The White and the Gold

by Thomas B. Costain

  Saintonge’s part in this narrative is confined to what might have been a very inconspicuous occurrence. At the small seaport of Brouage in that department was born one Samuel de Champlain in the year 1567. His father was a sea captain and so his biographers have been much concerned about the use of the “de,” which is a prerogative of the nobility in personal names. The decision reached has been that the family belonged to the lesser nobility; a matter of small consequence, actually, because Samuel de Champlain had in himself qualities of heart and mind which far transcend any question of the social standing of his father.

  Very little is known of his youth except that he was trained for the sea by his father and that he fought through the religious wars which were shaking and impoverishing France. One of the weakest and worst of French kings, Henry III, a son of the Catherine de’ Medici who caused the tocsin to ring on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s, was on the throne. He was being driven to repressive measures against the Huguenots, the Protestants of France, by his fanatical kinsmen, the Guises. In Navarre, which lay between France and Spain, was a young ruler who would become in time France’s great monarch, Henry IV. This youth, who was possessed of great ability and great natural charm as well, was the acknowledged leader and hope of the Huguenots. The three Henrys, for the head of the Catholic League which the Guises organized also bore that name, waged a three-sided and bloody series of wars for over twenty years. When both of the other Henrys had been removed from the struggle by the daggers of assassins and the Protestant Henry had reached the conclusion that Paris was worth a Mass and had recanted, the fighting came to an end. Henry of Navarre became King of France.

  It is stated that young Samuel de Champlain was an ardent Catholic but at the same time a loyal follower of Henry of Navarre, leaving the impression that he fought under the Protestant banner. This is decidedly confusing. It has been established that he served under three generals, D’Aumont, St. Luc, and Brissac. All three were Catholic generals who went into service with Henry after he became legally the King of France, and so it may be that Champlain did not enter service until after the Huguenot leader had purchased Paris with a Mass, It seems more likely, however, that he would be drawn into enlistment at an earlier age. He was twenty years old when St. Luc fought against Henry at Coutras, and it seems more than probable that the young soldier-sailor was in the ranks there. Coutras was the first great victory for the Protestant cause, and St. Luc had the misfortune to be captured there. Huguenot Henry, who was jovial and easy of temperament and had a great admiration for the fair sex (an understatement of understatements), gave the seventy-eight banners captured in the victory to one of his mistresses, the Comtesse de Grammont, to be used as hangings for her bed. It is probable also that Champlain was with Brissac when he was made governor of Paris; a most important development, for Brissac proceeded to sell possession of Paris to the Navarrese for a million and a half crowns, thereby paving the way for Henry’s ultimate success.

  In 1598 the Treaty of Vervins brought the fighting to an end and the still youthful Samuel de Champlain had to look about him for some form of employment. He decided to go to sea and found a chance to sail to Cádiz with a fleet taking back the Spanish mercenaries who had been fighting in France on the Catholic side and had been made prisoners. This resulted in his being given command of a Spanish vessel in an expedition to the West Indies, a journey which he described in his first book, called Bref Discours, It was an excellent book, although illustrated by the author’s own rather ludicrous drawings, and brought him to the attention of the French court, where the new broom of the Navarrese monarch was being busily employed. Perhaps it would have been more profitable for Champlain if the sagacious Henry had decided to use him in an engineering project in Saintonge. Settlers from the Netherlands were being imported to reclaim the salt marshes around Brouage. Champlain would have had a chance here to learn valuable lessons in colonization and also to impress himself on the attention of the King. Wealth and preferment are won in this way; but, as circumstances fell out, the youth from the salt marshes came into close touch instead with certain men who were dreaming again of a successful conquest of the New World. This project fired the enthusiasm and touched the idealistic side of Champlain, and the rest of his life was to be devoted to it.

  He failed thereby to attain wealth and ease, but he became the Founder of New France and so achieved lasting fame instead.

  2

  From a study of the events contributing to the founding of New France there emerges the figure of a man of whom relatively little has been told in Canadian annals. Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, played a larger share than Champlain at the start, and at one critical stage he displayed such firmness and courage that victory was achieved in the face of what seemed sure defeat. To the Sieur de Monts belongs a higher position in the gallery of the great in New World history than he is usually allotted.

  He was a member also of the lesser nobility and belonged to what might be termed the moneyman wing, the shrewd and resourceful men who were not averse to dabbling in trade and were ready to gamble their personal fortunes for furs and the fisheries of the west; the silent partners, in other words, of the sea captains who sailed from St. Malo and La Rochelle. There is a portrait of him in the Massachusetts Archives which shows him to have been a strikingly handsome man with a high wide forehead, arched eyebrows, the delicately chiseled nose of a court dandy, and a glossy goatee. He wears a jaunty hat with a long white plume, a flat collar of elegant lace, an elaborately embroidered cloak, and boots with turned-over tops in what might be called the manner of the Three Musketeers. It may be no more than a likeness of the typical courtier of the period. If it is a portrait, the Sieur de Monts must have resembled his royal master in being a favorite with the ladies.

  That he figures in Canadian history at all is due to the fact that Henry IV had been the leader of the Protestant cause. Monts was a Huguenot and ordinarily he would not have been allowed to play any part in the colonization of America, which had taken on from the first an evangelical coloring. Henry, although he had paid for Paris with a Mass, was still at this point a Huguenot at heart. He had already, on April 13, 1598, promulgated the Edict of Nantes, which gave Protestants a protected position, and it was hinted that he sometimes whispered to Huguenot divines in passing, “Pray God in my behalf.” He still strove to have some Protestants in positions of trust about him, and among those who enjoyed his favor was the elegant and determined Sieur de Monts.

  Henry was too poor and too concerned with restoring conditions in France to normal after the long civil wars to deplete the royal treasury in colonial ventures. He was willing, as the Tudor kings in England had been, to give his blessing to whatever his subjects undertook in that connection—when it was at their own expense. The most spectacular effort was under the direction, and at the personal risk, of a brave French nobleman, the Marquis de la Roche. He landed forty convicts on Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia while he proceeded with his ship to make some exploratory casts in the seas thereabouts. A storm drove his ship far out into the Atlantic and left it in such condition that he had to return to France. At home the creditors of La Roche had him seized and thrown into prison, and it was not until five years had rolled around that any attempt was made to rescue the unfortunate malefactors on Sable Island. Eleven of them were found alive, gaunt and weather-beaten Crusoes in shaggy skins with beards to their waists. The survivors were pardoned and given permission to engage in the fur trade in Canada, where some of them, according to the records, did quite well. La Roche, a man of gallantry and high purpose, died soon after in distress and want.

  In 1600 a merchant of St. Malo named Pontgravé went into partnership with a sea captain, Pierre Chauvin, as a result of which the latter took a small vessel to the St. Lawrence Basin and progressed as far as Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River. Here the fur traders, who came more or less regularly to the trading field which Cartier had opened up, had built a number of small wooden
huts for human occupation and storehouses for supplies. Chauvin landed sixteen men here to take possession for the winter while he proceeded to do some profitable trading. He returned to France in the fall. The next year it was found that the party left at Tadoussac had found it impossible to sustain the hardships of winter life. Some of them had died and the rest had gone native and were distributed among the Indian bands thereabouts.

  It was to Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, that Champlain turned when the determination formed in his mind to follow destiny to the New World. It was a fortunate thing for him that he had earned the regard of this resolute old soldier, a veteran of the religious wars and a close friend of Henry IV, although a moderate, if staunch, Catholic. On the death of Chauvin after two more abortive efforts, the governor of Dieppe went to the King and begged of him letters patent to make one more attempt at carrying the flag of France and the cross of Mother Church to Canada. The King loved every gray hair which rimed the head of the old soldier and was happy to grant the necessary permission. No money was forthcoming, however, and De Chastes was not a rich man by any standard; and so it was necessary to form a new company, admitting all the leading merchants of the seaports, including Pontgravé of St. Malo.

  In 1603 the new company sent out two small ships to begin operations. One was commanded by Pontgravé himself and the other by a captain Prevert, also of St. Malo. Champlain went along in the capacity of official observer and historian. While the two ships remained at Tadoussac, he ascended the great river by canoe with a small company, getting as far as the Lachine Rapids. The country had changed much since the days of Cartier. Gone were the tribes which had extended such tempered receptions to the first Frenchmen. Gone was the palisaded city that Cartier had found at Hochelaga. The tall natives who had occupied Mount Royal and its vicinity had been replaced by a few wandering bands of Algonquins. But everywhere he heard tales of the great rivers and the gigantic lakes and of the wonder of the country drained by these waters, and he returned to France in the fall more convinced than ever that his life-work was here. At home he wrote a book called Des Sauvages which attracted wide attention and focused interest on him as a man who would play an important part in future developments.

  When the two tiny vessels, sufficiently loaded with valuable pelts to satisfy the investors, had reached France the old soldier of Dieppe was dead. A new man, Pierre du Guast, who held a court post as gentleman in ordinary of the King’s chamber, was besieging Henry to be allowed to carry on the work.

  The Sieur de Monts had a new idea which appealed very much to the King and equally to the hardheaded men of the shipping trade. Along the St. Lawrence the country was inhospitable with its cold winters and its unfriendly Indians. Farther east there was the country of La Cadie (a name which stemmed from the Indian word aquoddie, meaning the pollock fish), the seaboard section of the continent which took in, to use the names which later came into universal acceptance, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, New Brunswick, and parts of Maine and Gaspé. For some reason which no one understood, La Cadie was blessed with a more gentle climate. The summers were balmy, the soil fertile, the Indians less antagonistic. Why not settle first in La Cadie and sink French roots down into its rewarding soil?

  This was a shrewd notion, and the King was easily persuaded to grant a charter to Monts in 1603 by which the latter and his associates were to have a monopoly of the fur trade and in return were to send out settlers at the rate of fifty a year, with all the necessary supplies, and to “represent our person in the countries, territories, coasts and confines of La Cadie from the 40th to the 46th degree.”

  The holder of the new charter went to work in a thoroughly businesslike way, which showed that he had a level head under his handsome beaver hat and gay plume. He capitalized his company at 90,000 livres and divided the right to participate among the merchants of Rouen, St. Malo, La Rochelle, and St. Jean de Luz. Monts himself took up most of the St. Malo allotment and so held about one tenth of the stock. It may have been that he overreached himself in assuming such a large share, not being a man of great wealth.

  The King discovered almost immediately, however, that the religious views of Monts were a serious obstacle. Sully, his chief minister and adviser, was against the charter from every standpoint and had said publicly, “Far-off possessions are not suited to the temperament or to the genius of Frenchmen,” which shows how mistaken great men can sometimes be. Administrative France was not willing to deal with a Huguenot, and Normandy refused to register the charter. An even greater difficulty was the opposition of independent traders, who raised a great clamor of protest at being shut out. This was not a matter concerning a few rascally shipowners who operated as mavericks on the edge of things. As early as 1578 it had been reported that there were a hundred and fifty French ships in the waters around and about Newfoundland and in the gulf, and that the number flying other flags totaled two hundred. Most of these independent traders were engaged in the fisheries, but an ever-increasing number followed the Cartier trail and sought the greater profits of the fur trade. They had established bases at Anticosti and Tadoussac, and the natives had fallen into the habit of taking their furs to these two points. It can easily be understood that the tough veterans who made a living by such means were not prepared to be barred summarily from the profitable rivers of Canada; not when they could raise the religious issue and shout “Calvinist” at the man heading the new company.

  It was found that concessions would have to be made. Although Huguenot settlers would be allowed to go out if they desired, and might take their ministers with them, the latter were forbidden to have any hand in the instruction of the natives. The number of annual settlers, moreover, was raised from fifty to one hundred. Monts and his associates accepted the new conditions.

  Monts knew something of Canada, having made one voyage to Tadoussac. He fitted out two ships, the exact tonnage of which has not been recorded but which obviously were of good size. They were, at any rate, much better suited to the work in hand than any of the ships which had crossed the Atlantic previously. The science of shipbuilding had been progressing with the years. The towering superstructures were being eliminated, thereby giving an increased seaworthiness and decidedly improved maneuverability. Even the convenient galleries around the stern had been abandoned. The new vessels were three-masters with the lateen mizzen thrown in; the importance of sails, in fact, was growing to such an extent that the first test of a sailor—a “yonker” as he was called in England—was his ability to handle himself in the shrouds. There were now two decks, but the conditions below were undoubtedly as bad as ever, so much of the space being given over to the guns and the elaborate cabins of the officers and the gentry. The crews subsisted in the general region of the orlop deck, where the bilge water stagnated in the ballast and the stench was indescribable.

  The two ships which set sail from Le Havre in March of the year 1604 carried a distinguished company. The Sieur de Monts himself was aboard, optimistic and aggressive and, no doubt, very decorative, with his commanding height and leonine head. Pontgravé, because of his previous experience, was in charge of navigation. Jean de Biencourt, Sieur de Poutrincourt, a nobleman of Picardy and a substantial investor, had decided to participate personally in the first venture. There were two priests and two Calvinist ministers, and there were the hundred settlers required under the charter, some of whom, alas, had been recruited in the usual way from the prisons and from among the vagabonds on the highways.

  Most important of all, as things turned out, was a man in the middle thirties who was quiet and sober in manner but carried about him nevertheless an air of distinction. This member of the company had a broad forehead, a long nose, and the liberal mustache and small goatee which would be fixed later in the memories of men by the great Cardinal Richelieu. This was the official recorder and geographer of the expedition, Samuel de Champlain.

  3

  It is not strange that everyone, even the scientists and geographers who served
kings in their snug little offices and the captains and master pilots who took out ships to buffet the waves and the ocean currents, was mystified by the difference in climate between the part of Canada called Quebec and the provinces which would be called Acadia. The existence of the Gulf Stream was still a secret. On his first voyage to America, Columbus had noted the curious and swift body of warm, light blue water with seaweed in great quantities along its edges, through which he had tossed and Struggled before reaching the islands of the West Indies. Ponce de León in his explorations around Florida had been caught in the fast-moving waters between the southern tip of the great peninsula and the island of Cuba. It was clear to all early navigators that the ocean thereabouts behaved in strange ways, but none of them guessed at the truth, that the warm water from the Gulf of Mexico poured out into the Atlantic and then flowed swiftly up the eastern coast of North America before making a broad circular swing and riding down past the British Isles and the Bay of Biscay and washing the shores of the Madeiras and the Azores and the Canaries, ameliorating the atmosphere in a most pronounced way wherever it went.

  This strange antic current of the North Atlantic would mystify navigators for another century and a half. One explanation of the discovery of the truth is that in the year 1771 a shrewd American named Benjamin Franklin was in London and decided to investigate the reason for the unconscionable time the Falmouth packets took in making the New York run. He found that the Falmouth captains had not learned how to cope with a current in which they invariably found themselves involved and held up for many days. Whether or not this suggested to the canny Franklin (he is given credit for so many things, so why not concede him this as well?) that the current was the same one which played such tricks around Florida and Cuba, the fact remains that this was the beginning of a long period of investigation in which scientists played a part. A favorite device was to drop bottles in the clear water of the Gulf Stream and to watch for them on the other side of the ocean. They turned up in Norway, along the Irish coast, on the tip of Cornwall, and on the shores of Biscay; proving thereby that the Stream made a circuit of the Atlantic and favored the British Isles most particularly in tempering what normally would be a cold climate. Bottle charts were kept and times were checked, and vessels were sent out to take soundings and to study the behavior of the monster current; and so in course of time the truth about the Gulf Stream came to be understood.