Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  45. CWB 1:12.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Several debunkers have severely chastised Champlain for gross inaccuracy in his sketch-map of Guadeloupe, which they offer as proof that he was never there. It is true that the drawing is inaccurate in its representation of the indented coast of Guadeloupe, which gives the island its distinctive butterfly shape. Champlain tells us that he was on the other side of the island, and this coast is represented more accurately. The pattern of this error is evidence that he worked from his own observation, rather than other sources. See Vigneras, “Voyage,” 176; Gagnon, “Is the Brief Discours by Champlain?” 91.

  48. This interpretation reconciles Champlain’s narrative with evidence found by Vigneras in Spanish archives. Coloma sailed directly to Puerto Rico; San Julian lagged behind, and the patache Sandoval was sent to Margarita Island. Cf. CWB 1:12–13; Vigneras, “Voyage,” 176–77, 189; there is no necessary contradiction here, and strictures in Bishop, Champlain, 16–17, are without foundation.

  49. CWB 1:13; Gagnon, “Is the Brief Discours by Champlain?” 83, 87; R. A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discoveries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998).

  50. CWB 1:12–13; Clyde L. Mackenzie, Jr., Luis Troccoli and Luis B. Leon, “History of the Atlantic Pearl-Oyster, Pinctata imbricata, Industry in Venezuela and Colombia, with Biological and Ecological Observations,” Marine Fisheries Review 65 (2003), 1–20; F[ernando] Cervigon, Las perlas en la historia de Venezuela (Caracas, 1998); R. A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discoveries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998).

  51. CWB 1:12–14; Vigneras, “Voyage,” 177, 189; cf. Gagnon, “Is the Brief Discours by Champlain?” 83, 87, 90–91.

  52. CWB 1:14.

  53. Ibid. 1:17; Here is another disparity of dates which has been used by iconoclasts to impeach Champlain’s Brief Discours. Spanish accounts reported that the English privateers had left much earlier; Champlain wrote that some English raiders left only fifteen days before Don Francisco’s ships arrived. English records indicate that the Earl of Cumberland left earlier, but his second-in-command, Sir John Berkeley, remained in San Juan to continue the work of destroying the walls of the fortress.

  Champlain’s account is confirmed by Richard T. Spence, The Privateering Earl, 141–75. The best primary account of the English attack is by Dr. John Layfield, an Oxford don who was chaplain to the Earl of Cumberland. His manuscript is in the British Library, Sloane MS 3289, partly published in S. Purchas ed., Hakluytus Posthumus; or Purchas his pilgrimes (20 vols., Glasgow, 1905–07), 16: 43–106; the Earl’s account is in Purchas 6: 29–42; an account based on interviews by Richard Robinson is in George Williamson, George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1558–1805) (Cambridge, 1920), 177–85.

  54. CWB 1:15, 18–19, 22.

  55. Ibid. 1:18; Vigneras, “Voyage,” 177.

  56. CWB 1:19–20; Iconoclasts have mocked these reports as fantasies. Champlain may have been describing a grove of Puerto Rican trees called the Benjamin Fig—not ficus sp. as Biggar believed, but ficus benjamina. Modern studies report that it has “the greatest crown spread of any tree on the island,” and “might be more accurately described as a clone formed of many aerial roots grown into stems from interconnected and ever-spreading branches,” much as Champlain observed. The largest ficus benjamina known to modern botany has a crown of about two hundred feet. A grove of them could have covered a very large area. Cf. CWB 1:19–22 with John K. Francis, Champion Trees of Puerto Rico (United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, Rio Piedras, P.R., 2000?), 1; and John K. Francis and Carol A. Lowe, eds., Bioecología de Arboles Nativos y Exóticos de Puerto Rico y las Indias Occidentales (United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, General Technical Report IITF-15, June 2000).

  57. Champlain’s account of the division of the fleet and the itinerary of his squadron is fully confirmed in Spanish records. Cf. CWB 1:25–31; Vigneras, “Voyage,” 179–80.

  58. This is Biggar’s point, in CWB, 1:31&n; Vigneras compared Champlain’s work with Spanish records and concluded that “L’auteur du Brief Discours suit avec exactitude l’itinéraire de Joannes Urdayre, et ses croquis de Puerto Plata, Manzanillo, Mosquitos et Monte Christi semblent pris sur le vif ou sont d’excellentes copies.” As always Vigneras gave Champlain a sharp elbow at the end! Cf. CWB 1:25–31; Vigneras, “Voyage,” 179, and evidence in Spanish records found by Vigneras and Laura Giraudo.

  59. Champlain’s account of the squadron’s track along this coast has been confirmed in Spanish archives; Cf. CWB 1:25–31; and records reported by Vigneras, 179. Vigneras adds, “His sketches of Puerto Plata, Manzanillo, Mosquitos et Monte Christi appear to be taken from life or are excellent copies.”

  60. Vigneras, “Voyage,” 179–80, concludes from his search of Spanish archives that “the version that Champlain gives accords with Spanish sources, except for several small details.”

  61. Champlain’s account differs from Spanish records in several details such as the number of enemy ships (thirteen by Champlain’s count, eleven in Spanish records). There was also a difference on the location of the skirmish. The Brief Discours puts it on the south side of Cap St. Nicolas; Spanish sources place it at Gonaives. To study the coast is to see that this is a matter of language; the two accounts are fundamentally consistent. Compare CWB 1:26–31, and Vigneras, “Voyage,” 179–80.

  62. CWB 1:32.

  63. CWB 1:23.

  64. Champlain’s description of the arid coast of southern Cuba with the Sierra Maestra rising behind it is very accurate, as I can testify from having cruised it several times. Cf. CWB 1:32–33.

  65. CWB 1:33–34. Critics have argued that Champlain could not have visited the Cayman Islands because the records of the Spanish squadron make no mention of it—the fallacy of negative proof. Champlain wrote that they paused only one day. The Caymans lay directly on their course. Champlain’s description of the fauna and flora was accurate. He has been chastised for writing that the Cayman Islands were six or seven in number. Today they are reckoned as three, but with the others as islets. He noted that only three islands had harbors. Cf. Vigneras, “Voyage,” 181.

  Champlain’s account has the ring of truth in its vivid and idiosyncratic detail. He wrote: “We anchored between the islands, and we remained there one day. I landed on two of them, and saw a very fine and most pleasant harbor. I walked a league inland, through very thick woods, and caught some rabbits, which were very numerous, a few birds, and a lizard as thick as my thigh, grey and the color of dead leaves.” He accurately described the flora and fauna, and was fascinated by the deep woods, huge flocks of birds, “very good fruits,” and the large Cayman iguanas, which are now protected. He caught a flightless bird as big as a goose and tried to eat it, a big mistake and a very bad taste (fort mauuais goust). It was evidence of Champlain’s omnivorous curiosity, and a testament to the authenticity of this experience. CWB 1:33–34.

  66. This also finds confirmation in the West India Pilot, which advised that “the attention of the mariner is drawn to the fishing grounds pointed out on the chart of the Campeche Bank, which would amply repay a couple of hours’ delay by an abundant supply of rock-fish and red snappers.” Compare West India Pilot (London, 1903), 1:453, quoted in CWB 1:35n.

  67. Champlain’s account of his visit to Mexico is the largest part of the Brief Discours, nearly 40 percent of the work. It was also the most controversial, and has been sharply attacked by hostile critics who argue that Champlain’s claim to have landed at Vera Cruz, to have traveled to Mexico City, and then to have visited Panama in a small vessel was either fiction or falsehood (Vigneras, “Voyage,” 182–85).

  There is indeed a major problem of chronology here. Vigneras found records in Seville that Urdayre’s Spanish squadron remained at Vera Cruz f
or about nine weeks, from May 1 to June 29, 1699. He read Champlain’s Brief Discours as saying that his ship was there for more than fifteen weeks, perhaps eighteen weeks.

  Champlain appears to say that he was two weeks at San Juan de Luz, spent an “entire month” in Mexico, made a voyage of three weeks to Porto Bello in Panama, was a month at Panama, returned to San Juan de Luz with no time given, and remained a period of fifteen days at San Juan de Luz while San Julian was careened and repaired yet again. This would appear to make a total of fifteen weeks plus the return from Panama, which Vigneras reckons at four and a half months. From this discrepancy Vigneras concludes that Champlain did not have time to spend one month at Mexico and another at Port-Bello, and that “it is necessary to reject one of these voyages, or perhaps both” (Vigneras, “Voyage,” 183; CWB 1:38, 66, 70).

  But there are also problems in the analysis of Vigneras. Champlain’s count of weeks is not clear in his text, particularly for the trip to Portobello. Vigneras assumes that he was three weeks going there, a month in Panama, and three weeks returning, for a total of eleven or twelve weeks. But it is not certain that these temporal units were separate or overlapping, and Champlain gave no estimate of time for his return voyage.

  The distance between Vera Cruz and Portobello was approximately 1,200 nautical miles. At a speed of five knots, each passage would have taken ten days, and Champlain might have been ten days at Portobello, for a total of four or five weeks, or a month overall, or even a little less, not eleven or twelve weeks. Perhaps this was what actually happened.

  Champlain’s Discours and Spanish records used different ways of timekeeping. The Spanish worked from documents and referred to calendar dates. Champlain worked from memory and reckoned time in intervals of weeks and months. He rarely referred to the calendar, and then only with vague references and never exact dates. This clearly caused a bias in time estimates. Throughout the Discours Champlain tended to overestimate the length of time intervals in the past, a clear pattern of memory distortion. For example, he remembered the passage from Blavet to Vigo Bay at eleven days; Spanish records showed that the voyage lasted five days. Champlain’s memory of the Atlantic crossing from San Lucar to Deseada was sixty-six to seventy days; Spanish records made it forty-five days. The disparity is roughly comparable in estimates of time spent in New Spain.

  This pattern of bias appears to have been working in Champlain’s memory of the Portobello trip, and time spent at San Juan de Luz. Also, the fifteen days spent careening the San Julian at San Juan de Luz could well have overlapped with his passage from Portobello. When we correct for a bias in Champlain’s inflated overestimates of time intervals, and if some of those intervals may have overlapped, it is possible that he could have made trips both to Mexico City and Portobello during the nine weeks when his squadron was moored at San Juan de Luz.

  Gagnon suggests another interpretative possibility, that Champlain included events that he witnessed, and happenings that were experienced by his shipmates. Gagnon suggests that we watch his pronouns carefully. Sometimes he spoke of “I” and sometimes of “we,” to mean voyages not only by himself but by others in his squadron. I believe that this is correct and important as a general way of reading Champlain’s text. But it does not apply to the Mexican and the Portobello voyage, because both were cast in the first person singular. Champlain tells us in no uncertain terms that he was there. Cf. Gagnon, “Is the Brief Discours by Champlain?” 91.

  68. 68. CWB 1:36.

  69. 69. Ibid. 1:36–37.

  70. 70. Gagnon, “Is the Brief Discours by Champlain?” 91; CWB 1:66; Records in Spanish archives establish that Urdayre ordered San Julian’s captain to go to Mexico City, and they report the length of the journey at thirty-nine days, very similar to Champlain’s estimate. Here is strong supporting evidence that Champlain did go to Mexico City, as he claimed. Vigneras was not persuaded, but his own research in Spanish archives strongly supports Champlain’s account, even if it does not explicitly mention his name.

  71. 71. CWB 1:39–41.

  72. Ibid. 1:56.

  73. Ibid. 1:54.

  74. CWB 1:60; Vigneras is exactly right when he notes the caution in Champlain’s statements, which hostile readers missed. Compare Vigneras, “Voyage,” 185.

  75. CWB 1:63–65.

  76. Ibid. 1:43.

  77. Ibid. 1:63.

  78. Ibid.

  79. On these points his critics were correct and Champlain was mistaken. But these problems of accuracy on specific points of fact do not impeach the authenticity of the document.

  80. CWB 1:66–67.

  81. Ibid. 1:70.

  82. Ibid. 1:69.

  83. Ibid. 1:70–71. Champlain’s account is confirmed in Spanish records of payment to seamen who did the repair work, June 20, 1599, see Giraudo, “Research Report,” 26; citing AWI Contracción 2965. Confirmation for the careenage at San Juan de Luz also appears in Spanish records; but chronology is again a problem.

  84. CWB 1:71.

  85. Spanish records confirm that the ship was separated from the squadron, severely damaged, and by luck reached Havana.

  86. Champlain’s account and Spanish records are consistent on the separation of the San Julian from Urdayre’s squadron, on reports that she was almost lost, and on the later arrival of Coloma. Vigneras, “Voyage,” 188.

  87. Giraudo, “Research Report,” 95.

  88. CWB 1:73.

  89. Ibid. 1:77.

  90. Ibid. 1:77–79.

  91. On problems of chronology in this part of Champlain’s travels, see Morris Bishop, Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (New York, 1948, 1963), 343–44. Note that Coloma was back by February 1600; Champlain tells us that he returned two years and two months after his departure, which would have been March or April 1601.

  92. Testament of Guillermo Elena, June 26, 1601; Armstrong, Champlain, 275. I follow Conrad Heidenreich and Janet Ritch on this text, in their new edition of Champlain’s writings.

  93. Ibid.

  94. CWB 1:208.

  95. Ibid. 1:68.

  96. Voyages (1632), in CWB 3:314; note the interlocking with the narrative of the West Indies and the connection with the king.

  97. Voyages (1632); CWB 3:315.

  98. CWB 4:362.

  6. GEOGRAPHER IN THE LOUVRE

  1. Henry Percival Biggar, ed., The Works of Samuel de Champlain, 6 vols. and a portfolio of maps and drawings (CWB), (Toronto, 1922–36, reprinted 1971) 3:294–95.

  2. Philippe Erlanger, La vie quotidienne sous Henri IV (Paris, 1958, 1977), 91–92; for Champlain’s presence at court, CWB 3:314–16.

  3. Quoted in Erlanger, La vie quotidienne, 92.

  4. For the composition of the royal household in 1602, see a contemporary list in the British Public Record Office, “Officiers de la couronne,” PRO SP 78/44 folio 404; this and other sources are cited in David Buisseret, Henri IV (London, 1984), 94–105. Social historians have done much interesting analytic work on the courts of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI as communities. See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV (Chicago, 2001); William R. Newton, L’espace du roi: la cour de France au Château de Versailles, 1682–1789 (Paris, 1999); and Newton, La petite Cour: services et serviteurs à la Cour de Versailles (Paris, 2006). The court of Henri IV was smaller than that of Louis XIV, but similar in many aspects of its structure and function.

  5. Louis Batiffol. Le Louvre sous Henri IV et Louis XIII: La vie de la cour de France au XVlle siècle (Paris, 1930), 13; Michel Carmona, Le Louvre et les Tuileries: huit siècles d’histoire (Paris, 2004), 75–80.

  6. Jean-Pierre Babelon, Henri IV (Paris, 1982), 814–17; Babelon, “Les travaux de Henri IV au Louvre et aux Tuileries,” Paris et Île de France Mémoires 29 (1978) 55–130; Batiffol, Le Louvre sous Henri IV et Louis XIll; Jacques Thuillier, “Peinture et politique: une théorie de la galerie royale sous Henri IV,” Études d’art français offertes à Charles Sterling (Paris, 1975); Michel Carmona, Le Louvre et les Tuileries, 71–1
08.

  7. Buisseret, Henri IV, 94; Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir: Histoire naturelle de sa croissance (Geneva, 1945; Paris, 1972); translated by J. F. Huntington as On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Boston, 1962).

  8. Buisseret, Henri IV, 94–95.

  9. Keith Thomas has some wonderful unpublished work on the theme of fashion and change in the early modern era.

  10. Buisseret, Henri IV, 94, 96; citing contemporary lists in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Clairambault, 837 folio 3225–3349; AN KK 151, 152, 153; also “Officiers de la Couronne,” PRO SP 78/44 folio 404 British National Archives.

  11. David Buisseret, in The Mapmaker’s Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2003), 64, 67, 116, 131, 139, passim. This is an excellent and deeply learned work by an expert on early cartography and a biographer of Henri IV. It is critically important for an understanding of Champlain’s career, and for the depth of Henri IV’s activity in supporting geography and cartography. It also describes the king’s large staff of expert geographers and cartographers such as Claude de Chastillon and Pierre Fougeu, and surveyors and instrument makers such as Philippe Danfrie at the Louvre.

  12. Marc Lescarbot referred to Champlain as “géographe du Roy” in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 2d edition, revised, corrected, and augmented (Paris, 1611), 612; John Carter Brown Library. Marcel Trudel was skeptical, and wrote: “Était-il géographe du roi, comme le saluera Lescarbot dans un sonnet de 1607? Nulle part Champlain ne porte ce titre et personne autre que Lescarbot ne le lui donne; rien n’établit que Champlain, tout en agissant en géographe, ait occupé le poste officiel de géographe du roi.” Cf. Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (Montreal, 1963) 1:258. The phrase does not appear in Lescarbot’s sonnet but it is in the second edition of his history of New France, as cited above.