain went up from Tadousac to make his settlement of Quebec he noted Malbaie as sufficiently s.p.a.cious. But its many rocks, he thought, made it unnavigable, except for the canoes of the Indians, whose light craft of bark can surmount all kinds of difficulties. Perhaps Champlain is a little severe on Malbaie which, when one knows how, is navigable enough for coasting schooners, but his observations are natural for a pa.s.sing traveller. In the years after Quebec was founded no more can be said of Malbaie than that it was on the route from Tadousac to Quebec and must have been visited by many a vessel pa.s.sing up to New France's small capital on the edge of the wilderness. In the summer of 1629 the occasional savages who haunted Malbaie might have seen an unwonted spectacle. Three English s.h.i.+ps, under Lewis Kirke, had pa.s.sed up the river and to him, Champlain, with a half-starved force of only sixteen men, had been obliged to surrender Quebec. Kirke was taking his captives down to Tadousac when, opposite Malbaie, he met a French s.h.i.+p coming to the rescue. A tremendous cannonade followed, the first those ancient hills had heard. It ended in disaster to France, and Kirke sailed on to Tadousac with the French s.h.i.+p as a prize.

When peace came France began more seriously the task of settling Canada.

Though inevitably Malbaie would soon be colonized, it was still very difficult of access. A wide stretch of mountain and forest separated it from Quebec; not for nearly two hundred years after Champlain's time was a road built across this barrier. Moreover France's first years of rule in Canada are marked by conspicuous failure in colonizing work. The trading Company--the Company of New France or of ”One Hundred a.s.sociates”--to which the country was handed over in 1633, thought of the fur trade, of fisheries, of profits--of anything rather than settlement, and never lived up to its promises to bring in colonists.

It made huge grants of land with a very light heart. In 1653 a grant was made of the seigniory of Malbaie to Jean Bourdon, Surveyor-General of the Colony. But Bourdon seems not to have thought it worth while to make any attempt to settle his seigniory and, apparently for lack of settlement, the grant lapsed. Even the Company of New France treasured some idea that would-be land owners in a colony had duties to perform.

After thirty years France at length grew tired of the incompetence of the Company and in 1663 made a radical change. The great Colbert was already the guiding spirit in France and colonial plans he made his special care. Louis XIV too was already dreaming of a great over-sea Empire. The first step was to take over from the trading Company the direct government of the colony. The next was to get the right men to do the work in New France. An excellent start was made when, in 1665, Jean Talon was sent out to Canada as Intendant. He had a genius for organization. Though in rank below the Governor he, with the t.i.tle of Intendant, did the real work of ruling; the Governor discharged its ceremonial functions. Talon had a policy. He wished to colonize, to develop industry, to promote agriculture. In his capacious brain new and progressive ideas were working. He brought in soldiers who became settlers, among them the first real seigneur of Malbaie. An adequate military force, the Carignan regiment, came out from France to awe into submission the aggressive Iroquois, who long had made Montreal, and even Quebec itself, unsafe by their sudden and blood-thirsty attacks.

Travelling by canoe and batteau the regiment went from Quebec up the whole length of the St. Lawrence, landed on the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario, and marched into the Iroquois country. With amazement and terror, those arrogant savages saw winding along their forest paths the glittering array of France. Some of their villages were laid low by fire. The French regiment had accomplished its task; with no spirit left the Iroquois made peace.

A good many officers of the Carignan regiment, with but slender prospects in France, decided to stay in Canada and to this day their names--Chambly, Vercheres, Longueuil, Sorel, Berthier and others are conspicuous in the geography of the Province of Quebec. Malbaie was granted to a soldier of fortune, the Sieur de Comporte, who came to Canada at this time, but apparently was not an officer of the Carignan Regiment. His outlook at Malbaie cannot have been considered promising, for Pierre Boucher, who in 1664 published an interesting account of New France, declared the whole region between Baie St. Paul and the Saguenay to be so rugged and mountainous as to make it unfit for civilized habitation. But Philippe Gaultier, Sieur de Comporte, was of the right material to be a good colonist. Born in 1641 he was twenty-four years of age when he came to Canada. Already he had had some stirring adventures, one of which might well have proved grimly fatal had he not found a refuge across the sea. Comporte, then serving as a volunteer in a Company of Infantry led by his uncle, La Fouille, was involved in one of the b.l.o.o.d.y brawls of the time that Richelieu had made such stern efforts to suppress. The Company was in garrison at La Motte-Saint-Heray in Poitou. On July 9th, 1665, one of its members, Lanoraye, came in with the tale of an insult offered to the company by a civilian in the town.

Lanoraye had been marching through the streets with a drum beating, in order to secure recruits, when one Bonneau, the local judge, attacked him, and took away the drum. Lanoraye rushed to arouse his fellow soldiers. When Comporte and half a dozen other hot-heads had listened to his tale, they cried with one voice, ”Let us go and demand the drum. He must give it up.” So at eight or nine o'clock at night they set out to look for Bonneau. They came upon him unexpectedly in the streets of the town. He was accompanied by seven or eight persons with whom he had supped and all were armed with swords, pistols or other weapons. When Lanoraye demanded the drum, Bonneau was defiant and told him to go away or he should chastise him. The inevitable fight followed. Comporte, whose own account we have, says that it lasted some time and the results were fatal. Comporte declares that he himself struck no blows but the fact remains that two of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that they died. Comporte and the rest of the Company soon went to Canada. In their absence he and others were sentenced to death.

In Canada he appears to have behaved himself. In France a simple volunteer, in New France he became an important citizen. Talon trusted him and made him Quarter-Master-General. In 1672 Comporte received an enormous grant of land stretching along the St. Lawrence from Cap aux Oies to Cap a l'Aigle, a distance of some eighteen miles, including Malbaie and a good deal more. About the same time he married Marie Bazire, daughter of one of the chief merchants in the colony, by whom he had a numerous family. So eminently respectable was he that we find him churchwarden at Quebec. In time he retired from trade, in which he had engaged, and became a judge of the newly established Court of the Prevote at Quebec. This was not doing badly for a man under sentence of death. But over him still hung this affair in France and, in 1680, he pet.i.tioned the King to have the sentence annulled. For this pet.i.tion he secured the support of the families of the men killed in the quarrel fifteen years earlier. In 1681 Louis XIV's pardon was registered with solemn ceremonial at Quebec, and at last Comporte was no longer an outlaw.

He had plans to settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he resolved to sell two-thirds of his interest in the seigniory of Malbaie.

The price was a pitiful 1000 livres, or some $200, and the purchasers were Francois Hazeur, Pierre Soumande and Louis Marchand of Quebec, who were henceforth to get two-thirds of the profits of the seigniory. Then, in 1687, still young--he was only forty-six--Comporte died, as did also his wife, leaving a young family apparently but ill provided for. His name still survives at Malbaie. The portion of the village on the left bank of the river above the bridge is called Comporte, and a lovely little lake, nestling on the top of a mountain beyond the Grand Fond, and unsurpa.s.sed for the excellence of its trout fis.h.i.+ng, is called Lac a Comporte; it may be that well-nigh two and a half centuries ago the first seigneur of Malbaie followed an Indian trail to this lake and wet a line in its brown and rippling waters.

Comporte and his partners in the seigniory had planned great things.

They had begun the erection of a mill, an enterprise which Comporte's heirs could not continue. So the guardian of the children determined to sell at auction their third of the seigniory. The sale apparently took place in Quebec in October, 1688. We have the record of the bids made.

Hazeur began with 410 livres; one Riverin offered 430 livres; after a few other bids Hazeur raised his to 480 livres; then Riverin offered 490 and finally the property was sold to Hazeur for 500 livres. Malbaie was cheap enough; one third of a property more than one hundred and fifty square miles in extent sold for about $100! In 1700 for a sum of 10,000 livres ($2,000) Hazeur bought out all other interests in the seigniory and became its sole owner. Its value had greatly improved in 22 years.

Of Hazeur we know but little. He was a leading merchant at Quebec and was interested in the fis.h.i.+ng for ”porpoises” or white whales. When he died in 1708 he left money to the Seminary at Quebec on condition that from this endowment, forever, two boys should be educated; for the intervening two centuries the condition has been faithfully observed; one knows not how many youths owe their start in life to the gift of the former seigneur of Malbaie. There, however, no memory or tradition of him survives. In his time some land was cleared. The saw mill and a grist mill, begun by Comporte, were completed and stood, it seems, near the mouth of the little river now known as the Fraser but then as the Ruisseau a la Chute. Civilization had made at Malbaie an inroad on the forest and was struggling to advance.

On Hazeur's death in 1708 his two sons, both of them priests, inherited Malbaie. Meanwhile the government developed a policy for the region. It resolved to set aside, as a reserve, a vast domain stretching from the Mingan seigniory below Tadousac westward to Les Eboulements, and extending northward to Hudson Bay. The wealth of forest, lake, and river, in this tract furnished abundant promise for the fur and other trade of which the government was to have here a complete monopoly.

Malbaie was necessary to round out the territory and so the heirs of Hazeur were invited to sell back the seigniory to the government. The sale was completed in October, 1724, when the government of New France, acting through M. Begon, the Intendant, for a sum of 20,000 livres (about $4,000) found itself possessed of Malbaie ”as if it had never been granted,” of a saw mill and a grist mill, of houses, stables and barns, gardens and farm implements, grain, furniture, live stock, cleared land, cut wood and all other products of human industry there in evidence.[1]

Within the reserve, in addition to Malbaie, were a number of trading posts--Tadousac, Chicoutimi, Lake St. John, Mista.s.sini, &c. In this great tract the government expected to reap large profits from its monopoly of trade with the Indians. Some of the fertile land was to be used for farms which should produce food supplies for the posts. The Intendant had sanguine hopes that the profit from trade and agriculture would aid appreciably in meeting the expense of government. It was, we may be well a.s.sured, an expectation never realized.

We get a glimpse of Malbaie in 1750 as a King's post. There were two farms, one called La Malbaie, the other La Comporte. The two farmers were both in the King's service and, in the absence of other diversions, quarrelled ceaselessly. The region, wrote the Jesuit Father Claude G.o.defroi Coquart, who was sent, in 1750, to inspect the posts, is the finest in the world. He reported, in particular, that the farm of Malbaie had good soil, excellent facilities for raising cattle, and other advantages. Only a very little land had been cleared, just enough wheat being raised to supply the needs of the farmer and his a.s.sistants.

The place should be made more productive, M. Coquart goes on to say, and the present farmer, Joseph Dufour, is just the man to do it. He is able and intelligent and if only--and here we come to the inherent defect in trying to do such pioneer work by paid officials who had no final responsibility--he were offered better pay the farm could be made to produce good results. The old quarrel with the farmer at La Comporte had been settled; now the farmer of Malbaie was the superior officer, rivalry had ceased, and all was peace.

Coquart gives an estimate of the farming operations at Malbaie which is of special interest as showing that, if the old regime in Canada did not produce good results, it was not for lack of criticism. Better cattle should be raised, he says; at Malbaie one does not see oxen as fine as those at Beaupre, near Quebec, or on the south sh.o.r.e. The pigs too are extremely small, the very fattest hardly weighing 180 pounds; in contrast, at La Pet.i.te Riviere, above Baie St. Paul, the pigs are huge; one could have good breeds without great expense; it costs no more to feed them and [a truism] there would be more pork! Of sheep too hardly fifty are kept at Malbaie through the winter; there should be two or three hundred. From the two farms come yearly only thirty or forty pairs of chickens.

Father Coquart's census is as rigorous and unsparing of detail as the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror. He tells exactly what the Malbaie farm can produce in a year; the record for the year of grace 1750 is ”4 or 6 oxen; 25 sheep, 2 or 3 cows, 1200 pounds of pork, 1400 to 1500 pounds of b.u.t.ter, one barrel of lard,”--certainly not much to help a paternal government. The salmon fishery should be developed, says Coquart. Now the farmers get their own supply and nothing more. Nets should be used and great quant.i.ties of salmon might be salted down in good seasons. Happily, conditions are mending. The previous farmer had let things go to rack and ruin but now one sees neither thistles nor black wheat; all the fences are in place. Joseph Dufour has a special talent for making things profitable. If he can be induced to continue his services, it will be a benefit to his employer. But he is not contented. Last year he could not make it pay and wished to leave.

Nearly all his wages are used in the support of his family. He has three grown-up daughters who help in carrying on the establishment, and a boy for the stables. The best paid of these gets only 50 livres (about $10) a year; she should get at least 80 livres, M. Coquart thinks. Dufour has on the farm eight sheep of his own but even of these the King takes the wool, and actually the farmer has had to pay for what wool his family used. Surely he should be allowed to keep at least half the wool of his own sheep! If it was the policy of the Crown to grant lands along the river of Malbaie there are many people who would like those fertile areas, but there is danger that they would trade with the Indians which should be strictly forbidden. So runs M. Coquart's report. It was rendered to one of the greatest rascals in New France, the Intendant Bigot, but he was a rascal who did his official tasks with some considerable degree of thoroughness and insight. He knew what were the conditions at Malbaie even if he did not mend them.

After 1750 the curtain falls again upon Malbaie and we see nothing until, a few years later, the desolation of war has come, war that was to bring to Canada, and, with it, to Malbaie, new masters of British blood. After long mutterings the war broke out openly in 1756. In those days the farmer at Malbaie who looked out, as we look out, upon the mighty river would see great s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing up and down. Some of them differed from the merchant s.h.i.+ps to which his eye was accustomed. They stood high in the water. s.h.i.+ps came near the north sh.o.r.e in those days and he could see grim black openings in their sides which meant cannon.

Already Britain had almost driven France from the sea and these French s.h.i.+ps, which ascended the St. Lawrence, were few. Then, in 1759, happened what had been long-expected and talked about. Signal fires blazed at night on both sides of the St. Lawrence to give the alarm, when not French, but British s.h.i.+ps, sailed up the river, a huge fleet.

They stopped at Tadousac and then slowly and cautiously filed past Malbaie. On a summer day the crowd of white sails scattered on the surface of the river made an animated scene. In wonder our farmer and his helpers watched the s.h.i.+ps silently advance to their goal. There were 39 men-of-war, 10 auxiliaries, 70 transports and a mult.i.tude of smaller craft carrying some 27,000 men; it was the mightiest array Britain had ever sent across the ocean. New France was doomed.

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