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Updated: June 1, 2025
I would have it written not only in France but somewhere at the northern portals of the American continent, on the cliffs of the Saguenay, or on that Rock of Quebec which saw the first vessel of the French come up the river and supported the last struggle for formal dominion of a land which the French can never lose, except by forgetting: "Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand.
These people are giuen to no other exercise, but onely to husbandrie and fishing for their sustenance: they haue no care of any other wealth or commoditie in this world, for they haue no knowledge of it, and that is, because they neuer trauell and go out of their countrey, as those of Canada and Saguenay doe, albeit the Canadians with eight or nine Villages more alongst the riuer be subiects vnto them.
Besides, there is a considerable range of temperatures in a country whose extreme north and south lie 1,000 miles apart, one in the latitude of Greenland, the other in that of Paris. Taking the Labrador peninsula geographically, as including the whole area east of a line run up the Saguenay and on from lake St. John to James bay, it comprises 560,000 square miles eleven Englands!
François Xavier at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and made our snowshoes very heavy.
On the banks of this river lies the country called Saguenay, whence comes the red copper, to which the two savages whom he had taken on his first voyage gave the name of caquetdazé. But before entering the St. Lawrence, Cartier wished to explore the whole gulf, to see if no passage existed to the north.
"Four dollars five dollars: do I hear no more than five dollars? going once, going twice, going three times gone!" he cried, for no one had made a further bid; and indeed M. Manotel would not have heard another voice than Jean Jacques' if it had been as loud as the falls of the Saguenay. He was a kind of poet in his way, was M. Manotel.
From Anticosti, which Cartier named the Island of the Assumption, the ships sailed across to the Gaspe side of the Gulf, which they saw on August 16, and which was noted to be a land 'full of very great and high hills. According to the information of his Indian guides, he had now reached the point beyond which extended the great kingdom of Saguenay.
This is the Saguenay; and in the cold evening light under which the traveller approaches its mouth, no landscape could look more forlorn than that of Tadoussac, where early in the sixteenth century the French traders fixed their first post, and where still the oldest church north of Florida is standing.
Of the many tributaries which give strength to the current of the St. Lawrence and contribute to its glory, the Saguenay River with its remarkable scenery is counted one of the wonders of our continent. It joins the great river from the north shore, about one hundred and thirty-four statute miles below Quebec.
Wee vnderstood of Donnacona and of others, that the said riuer is called the riuer of Saguenay, and goeth to Sagnenay, being somewhat more then a league farther Westnorthwest, and that 8 or 9 dayes journeys beyond, it will beare but small boats.
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