The Dawn of Canadian History : A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

The Iroquois were in some respects superior to most of the Indians of the continent. Though they had a limited agriculture, and though they made hardly any use of metals, they had advanced further in other directions than most savages. They built of logs, houses long enough to be divided into several compartments, with a family in each compartment. By setting a group of houses together, and surrounding them with a palisade of stakes and trees set on end, the settlement was turned into a kind of fort, and could bid defiance to the limited means of attack possessed by their enemies. Inside their houses they kept a good store of corn, pumpkins and dried meat, which belonged not to each man singly but to the whole group in common. This was the type of settlement seen at Quebec and at Hochelaga, and, later on, among the Five Nations. Indeed, the Five Nations gave to themselves the picturesque name of the Long House, for their confederation resembled, as it were, the long wooden houses that held the families together.

All this shows that the superiority of the Iroquois over their enemies lay in organization. In this they were superior even to their kinsmen the Hurons. All Indian tribes kept women in a condition which we should think degrading. The Indian women were drudges; they carried the burdens, and did the rude manual toil of the tribe. Among the Iroquois, however, women were not wholly despised; sometimes, if of forceful character, they had great influence in the councils of the tribe. Among the Hurons, on the other hand, women were treated with contempt or brutal indifference. The Huron woman, worn out with arduous toil, rapidly lost the brightness of her youth. At an age when the women of a higher culture are still at the height of their charm and attractiveness the woman of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled hag, horrible to the eye and often despicable in character. The inborn gentleness of womanhood had been driven from her breast by ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of the warriors surpassed the unhallowed fiendishness of the withered squaw in preparing the torments of the stake and in shrieking her toothless exultation beside the torture fire.

Where women are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them to admire.

North and west from the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois were the family of tribes belonging to the Athapascan stock. The general names of Chipewyan and Tinne are also applied to the same great branch of the Indian race. In a variety of groups and tribes, the Athapascans spread out from the Arctic to Mexico. Their name has since become connected with the geography of Canada alone, but in reality a number of the tribes of the plains, like the well-known Apaches, as well as the Hupas of California and the Navahos, belong to the Athapascans. In Canada, the Athapascans roamed over the country that lay between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains. They were found in the basin of the Mackenzie river towards the Arctic sea, and along the valley of the Fraser to the valley of the Chilcotin. Their language was broken into a great number of dialects which differed so widely that only the kindred groups could understand one another's speech. But the same general resemblance ran through the various branches of the Athapascans. They were a tall, strong race, great in endurance, during their prime, though they had little of the peculiar stamina that makes for long life and vigorous old age. Their descendants of to-day still show the same facial characteristics—the low forehead with prominent ridge bones, and the eyes set somewhat obliquely so as to suggest, though probably without reason, a kinship with Oriental peoples.

The Athapascans stood low in the scale of civilization. Most of them lived in a prairie country where a luxuriant soil, not encumbered with trees, would have responded to the slightest labour. But the Athapascans, in Canada at least, knew nothing of agriculture. With alternations of starvation and rude plenty, they lived upon the unaided bounty of tribes of the far north, degraded by want and indolence, were often addicted to cannibalism.

The Indians beyond the mountains, between the Rockies and the sea, were for the most part quite distinct from those of the plains. Some tribes of the Athapascans, as we have seen, penetrated into British Columbia, but the greater part of the natives in that region were of wholly different races. Of course, we know hardly anything of these Indians during the first two centuries of European settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century, when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into the North Pacific,—the Tlingit of the far north, the Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai. It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific Indians belong to one kindred stock. There are, it is true, many distinct languages between California and Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics of the natives show a similarity throughout.

The total number of the original Indian population of the continent can be a matter of conjecture only. There is every reason, however, to think that it was far less than the absurdly exaggerated figures given by early European writers. Whenever the first explorers found a considerable body of savages they concluded that the people they saw were only a fraction of some large nation. The result was that the Spaniards estimated the inhabitants of Peru at thirty millions. Las Casas, the Spanish historian, said that Hispaniola, the present Hayti, had a population of three millions; a more exact estimate, made about twenty years after the discovery of the island, brought the population down to fourteen thousand! In the same way Montezuma was said to have commanded three million Mexican warriors—an obvious absurdity. The early Jesuits reckoned the numbers of the Iroquois at about a hundred thousand; in reality there seem to have been, in the days of Wolfe and Montcalm, about twelve thousand. At the opening of the twentieth century there were in America north of Mexico about 403,000 Indians, of whom 108,000 were in Canada. Some writers go so far as to say that the numbers of the natives were probably never much greater than they are to-day. But even if we accept the more general opinion that the Indian population has declined, there is no evidence to show that the population was ever more than a thin scattering of wanderers over the face of a vast country. Mooney estimates that at the coming of the white man there were only about 846,000 aborigines in the United States, 220,000 in British America, 72,000 in Alaska, and 10,000 in Greenland, a total native population of 1,148,000 from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.

The limited means of support possessed by the natives, their primitive agriculture, their habitual disinclination to settled life and industry, their constant wars and the epidemic diseases which, even as early as the time of Jacques Cartier, worked havoc among them, must always have prevented the growth of a numerous population. The explorer might wander for days in the depths of the American forest without encountering any trace of human life. The continent was, in truth, one vast silence, broken only by the roar of the waterfall or the cry of the beasts and birds of the forest.

CHAPTER IV

THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN

There are many stories of the coming of white men to the coasts of America and of their settlements in America long before the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Even in the time of the Greeks and Romans there were traditions and legends of sailors who had gone out into the 'Sea of Darkness' beyond the Pillars of Hercules—the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar—and far to the west had found inhabited lands. Aristotle thought that there must be land out beyond the Atlantic, and Plato tells us that once upon a time a vast island lay off the coasts of Africa; he calls it Atlantis, and it was, he says, sunk below the sea by an earthquake. The Phoenicians were wonderful sailors; their ships had gone out of the Mediterranean into the other sea, and had reached the British Isles, and in all probability they sailed as far west as the Canaries. We find, indeed, in classical literature many references to supposed islands and countries out beyond the Atlantic. The ancients called these places the Islands of the Blessed and the Fortunate Isles. It is, perhaps, not unnatural that in the earlier writers the existence of these remote and mysterious regions should be linked with the ideas of the Elysian Fields and of the abodes of the dead. But the later writers, such as Pliny, and Strabo, the geographer, talked of them as actual places, and tried to estimate how many Roman miles they must be distant from the coast of Spain.

There were similar legends among the Irish, legends preserved in written form at least five hundred years before Columbus. They recount wonderful voyages out into the Atlantic and the discovery of new land. But all these tales are mixed up with obvious fable, with accounts of places where there was never any illness or infirmity, and people lived for ever, and drank delicious wine and laughed all day, and we cannot certify to an atom of historic truth in them.

Still more interesting, if only for curiosity's sake, are weird stories that have been unearthed among the early records of the Chinese. These are older than the Irish legends, and date back to about the sixth century. According to the Chinese story, a certain Hoei-Sin sailed out into the Pacific until he was four thousand miles east of Japan. There he found a new continent, which the Chinese records called Fusang, because of a certain tree—the fusang tree,—out of the fibres of which the inhabitants made, not only clothes, but paper, and even food. Here was truly a land of wonders. There were strange animals with branching horns on their heads, there were men who could not speak Chinese but barked like dogs, and other men with bodies painted in strange colours. Some people have endeavoured to prove by these legends that the Chinese must have landed in British Columbia, or have seen moose or reindeer, since extinct, in the country far to the north. But the whole account is so mixed up with the miraculous, and with descriptions of things which certainly never existed on the Pacific coast of America, that we can place no reliance whatever upon it.

The only importance that we can attach to such traditions of the discovery of unknown lands and peoples on a new continent is their bearing as a whole, their accumulated effect, on the likelihood of such discovery before the time of Columbus. They at least make us ready to attach due weight to the circumstantial and credible records of the voyages of the Norsemen. These stand upon ground altogether different from that of the dim and confused traditions of the classical writers and of the Irish and Chinese legends. In fact, many scholars are now convinced that the eastern coast of Canada was known and visited by the Norsemen five hundred years before Columbus.

From time immemorial the Norsemen were among the most daring and skilful mariners ever known. They built great wooden boats with tall, sweeping bows and sterns. These ships, though open and without decks, were yet stout and seaworthy. Their remains have been found, at times lying deeply buried under the sand and preserved almost intact. One such vessel, discovered on the shore of Denmark, measured 72 feet in length. Another Viking ship, which was dug up in Norway, and which is preserved in the museum at Christiania, was 78 feet long and 17 feet wide. One of the old Norse sagas, or stories, tells how King Olaf Tryggvesson built a ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass, was 74 ells long; in modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942 tons burden. Even if we make allowance for the exaggeration or ignorance of the writer of the saga, there is still a vast contrast between this vessel and the little ship Centurion in which Anson sailed round the world.

It is needless, however, to prove that the Norsemen could have reached America in their ships. The voyages from Iceland to Greenland which we know they made continually for four hundred years were just as arduous as a further voyage from Greenland to the coast of Canada.

The story of the Norsemen runs thus. Towards the end of the ninth century, or nearly two hundred years before the Norman conquest, there was a great exodus or outswarming of the Norsemen from their original home in Norway. A certain King Harold had succeeded in making himself supreme in Norway, and great numbers of the lesser chiefs or jarls preferred to seek new homes across the seas rather than submit to his rule. So they embarked with their seafaring followers—Vikings, as we still call them—often, indeed, with their wives and families, in great open ships, and sailed away, some to the coast of England, others to France, and others even to the Mediterranean, where they took service under the Byzantine emperors. But still others, loving the cold rough seas of the north, struck westward across the North Sea and beyond the coasts of Scotland till they reached Iceland. This was in the year 874. Here they made a settlement that presently grew to a population of fifty thousand people, having flocks and herds, solid houses of stone, and a fine trade in fish and oil with the countries of Northern Europe. These settlers in Iceland attained to a high standard of civilization. They had many books, and were fond of tales and stories, as are all these northern peoples who spend long winter evenings round the fireside. Some of the sagas, or stories, which they told were true accounts of the voyages and adventures of their forefathers; others were fanciful stories, like our modern romances, created by the imagination; others, again, were a mixture of the two. Thus it is sometimes hard to distinguish fact and fancy in these early tales of the Norsemen. We have, however, means of testing the stories. Among the books written in Iceland there was one called the 'National Name-Book,' in which all the names of the people were written down, with an account of their forefathers and of any notable things which they had done.

It is from this book and from the old sagas that we learn how the Norsemen came to the coast of America. It seems that about 900 a certain man called Gunnbjorn was driven westward in a great storm and thrown on the rocky shore of an ice-bound country, where he spent the winter. Gunnbjorn reached home safely, and never tried again to find this new land; but, long after his death, the story that there was land farther west still lingered among the settlers in Iceland and the Orkneys, and in other homes of the Norsemen. Some time after Gunnbjorn's voyage it happened that a very bold and determined man called Eric the Red, who lived in the Orkneys, was made an outlaw for having killed several men in a quarrel. Eric fled westward over the seas about the year 980, and he came to a new country with great rocky bays and fjords as in Norway. There were no trees, but the slopes of the hillsides were bright with grass, so he called the country Greenland, as it is called to this day. Eric and his men lived in Greenland for three years, and the ruins of their rough stone houses are still to be seen, hard by one of the little Danish settlements of to-day. When Eric and his followers went back to Iceland they told of what they had seen, and soon he led a new expedition to Greenland. The adventurers went in twenty-five ships; more than half were lost on the way, but eleven ships landed safely and founded a colony in Greenland. Other settlers came, and this Greenland colony had at one time a population of about two thousand people. Its inhabitants embraced Christianity when their kinsfolk in other places did so, and the ruins of their stone churches still exist. The settlers raised cattle and sheep, and sent ox hides and seal skins and walrus ivory to Europe in trade for supplies. But as there was no timber in Greenland they could not build ships, and thus their communication with the outside world was more or less precarious. In spite of this, the colony lasted for about four hundred years. It seems to have come to an end at about the beginning of the fifteenth century. The scanty records of its history can be traced no later than the year 1409. What happened to terminate its existence is not known. Some writers, misled by the name 'Greenland,' have thought that there must have been a change of climate by which the country lost its original warmth and verdure and turned into an arctic region. There is no ground for this belief. The name 'Greenland' did not imply a country of trees and luxuriant vegetation, but only referred to the bright carpet of grass still seen in the short Greenland summer in the warmer hollows of the hillsides. It may have been that the settlement, never strong in numbers, was overwhelmed by the Eskimos, who are known to have often attacked the colony: very likely, too, it suffered from the great plague, the Black Death, that swept over all Europe in the fourteenth century. Whatever the cause, the colony came to an end, and centuries elapsed before Greenland was again known to Europe.

This whole story of the Greenland settlement is historical fact which cannot be doubted. Partly by accident and partly by design, the Norsemen had been carried from Norway to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and Iceland, and from there to Greenland. This having happened, it was natural that their ships should go beyond Greenland itself. During the four hundred years in which the Norse ships went from Europe to Greenland, their navigators had neither chart nor compass, and they sailed huge open boats, carrying only a great square sail. It is evident that in stress of weather and in fog they must again and again have been driven past the foot of Greenland, and must have landed somewhere in what is now Labrador. It would be inconceivable that in four centuries of voyages this never happened. In most cases, no doubt, the storm-tossed and battered ships, like the fourteen vessels that Eric lost, were never heard of again. But in other cases survivors must have returned to Greenland or Iceland to tell of what they had seen.

This is exactly what happened to a bold sailor called Bjarne, the son of Herjulf, a few years after the Greenland colony was founded. In 986 he put out from Iceland to join his father, who was in Greenland, the purpose being that, after the good old Norse custom, they might drink their Christmas ale together. Neither Bjarne nor his men had ever sailed the Greenland sea before, but, like bold mariners, they relied upon their seafaring instinct to guide them to its coast. As Bjarne's ship was driven westward, great mists fell upon the face of the waters. There was neither sun nor stars, but day after day only the thick wet fog that clung to the cold surface of the heaving sea. To-day travellers even on a palatial steamship, who spend a few hours shuddering in the chill grey fog of the North Atlantic, chafing at delay, may form some idea of voyages such as that of Bjarne Herjulf and his men. These Vikings went on undaunted towards the west. At last, after many days, they saw land, but when they drew near they saw that it was not a rugged treeless region, such as they knew Greenland to be, but a country covered with forests, a country of low coasts rising inland to small hills, and with no mountains in sight. Accordingly, Bjarne said that this was not Greenland, and he would not stop, but turned the vessel to the north. After two days they sighted land again, still on the left side, and again it was flat and thick with trees. The sea had fallen calm, and Bjarne's men desired to land and see this new country, and take wood and water into the ship. But Bjarne would not. So they held on their course, and presently a wind from the south-west carried them onward for three days and three nights. Then again they saw land, but this time it was high and mountainous, with great shining caps of snow. And again Bjarne said, 'This is not the land I seek.' They did not go ashore, but sailing close to the coast they presently found that the land was an island. When they stood out to sea again, the south wind rose to a gale that swept them towards the north, with sail reefed down and with their ship leaping through the foaming surges. Three days and nights they ran before the gale. On the fourth day land rose before them, and this time it was Greenland. There Bjarne found his father, and there, when not at sea, he settled for the rest of his days.

Such is the story of Bjarne Herjulf, as the Norsemen have it. To the unprejudiced mind there is every reason to believe that his voyage had carried him to America, to the coast of the Maritime Provinces, or of Newfoundland or Labrador. More than this one cannot say. True, it is hard to fit the 'two days' and the 'three days' of Bjarne's narrative into the sailing distances. But every one who has read any primitive literature, or even the Homeric poems, will remember how easily times and distances and numbers that are not exactly known are expressed in loose phrases not to be taken as literal.

The news of Bjarne's voyage and of his discovery of land seems to have been carried presently to the Norsemen in Iceland and in Europe. In fact, Bjarne himself made a voyage to Norway, and, on account of what he had done, figured there as a person of some importance. But people blamed Bjarne because he had not landed on the new coasts, and had taken so little pains to find out more about the region of hills and forests which lay to the south and west of Greenland. Naturally others were tempted to follow the matter further. Among these was Leif, son of Eric the Red. Leif went to Greenland, found Bjarne, bought his ship, and manned it with a crew of thirty-five. Leif's father, Eric, now lived in Greenland, and Leif asked him to take command of the expedition. He thought, the saga says, that, since Eric had found Greenland, he would bring good luck to the new venture. For the time, Eric consented, but when all was ready, and he was riding down to the shore to embark, his horse stumbled and he fell from the saddle and hurt his foot. Eric took this as an omen of evil, and would not go; but Leif and his crew of thirty-five set sail towards the south-west. This was in the year 1000 A.D., or four hundred and ninety-two years before Columbus landed in the West Indies.

Leif and his men sailed on, the saga tells us, till they came to the last land which Bjarne had discovered. Here they cast anchor, lowered a boat, and rowed ashore. They found no grass, but only a great field of snow stretching from the sea to the mountains farther inland; and these mountains, too, glistened with snow. It seemed to the Norsemen a forbidding place, and Leif christened it Helluland, or the country of slate or flat stones. They did not linger, but sailed away at once. The description of the snow-covered hills, the great slabs of stone, and the desolate aspect of the coast conveys at least a very strong probability that the land was Labrador.

Leif and his men sailed away, and soon they discovered another land. The chronicle does not say how many days they were at sea, so that we cannot judge of the distance of this new country from the Land of Stones. But evidently it was entirely different in aspect, and was situated in a warmer climate. The coast was low, there were broad beaches of white sand, and behind the beaches rose thick forests spreading over the country. Again the Norsemen landed. Because of the trees, they gave to this place the name of Markland, or the Country of Forests. Some writers have thought that Markland must have been Newfoundland, but the description also suggests Cape Breton or Nova Scotia. The coast of Newfoundland is, indeed, for the most part, bold, rugged, and inhospitable.

Leif put to sea once more. For two days the wind was from the north-east. Then again they reached land. This new region was the famous country which the Norsemen called Vineland, and of which every schoolboy has read. There has been so much dispute as to whether Vineland—this warm country where grapes grew wild—was Nova Scotia or New England, or some other region, that it is worth while to read the account of the Norse saga, literally translated:

They came to an island, which lay on the north side of the land, where they disembarked to wait for good weather. There was dew upon the grass; and having accidentally got some of the dew upon their hands and put it to their mouths, they thought that they had never tasted anything so sweet. Then they went on board and sailed into a sound that was between the island and a point that went out northwards from the land, and sailed westward past the point. There was very shallow water and ebb tide, so that their ship lay dry; and there was a long way between their ship and the water. They were so desirous to get to the land that they would not wait till their ship floated, but ran to the land, to a place where a river comes out of a lake. As soon as their ship was afloat they took the boats, rowed to the ship, towed her up the river, and from thence into the lake, where they cast anchor, carried their beds out of the ship, and set up their tents.

They resolved to put things in order for wintering there, and they erected a large house. They did not want for salmon, in both the river and the lake; and they thought the salmon larger than any they had ever seen before. The country appeared to them to be of so good a kind that it would not be necessary to gather fodder for the cattle for winter. There was no frost in winter, and the grass was not much withered. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland and Iceland.

The chronicle goes on to tell how Leif and his men spent the winter in this place. They explored the country round their encampment. They found beautiful trees, trees big enough for use in building houses, something vastly important to men from Greenland, where no trees grow. Delighted with this, Leif and his men cut down some trees and loaded their ship with the timber. One day a sailor, whose home had been in a 'south country,' where he had seen wine made from grapes, and who was nicknamed the 'Turk,' found on the coast vines with grapes, growing wild. He brought his companions to the spot, and they gathered grapes sufficient to fill their ship's boat. It was on this account that Leif called the country 'Vineland.' They found patches of supposed corn which grew wild like the grapes and reseeded itself from year to year. It is striking that the Norse chronicle should name these simple things. Had it been a work of fancy, probably we should have heard, as in the Chinese legends, of strange demons and other amazing creatures. But we hear instead of the beautiful forest extending to the shore, the mountains in the background, the tangled vines, and the bright patches of wild grain of some kind ripening in the open glades-the very things which caught the eye of Cartier when, five centuries later, he first ascended the St Lawrence.

Where Vineland was we cannot tell. If the men really found wild grapes, and not some kind of cranberry, Vineland must have been in the region where grapes will grow. The vine grows as far north as Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, and, of course, is found in plenty on the coasts of Nova Scotia and New England. The chronicle says that the winter days were longer in Vineland than in Greenland, and names the exact length of the shortest day. Unfortunately, however, the Norsemen had no accurate system for measuring time; otherwise the length of the shortest winter day would enable us to know at what exact spot Leif's settlement was made.

Leif and his men stayed in Vineland all winter, and sailed home to Greenland in the spring (1001 A.D.). As they brought timber, much prized in the Greenland settlement, their voyage caused a great deal of talk. Naturally others wished to rival Leif. In the next few years several voyages to Vineland are briefly chronicled in the sagas.

First of all, Thorwald, Leif's brother, borrowed his ship, sailed away to Vineland with thirty men, and spent two winters there. During his first summer in Vineland, Thorwald sent some men in a boat westward along the coast. They found a beautiful country with thick woods reaching to the shore, and great stretches of white sand. They found a kind of barn made of wood, and were startled by this first indication of the presence of man. Thorwald had, indeed, startling adventures. In a great storm his ship was wrecked on the coast, and he and his men had to rebuild it. He selected for a settlement a point of land thickly covered with forest. Before the men had built their houses they fell in with some savages, whom they made prisoners. These savages had bows and arrows, and used what the Norsemen called 'skin boats.' One of the savages escaped and roused his tribe, and presently a great flock of canoes came out of a large bay, surrounded the Viking ship, and discharged a cloud of arrows. The Norsemen beat off the savages, but in the fight Thorwald received a mortal wound. As he lay dying he told his men to bury him there in Vineland, on the point where he had meant to build his home. This was done. Thorwald's men remained there for the winter. In the spring they returned to Greenland, with the sad news for Leif of his brother's death.

Other voyages followed. A certain Thorfinn Karlsevne even tried to found a permanent colony in Vineland. In the spring of 1007, he took there a hundred and sixty men, some women, and many cattle. He and his people remained in Vineland for nearly four years. They traded with the savages, giving them cloth and trinkets for furs. Karlsevne's wife gave birth there to a son, who was christened Snorre, and who was perhaps the first white child born in America. The Vineland colony seems to have prospered well enough, but unfortunately quarrels broke out between the Norsemen and the savages, and so many of Karlsevne's people were killed that the remainder were glad to sail back to Greenland.

The Norse chronicles contain a further story of how one of Karlsevne's companions, Thorward, and his wife Freydis, who was a daughter of Eric the Red, made a voyage to Vineland. This expedition ended in tragedy. One night the Norsemen quarrelled in their winter quarters, there was a tumult and a massacre. Freydis herself killed five women with an axe, and the little colony was drenched in blood. The survivors returned to Greenland, but were shunned by all from that hour.

After this story we have no detailed accounts of voyages to Vineland. There are, however, references to it in Icelandic literature. There does not seem any ground to believe that the Norsemen succeeded in planting a lasting colony in Vineland. Some people have tried to claim that certain ancient ruins on the New England coast—an old stone mill at Newport, and so on—are evidences of such a settlement. But the claim has no sufficient proof behind it.

On the whole, however, there seems every ground to conclude that again and again the Norsemen landed on the Atlantic coast of America. We do not know where they made their winter quarters, nor does this matter. Very likely there were temporary settlements in both 'Markland,' with its thick woods bordering on the sea, and in other less promising regions. It should be added that some writers of authority refuse even to admit that the Norsemen reached America. Others, like Nansen, the famous Arctic explorer, while admitting the probability of the voyages, believe that the sagas are merely a sort of folklore, such as may be found in the primitive literature of all nations. On the other hand, John Fiske, the American historian, who devoted much patient study to the question, was convinced that what is now the Canadian coast, with, probably, part of New England too, was discovered, visited, and thoroughly well known by the Norse inhabitants of Greenland. For several centuries they appear to have made summer voyages to and from this 'Vineland the Good' as they called it, and to have brought back timber and supplies not found in their own inhospitable country. It is quite possible that further investigation may throw new light on the Norse discoveries, and even that undeniable traces of the buildings or implements of the settlers in Vineland may be found. Meanwhile the subject, interesting though it is, remains shrouded in mystery.

CHAPTER V

THE BRISTOL VOYAGES

The discoveries of the Norsemen did not lead to the opening of America to the nations of Europe. For this the time was not yet ripe. As yet European nations were backward, not only in navigation, but in the industries and commerce which supply the real motive for occupying new lands. In the days of Eric the Red Europe was only beginning to emerge from a dark period. The might and splendour of the Roman Empire had vanished, and the great kingdoms which we know were still to rise.

All this changed in the five hundred years between the foundation of the Greenland colony and the voyage of Christopher Columbus. The discovery of America took place as a direct result of the advancing civilization and growing power of Europe. The event itself was, in a sense, due to pure accident. Columbus was seeking Asia when he found himself among the tropical islands of the West Indies. In another sense, however, the discovery marks in world history a necessary stage, for which the preceding centuries had already made the preparation. The story of the voyages of Columbus forms no part of our present narrative. But we cannot understand the background that lies behind the history of Canada without knowing why such men as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama and the Cabots began the work of discovery.

First, we have to realize the peculiar relations between Europe, ancient and mediaeval, and the great empires of Eastern Asia. The two civilizations had never been in direct contact. Yet in a sense they were always connected. The Greeks and the Romans had at least vague reports of peoples who lived on the far eastern confines of the world, beyond even the conquests of Alexander the Great in Hindustan. It is certain, too, that Europe and Asia had always traded with one another in a strange and unconscious fashion. The spices and silks of the unknown East passed westward from trader to trader, from caravan to caravan, until they reached the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and, at last, the Mediterranean. The journey was so slow, so tedious, the goods passed from hand to hand so often, that when the Phoenician, Greek, or Roman merchants bought them their origin had been forgotten. For century after century this trade continued. When Rome fell, other peoples of the Mediterranean continued the Eastern trade. Genoa and Venice rose to greatness by this trade. As wealth and culture revived after the Gothic conquest which overthrew Rome, the beautiful silks and the rare spices of the East were more and more prized in a world of increasing luxury. The Crusades rediscovered Egypt, Syria, and the East for Europe. Gold and jewels, diamond-hilted swords of Damascus steel, carved ivory, and priceless gems,—all the treasures which the warriors of the Cross brought home, helped to impress on the mind of Europe the surpassing riches of the East.

Gradually a new interest was added. As time went on doubts increased regarding the true shape of the earth. Early peoples had thought it a great flat expanse, with the blue sky propped over it like a dome or cover. This conception was giving way. The wise men who watched the sky at night, who saw the sweeping circles of the fixed stars and the wandering path of the strange luminous bodies called planets, began to suspect a mighty secret,—that the observing eye saw only half the heavens, and that the course of the stars and the earth itself rounded out was below the darkness of the horizon. From this theory that the earth was a great sphere floating in space followed the most enthralling conclusions. If the earth was really a globe, it might be possible to go round it and to reappear on the farther side of the horizon. Then the East might be reached, not only across the deserts of Persia and Tartary, but also by striking out into the boundless ocean that lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules. For such an attempt an almost superhuman courage was required. No man might say what awful seas, what engulfing gloom, might lie across the familiar waters which washed the shores of Europe. The most fearless who, at evening, upon the cliffs of Spain or Portugal, watched black night settle upon the far-spreading waters of the Atlantic, might well turn shuddering from any attempt to sail into those unknown wastes.

It was the stern logic of events which compelled the enterprise. Barbarous Turks swept westward. Arabia, Syria, the Isles of Greece, and, at last, in 1453, Constantinople itself, fell into their hands. The Eastern Empire, the last survival of the Empire of the Romans, perished beneath the sword of Mahomet. Then the pathway by land to Asia, to the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, was blocked by the Turkish conquest. Commerce, however, remained alert and enterprising, and men's minds soon turned to the hopes of a western passage which should provide a new route to the Indies.

All the world knows the story of Christopher Columbus, his long years of hardship and discouragement; the supreme conviction which sustained him in his adversity; the final triumph which crowned his efforts. It is no detraction from the glory of Columbus to say that he was only one of many eager spirits occupied with new problems of discovery across the sea. Not the least of these were John and Sebastian Cabot, father and son. John Cabot, like Columbus, was a Genoese by birth; a long residence in Venice, however, earned for him in 1476 the citizenship of that republic. Like many in his time, he seems to have been both a scientific geographer and a practical sea-captain. At one time he made charts and maps for his livelihood. Seized with the fever for discovery, he is said to have begged in vain from the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal for help in a voyage to the West. About the time of the great discovery of Columbus in 1492, John Cabot arrived in Bristol. It may be that he took part in some of the voyages of the Bristol merchants, before the achievements of Columbus began to startle the world.

At the close of the fifteenth century the town of Bristol enjoyed a pre-eminence which it has since lost. It stood second only to London as a British port. A group of wealthy merchants carried on from Bristol a lively trade with Iceland and the northern ports of Europe. The town was the chief centre for an important trade in codfish. Days of fasting were generally observed at that time; on these the eating of meat was forbidden by the church, and fish was consequently in great demand. The merchants of Bristol were keen traders, and were always seeking the further extension of their trade. Christopher Columbus himself is said to have made a voyage for the Bristol merchants to Iceland in 1477. There is even a tale that, before Columbus was known to fame, an expedition was equipped there in 1480 to seek the 'fabulous islands' of the Western Sea. Certain it is that the Spanish ambassador in England, whose business it was to keep his royal master informed of all that was being done by his rivals, wrote home in 1498: 'It is seven years since those of Bristol used to send out, every year, a fleet of two, three, or four caravels to go and search for the Isle of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of the Genoese.'

We can therefore realize that when Master John Cabot came among the merchants of this busy town with his plans he found a ready hearing. Cabot was soon brought to the notice of his august majesty Henry VII of England. The king had been shortsighted enough to reject overtures made to him by Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher, and no doubt he regretted his mistake. Now he was eager enough to act as the patron of a new voyage. Accordingly, on March 5, 1496, he granted a royal licence in the form of what was called Letters Patent, authorizing John Cabot and his sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sancius to make a voyage of discovery in the name of the king of England. The Cabots were to sail 'with five ships or vessels of whatever burden or quality soever they be, and with as many marines or men as they will have with them in the said ships upon their own proper costs and charges.' It will be seen that Henry VII, the most parsimonious of kings, had no mind to pay the expense of the voyage. The expedition was 'to seek out, discover and find whatsoever islands, countries, regions and provinces of the heathens or infidels, in whatever part of the world they be, which before this time have been unknown to all Christians.' It was to sail only 'to the seas of the east and west and north,' for the king did not wish to lay any claim to the lands discovered by the Spaniards and Portuguese. The discoverers, however, were to raise the English flag over any new lands that they found, to conquer and possess them, and to acquire 'for us dominion, title, and jurisdiction over those towns, castles, islands, and mainlands so discovered.' One-fifth of the profits from the anticipated voyages to the new land was to fall to the king, but the Cabots were to have a monopoly of trade, and Bristol was to enjoy the right of being the sole port of entry for the ships engaged in this trade.

Not until the next year, 1497, did John Cabot set out. Then he embarked from Bristol with a single ship, called in an old history the Matthew, and a crew of eighteen men. First, he sailed round the south of Ireland, and from there struck out westward into the unknown sea. The appliances of navigation were then very imperfect. Sailors could reckon the latitude by looking up at the North Star, and noting how high it was above the horizon. Since the North Star stands in the sky due north, and the axis on which the earth spins points always towards it, it will appear to an observer in the northern hemisphere to be as many degrees above the horizon as he himself is distant from the pole or top of the earth. The old navigators, therefore, could always tell how far north or south they were. Moreover, as long as the weather was clear they could, by this means, strike, at night at least, a course due east or west. But when the weather was not favourable for observations they had to rely on the compass alone. Now the compass in actual fact does not always and everywhere point due north. It is subject to variation, and in different times and places points either considerably east of north or west of it. In the path where Cabot sailed, the compass pointed west of north; and hence, though he thought he was sailing straight west from Ireland, he was really pursuing a curved path bent round a little towards the south. This fact will become of importance when we consider where it was that Cabot landed. For finding distance east and west the navigators of the fifteenth century had no such appliances as our modern chronometer and instruments of observation. They could tell how far they had sailed only by 'dead reckoning'; this means that if their ship was going at such and such a speed, it was supposed to have made such and such a distance in a given time. But when ships were being driven to and fro, and buffeted by adverse winds, this reckoning became extremely uncertain.

John Cabot and his men mere tossed about considerably in their little ship. Though they seem to have set out early in May of 1497, it was not until June 24 that they sighted land. What the land was like, and what they thought of it, we know from letters written in England by various persons after their return. Thus we learn that it was a 'very good and temperate country,' and that 'Brazil wood and silks grow there.' 'The sea,' they reported, 'is covered with fishes, which are caught not only with the net, but with baskets, a stone being tied to them in order that the baskets may sink in the water.' Henceforth, it was said, England would have no more need to buy fish from Iceland, for the waters of the new land abounded in fish. Cabot and his men saw no savages, but they found proof that the land was inhabited. Here and there in the forest they saw trees which had been felled, and also snares of a rude kind set to catch game. They were enthusiastic over their success. They reported that the new land must certainly be connected with Cipango, from which all the spices and precious stones of the world originated. Only a scanty stock of provisions, they declared, prevented them from sailing along the coast as far as Cathay and Cipango. As it was they planted on the land a great cross with the flag of England and also the banner of St Mark, the patron saint of Cabot's city of Venice.

The older histories used always to speak as if John Cabot had landed somewhere on the coast of Labrador, and had at best gone no farther south than Newfoundland. Even if this were the whole truth about the voyage, to Cabot and his men would belong the signal honour of having been the first Europeans, since the Norsemen, to set foot on the mainland of North America. Without doubt they were the first to unfurl the flag of England, and to erect the cross upon soil which afterwards became part of British North America. But this is not all. It is likely that Cabot reached a point far south of Labrador. His supposed sailing westward carried him in reality south of the latitude of Ireland. He makes no mention of the icebergs which any voyager must meet on the Labrador coast from June to August. His account of a temperate climate suitable for growing dye-wood, of forest trees, and of a country so fair that it seemed the gateway of the enchanted lands of the East, is quite unsuited to the bare and forbidding aspect of Labrador. Cape Breton island was probably the place of Cabot's landing. Its balmy summer climate, the abundant fish of its waters, fit in with Cabot's experiences. The evidence from maps, one of which was made by Cabot's son Sebastian, points also to Cape Breton as the first landing-place of English sailors in America.

There is no doubt of the stir made by Cabot's discovery on his safe return to England. He was in London by August of 1497, and he became at once the object of eager curiosity and interest. 'He is styled the Great Admiral,' wrote a Venetian resident in London, 'and vast honour is paid to him. He dresses in silk, and the English run after him like mad people.' The sunlight of royal favour broke over him in a flood: even Henry VII proved generous. The royal accounts show that, on August 10, 1497, the king gave ten pounds 'to him that found the new isle.' A few months later the king granted to his 'well-beloved John Cabot, of the parts of Venice, an annuity of twenty pounds sterling,' to be paid out of the customs of the port of Bristol. The king, too, was lavish in his promises of help for a new expedition. Henry's imagination had evidently been fired with the idea of an Oriental empire. A contemporary writer tells us that Cabot was to have ten armed ships. At Cabot's request, the king conceded to him all the prisoners needed to man this fleet, saving only persons condemned for high treason. It is one of the ironies of history that on the first pages of its annals the beautiful new world is offered to the criminals of Europe.

During the winter that followed, John Cabot was the hero of the hour. Busy preparations went on for a new voyage. Letters patent were issued giving Cabot power to take any six ships that he liked from the ports of the kingdom, paying to their owners the same price only as if taken for the king's service. The 'Grand Admiral' became a person of high importance. On one friend he conferred the sovereignty of an island; to others he made lavish promises; certain poor friars who offered to embark on his coming voyage were to be bishops over the heathen of the new land. Even the merchants of London ventured to send out goods for trade, and brought to Cabot 'coarse cloth, caps, laces, points, and other trifles.'