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We know, indeed, that an ancient map of the eastern coast of America, made some ten years after the first of Cartier's voyages, has pictured upon it a group of figures that represent the landing of the navigator and his followers among the Indians of Gaspe. It was the fashion of the time to attempt by such decorations to make maps vivid.
"Whom do you mean?" cried Charles, a vague anxiety roused within him at the sight of Cartier's face. "I mean De Roberval." "Why, what has he done? Is there bad news? Tell me at once, I beg of you! What have you heard?" "I do not know what he has done.
It was on Champlain's cliff and beneath Cartier's Mount Royal that the unequal contest for the possession of America ended, where it began a contest whose story, as Parkman says, in a sense demeaning his own great contribution, "would have been a history, if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode."
The truth of the story was proved, long after the writing of Cartier's narrative, by the finding of a great pile of human bones in a cave on an island near Bic, not far from the mouth of the Saguenay. The place is called L'Isle au Massacre to-day. The French now settled down into their winter quarters.
Great doubt and uncertainty surround the ultimate fate of Roberval's attempted colony, of which Cartier's expedition was to form the advance guard. Roberval, as already seen, had stayed behind in France when Cartier sailed in 1541, because his equipment was not yet ready for the voyage. Nor does he seem to have finally started on his expedition for nearly a year after the departure of Cartier.
"The Devil, or La Pommeraye," said Jules. "Neither! Too merry for the Devil," answered Henri, "and La Pommeraye, we heard, was killed in Paris." "Nay," replied Jules, "that report was false. But it is true that he is no longer in France. Guillaume Leblanc saw him on board one of Cartier's ships, making for the New World. I was glad of the tidings, I have to confess.
This, at least, was the way that Cartier interpreted the simple and evident signs that the Indians made. The commentators on Cartier's voyages have ever since sought some other explanation, supposing that no such metals existed in the country.
This street is so eminently respectable and quiet." Sue met Madam de Cartier's eye unflinchingly. There was an unfathomable twinkle in Madam's that meant much or little. Madam was naturally merry. Nevertheless, Sue, for all her bravado, was worried. She changed the subject immediately. "Sue's perfectly furious at Deborah," Annabel said, catching up with Blue Bonnet on the way to chapel.
If he did not find the long-sought passage to the Western Sea, at least he added to the dominions of France a territory the potential wealth of which, as we now see, was not surpassed even by the riches of Cathay. The report of Cartier's first voyage, written by himself, brought to him the immediate favour of the king.
The modern enquirer will recognize, perhaps, the great auk which once abounded on the coast, but which is now extinct. The sailors killed large numbers of the birds, and filled two boats with them. Then the ships sailed on rejoicing from the Island of Birds with six barrels full of salted provisions added to their stores. Cartier's Island of Birds is the Funk Island of our present maps.
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