Part 1 (1/2)

The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation.

by Charles Roger.

PREFACE.

The beauty of a book, as of a picture, consists in the grouping of images and in the arrangement of details. Not only has att.i.tude and grouping to be attended to by the painter, and by the narrator of events, but attention must be paid to light and shade; and the same subject is susceptible of being treated in many ways. When the idea occurred to me of offering to the public of Canada a history of the province, I was not ignorant of the existence of other histories. Smith, Christie, Garneau, Gourlay, Martin and Murray, the narratives of the Jesuit Fathers, Charlevoix, the Journals of Knox, and many other histories and books, were more or less familiar to me; but there was then no history, of all Canada from the earliest period to the present day so concisely written, and the various events and personages, of which it is composed, so grouped together, as to present an attractive and striking picture to the mind of every reader. It was that want which I determined to supply, and with some degree of earnestness the self-imposed task was undertaken. My plan was faintly to imitate the simple narrative style, the conciseness, the picturesqueness, the eloquence, the poetry, and the philosophic spirit of a history, the most remarkable of any extant-that of the world. As Moses graphically and philosophically has sketched the peopling of the earth; painted the beauties of dawning nature; shown the origin of agriculture and the arts; described the social advancement of families, tribes and nations; exhibited the short-comings and the excellencies of patriarchal and of monarchical forms of government; exposed the warrings and bickerings among men; told of the manner in which a people escaped from bondage and raised themselves on the wreck of thrones, princ.i.p.alities, and powers, to greatness; published the laws by which that most chosen people were governed; and dwelt upon the perversity of human nature; and as other men, divinely inspired, have sublimely represented the highest stages of Jewish civilisation, so did I propose to myself to exhibit the rise of Canada from a primitive condition to its present state of advancement. My first great difficulty was to obtain a publisher. There could only be a very few persons who would run the risk of publis.h.i.+ng a mere history of Canada, even with all these fanciful excellencies, produced by one unknown to fame. But ”where there is a will, there is a way,” and about the middle of the month of June last, I had succeeded in disposing of a book, then scarcely begun, to Mr. Peter Sinclair, Bookseller, John Street, in the City of Quebec. That gentleman, with characteristic spirit and liberality, agreed to become my publisher, and until the 17th day of September, I read and wrote diligently, having written, in round numbers, about a thousand pages of foolscap and brought to a conclusion the first rebellion. Then the work of printing was begun, and the correction of all the proofs together with the editorial management of a newspaper, have since afforded me sufficient occupation. Mr. McMullen, of Brockville, has, however, produced a history of this country from its discovery to the present time, almost as if he had been influenced by motives similar to those which have influenced me. His pictures, however, are not my pictures, nor his sentiments my sentiments. The books-although the facts are the same and necessarily derived from the same sources-are essentially different. He is most elaborate in the beginning, I become more and more particular with regard to details towards the close-I expand with the expansion of the country. In the first chapter of this first volume, the history of the province while under French rule is rapidly traced, and the history of the New England Colonies dipped into, with the view of showing the progressional resemblance between that country which is now the United States and our own; in the second chapter the reader obtains only a glance, as it were, at the American war of independence, when he is carried again into Canada and made acquainted with the many difficulties in spite of which Upper and Lower Canada continued to advance in wealth and civilisation; in the third chapter a history of the war between England and the United States is given with considerable minuteness; and the fourth chapter brings the reader up to the termination of that extraordinary period of mis-government, subsequent to the American war, which continued until the Rebellion, and has not even yet been altogether got rid of. There are without doubt, errors, exceptions, and omissions enough to be found-an island may have been inadvertently placed in a wrong lake, a date or figure may be incorrect, words may have been misprinted, and, in some parts, the sense a little interfered with-but I have set down nothing in malice, having had a strict regard for truth. I have creamed Gourlay, Christie, Murray, Alison, Wells, and Henry, and taken whatever I deemed essential from a history of the United States, without a t.i.tle page, and from Jared Sparks and other authors; but for the history of Lower Canada my chief reliance has been upon the valuable volumes, compiled with so much care, by Mr. Christie, and I have put the essence of his sixth volume of revelations in its fitting place.

For valuable a.s.sistance in the way of information, I am indebted to Mr. Christie personally, to the Honble. Henry Black, to the Librarians of the Legislative a.s.sembly-the Reverend Dr. Adamson and Dr. Winder-and to Daniel Wilkie, Esquire, one of the teachers of the High School of Quebec.

C. ROGER.

Quebec, 31st December, 1855.

THE RISE OF CANADA FROM BARBARISM TO CIVILISATION.

CHAPTER I.

There have been many attempts to discover a northwest pa.s.sage to the East Indies or China. Some of these attempts have been disastrous, but none fruitless. They have all led to other discoveries of scarcely inferior importance, and so recently as within the past twelve months the discovery of a pa.s.sage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans has been made. It was in the attempt to find a new pa.s.sage from Europe to Asia that this country was discovered. In one of these exploring expeditions, England, four centuries ago, employed John Cabot. This Italian navigator, a man of great intrepidity, courage, and nautical skill, discovered Newfoundland, saw Labrador, (only previously known to the Danes) and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To Labrador he gave, it is alleged, the name of Primavista. But that he so designated that still rugged and inhospitable, but not unimprovable, region, is less than probable. The name was more applicable to the gulf which, doubtless, appeared to Cabot to be a first glimpse of the grand marine highway of which he was in quest, and with which he was so content that he returned to England and was knighted by Henry the Seventh. Sebastian Cabot made the next attempt to reach China by sailing northwest. He penetrated to Hudson's Bay, never even got a glimpse of the St. Lawrence, and returned to England. Fifty years afterwards, Cotereal left Portugal, with the view of following the course of the elder Cabot. He reached Labrador, returned to Portugal, was lost on a second voyage, and was the first subject of a ”searching expedition,” three vessels having been fitted out with that view by the King of Portugal. Several other attempts at discovery were subsequently made. Two merchants of Bristol, in England, obtained a patent to establish colonies in Newfoundland and Labrador, and in 1527, Henry the Seventh, for the last time, despatched a northwest pa.s.sage discovery fleet. The formation of English settlements, and the exploration were equally unsuccessful. These facts I allude to, rather with the object of accounting for the name of ”Canada,” applied to the country through which the St. Lawrence flows, than for any other purpose. In the ”Relations des Jesuits,” Father Henepin states that the Spaniards first discovered Canada while in search, not of a northwest pa.s.sage, but of gold, which they could not find, and therefore called the land, so valueless in their eyes, El Capo di Nada-”The Cape of Nothing.” But, the Spaniards, who possibly did visit Canada two years before Cabot, whatever the object of their voyage may have been, could not have done anything so absurd. Quebec, not Canada, may have been to them Cape Nothing, and doubtless was. It was the way they looked for. That was as visible to them as to Cabot, and a pa.s.sage, strath, or way is signified in Spanish by the word Canada. It was not gold but a way to gold that English, Spaniards, Italians, and French sought. It was the cashmeres, the pearls, and the gold of India that were wanted. It was a short way to wealth that all hoped for. And the St. Lawrence has, indeed, been a short way to wealth, if not to China, as will afterwards be shown.[1]

Pa.s.sing over the exploration of what is now the Coast of the United States, by Verrazzano, I come to the discovery of Gaspe Basin and the River St. Lawrence, by Jacques Cartier, of St. Malo, in France. With s.h.i.+ps of one hundred and twenty tons, and forty tons, Cartier arrived in the St. Lawrence-as some spring traders of the present day occasionally do-before the ice had broken up, and found it necessary to go back and seek shelter in some of the lower bays or harbours. He left St. Malo in April, 1534, and arrived in the St. Lawrence early in May. Returning to Gaspe, he entered the Bay Chaleur, remained there until the 25th July, and returned to France. Next year, Cartier arrived in the St. Lawrence, after various disasters to his three vessels, and viewed and named Anticosti, which he called L'Isle de L'a.s.somption; explored the River Saguenay; landed on, and named the Isle aux Coudres, or Island of Filberts; pa.s.sed the Isle of Bacchus, now Island of Orleans; and at length came to anchor on the ”Little River” St. Croix, the St. Charles of these times, on which stood the huts of Stadacona. Cartier chatted with the Indians for a season. He found them an exceedingly good tempered and very communicative people. They told him that there was another town higher up the river, and Cartier determined upon visiting that congregation of birch bark tents or huts, pitched on a spot of land called Hochelaga, now the site of Montreal. At Hochelaga the ”new Governor” met with a magnificent reception. A thousand natives a.s.sembled to meet him on the sh.o.r.e, and the compliment was returned by presents of ”tin” beads, and other trifles. Hochelaga was the chief Indian Emporium of Canada; it was ever a first cla.s.s city-in Canada. Charlevoix says, even in those days this (Hochelaga) was a place of considerable importance, as the capital of a great extent of country. Eight or ten villages were subject to its sway. Jacques Cartier returned to Quebec, loaded his vessels with supposed gold ore, and Cape Diamonds, which he supposed were brilliants of the first water, and then went home to France, where he told a truly magnificent tale concerning a truly magnificent country. Expeditions for Canada were everywhere set afoot. Even Queen Elizabeth, of England, sent Frobisher on a voyage of discovery, but he only discovered a foreland and tons of mica, which he mistook for golden ore. Martin Frobisher was ruined. His was a ruinous speculation. Talc or mica did not pay the expense of a nine month's voyage with fifteen s.h.i.+ps. But all that was then sought for is now found in Canada-and more. To obtain much gold, however, the settlement of a country is necessary. It is the wants of the settlers which extract gold from the ground for the benefit of the trader. The only occupiers of Canada, no farther back than two hundred years, were Indians. The Montagnais, the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Outagomies, the Mohawks, the Senecas, the Sioux, the Blackfeet, and the Crowfeet red-faces, were the undisputed possessors of the soil. They held the mine, the lake, the river, the forest, and the towns.h.i.+p in free and common soccage. They were sometimes merchants and sometimes soldiers. They were all ready to trade with their white invaders, all p.r.o.ne to quarrel among themselves. The Iroquois and Hurons were ever at war with each other. When not smoking they were sure to be fighting.