APPENDIX.

No. I.

"Geneva, Nov. 6.—Two days after the news arrived here of the taking of Quebec, Monsieur de Voltaire gave a grand entertainment at his house in the country. In the evening the company retired into a noble gallery, at the end of which was erected an elegant theater, and a new piece, called Le Patriot Insulaire, was performed, in which all the genius and fire of that celebrated poet were exhausted in the cause of liberty. M. de Voltaire himself appeared in the principal character, and drew tears from the whole audience. The scenes were decorated with emblems of liberty, and over the stage was this inscription in Latin and English:

'Libertati quieti Musis Sacrum S P of the F.'

The English line means 'Spite of the French.'

"After the play the windows of the gallery flew open, and presented a spacious court finely illuminated and adorned with savage trophies. In the middle of the court a magnificent fire-work was played off, accompanied with martial music; the star of St. George shedding forth innumerable rockets, and underneath a lively representation, by girandoles, of the cataract of Niagara."—Public Advertiser, Nov. 23, 1759.

No. II.

"One of the most singular geographical illusions on record is that which for a long while haunted the imaginations of the inhabitants of the Canaries. They fancied they beheld a mountainous island, of about ninety leagues in length, lying far to the westward. It was only seen at intervals, though in perfectly clear and serene weather. To some it seemed one hundred leagues distant, to others forty, to others only fifteen or eighteen.[199]

"On attempting to reach it, however, it somehow or other eluded the search, and was nowhere to be found. Still, there were so many persons of credibility who concurred in testifying to their having seen it, and the testimony of the inhabitants of different islands agreed so well as to its form and position, that its existence was generally believed; and geographers inserted it in their maps. It is laid down on the globe of Martin Behrm, projected in 1492, as delineated by M. de Murr, and it will be found in most of the maps of the time of Columbus, placed commonly about 200 leagues west of the Canaries. During the time that Columbus was making his proposition to the court of Portugal, an inhabitant of the Canaries applied to King John II. for a vessel to go in search of this island. In the archives of the Torre di Tombo,[200] also, there is a record of a contract made by the crown of Portugal with Fernando de Ulmo, cavalier of the royal household, and captain of the Island of Terceira, wherein he undertakes to go, at his own expense, in quest of an island, or islands, or terra firma, supposed to be the Island of the Seven Cities, on condition of having jurisdiction over the same for himself and his heirs, allowing one tenth of the revenues to the king. This Ulmo, finding the expedition above his capacity, associated one Juan Alphonso del Estreito in the enterprise. They were bound to be ready to sail with two caravels in the month of March, 1487.[201] The fate of their enterprise is unknown.

"The name of St. Brandan, or Borondan, given to this imaginary island from time immemorial, is said to be derived from a Scotch abbot, who flourished in the sixth century, and who is called sometimes by the foregoing appellations, sometimes St. Blandano or St. Blandanus. In the Martyrology of the order of St. Augustine, he is said to have been the patriarch of 3000 monks. About the middle of the sixth century, he accompanied his disciple, St. Maclovio or St. Malo, in search of certain islands, possessing the delights of paradise, which they were told existed in the midst of the ocean, and were inhabited by infidels. After these most adventurous saints-errant had wandered for a long time upon the ocean, they at length landed upon an island called Ima. Here St. Malo found the body of a giant lying in a sepulcher. He resuscitated him, and had much interesting conversation with him, the giant informing him that the inhabitants of that island had some notions of the Trinity, and, moreover, giving him an account of the torments which Jews and pagans suffered in the infernal regions. Finding the giant so docile and reasonable, St. Malo expounded to him the doctrines of the Christian religion, converted him, and baptized him by the name of Mildum. The giant, however, either through weariness of life, or eagerness to enjoy the benefits of his conversion, begged permission, at the end of fifteen days, to die again, which was granted him.

"According to another account, the giant told them he knew of an island in the ocean, defended by walls of burnished gold, so resplendent that they shone like crystal, but to which there was no entrance. At their request he undertook to guide them to it, and, taking the cable of their ship, threw himself into the sea. He had not proceeded far, however, when a tempest arose and obliged them all to return, and shortly after the giant died.[202] A third legend makes the saint pray to Heaven, on Easter day, that they may be permitted to find land where they may celebrate the offices of religion with becoming state: an island immediately appears, on which they land, perform a solemn mass, and the sacrament of the Eucharist; after which, reembarking and making sail, they behold to their astonishment the supposed island suddenly plunge to the bottom of the sea, being nothing else than a monstrous whale.[203] When the rumor circulated of an island seen from the Canaries, which always eluded the search, the legends of St. Brandan were revived, and applied to this unapproachable land. We are told, also, that there was an ancient Latin manuscript in the archives of the cathedral church of the Grand Canary in which the adventures of these saints were recorded. Through carelessness, however, this manuscript disappeared.[204] Some have maintained that this island was known to the ancients, and was the same mentioned by Ptolemy among the Fortunate or Canary Islands by the name of Aprositus,[205] a Greek word signifying 'inaccessible,' and which, according to Friar Diego Philipo, in his book on the Incarnation of Christ, shows that it possessed the same quality in ancient times of deluding the eye, and being unattainable to the feet of mortals.[206] But, whatever belief the ancients may have had on the subject, it is certain that it took a strong hold on the faith of the moderns during the prevalent rage for discovery; nor did it lack abundant testimonials. Don Joseph de Viera y Clavijo says there never was a more difficult paradox or problem in the science of geography, since to affirm the existence of this island is to trample upon sound criticism, judgment, and reason, and to deny it, one must abandon tradition and experience, and suppose that many persons of credit had not the proper use of their senses.[207]

"The belief in this island has continued long since the time of Columbus. It was repeatedly seen, and by various persons at a time, always in the same place and the same form. In 1626, an expedition set off for the Canaries in quest of it, commanded by Fernando de Troya and Fernando Alvarez. They cruised in the wonted direction, but in vain; and their failure ought to have undeceived the public. 'The phantasm of the island, however,' says Viera, 'had such a secret enchantment for all who beheld it, that the public preferred doubting the good conduct of the explorers than their own senses.' In 1570 the appearances were so repeated and clear, that there was a universal fever of curiosity awakened among the people of the Canaries, and it was determined to send forth another expedition. That they might not appear to act upon light grounds, an exact investigation was previously made of all the persons of talent and credibility who had seen these apparitions of land, or who had other proofs of its existence.

"Alonzode Espinosa, governor of the island of Ferro, accordingly made a report, in which more than one hundred witnesses, several of them persons of the highest respectability, deposed that they had beheld the unknown island about forty leagues to the northwest of Ferro; that they had contemplated it with calmness and certainty, and had seen the sun set behind one of its points.

"Testimonials of still greater force came from the islands of Palma and Teneriffe. There were certain Portuguese who affirmed that, being driven about by a tempest, they had come upon the island of St. Borondon. Pedro Vello, who was the pilot of the vessel, asserted that, having anchored in a bay, he landed with several of the crew. They drank fresh water in a brook, and beheld in the sand the print of footsteps, double the size of those of an ordinary man, and the distance between them was in proportion. They found a cross nailed to a neighboring tree, near to which were three stones placed in form of a triangle, with signs of fire having been made among them, probably to cook shell-fish. Having seen much cattle and sheep grazing in the neighborhood, two of their party, armed with lances, went into the woods in pursuit of them. The night was approaching, the heavens began to lower, and a harsh wind arose. The people on board the ship cried out that she was dragging her anchor, whereupon Vello entered the boat and hurried on board. In an instant they lost sight of land, being, as it were, swept away in the hurricane. When the storm had passed away, and sea and sky were again serene, they searched in vain for the island; not a trace of it was to be seen, and they had to pursue their voyage, lamenting the loss of their two companions who had been abandoned in the wood.[208]

"A learned licentiate, Pedro Ortez de Funez, inquisitor of the Grand Canary, while on a visit at Teneriffe, summoned several persons before him who testified having seen the island. Among them was one Marcos Verde, a man well known in those parts. He stated that, in returning from Barbary, and arriving in the neighborhood of the Canaries, he beheld land, which, according to his maps and calculations, could not be any of the known islands. He concluded it to be the far-famed St. Borondon. Overjoyed at having discovered this land of mystery, he coasted along its spell-bound shores until he anchored in a beautiful harbor, formed by the mouth of a mountain ravine. Here he landed with several of his crew. 'It was now,' he said, 'the hour of Ave Maria, or of vespers. The sun being set, the shadows began to spread over the land. The navigators, having separated, wandered about in different directions, until out of hearing of each other's shouts. Those on board, seeing the night approaching, made signals to summon back the wanderers to the ship. They re-embarked, intending to resume their investigations on the following day. Scarcely were they on board, however, when a whirlwind came rushing down the ravine with such violence as to drag the vessel from her anchor and hurry her out to sea, and they never saw any thing more of this hidden and inhospitable island.'

"Another testimony remains on record in a manuscript of one Abreu Galindo, but whether taken at this time does not appear. It was that of a French adventurer, who, many years before, making a voyage among the Canaries, was overtaken by a violent storm, which carried away his masts. At length the furious winds drove him to the shores of an unknown island covered with stately trees. Here he landed with part of his crew, and, choosing a tree proper for a mast, cut it down, and began to shape it for his purpose. The guardian power of the island, however, resented, as usual, this invasion of his forbidden shores. The heavens assumed a dark and threatening aspect; the night was approaching; and the mariners, fearing some impending evil, abandoned their labor, and returned on board. They were borne away, as usual, from the coast, and the next day arrived at the island of Palma.[209]

"The mass of testimony collected by official authority in 1570 seemed so satisfactory that another expedition was fitted out in the same year in the island of Palma. It was commanded by Fernando de Villalobos, regidor of the island, but was equally fruitless with the preceding. St. Borondon seemed disposed only to tantalize the world with distant and serene glimpses of his ideal paradise, or to reveal it amid storms to tempest-tossed mariners, but to hide it completely from the view of all who diligently sought it. Still, the people of Palma adhered to their favorite chimera. Thirty-four years afterward, in 1605, they sent another ship on the quest, commanded by Gaspar Perez de Acosta, an accomplished pilot, accompanied by the Padre Lorenzo Pinedo, a holy Franciscan friar, skilled in natural science. San Borondon, however, refused to reveal his island to either monk or mariner. After cruising about in every direction, sounding, observing the skies, the clouds, the winds, every thing that could furnish indications, they returned without having seen any thing to authorize a hope.

"Upward of a century now elapsed without any new attempt to seek this fairy island. Every now and then, it is true, the public mind was agitated by fresh reports of its having been seen. Lemons and other fruits, and the green branches of trees, which floated to the shores of Gomara and Ferro, were pronounced to be from the enchanted groves of San Borondon. At length, in 1721, the public infatuation again rose to such a height that a fourth expedition was sent, commanded by Don Gaspar Dominguez, a man of probity and talent. As this was an expedition of solemn and mysterious import, he had two holy friars as apostolical chaplains. They made sail from the island of Teneriffe toward the end of October, leaving the populace in an indescribable state of anxious curiosity. The ship, however, returned from its cruise as unsuccessful as all its predecessors.

"We have no account of any expedition being since undertaken, though the island still continued to be a subject of speculation, and occasionally to reveal its shadowy mountains to the eyes of favored individuals. In a letter written from the island of Gomara, 1759, by a Franciscan monk to one of his friends, he relates having seen it from the village of Alaxera, at six in the morning of the third of May. It appeared to consist of two lofty mountains, with a deep valley between, and on contemplating it with a telescope, the valley or ravine appeared to be filled with trees. He summoned the curate, Antonio Joseph Manrique, and upward of forty other persons, all of whom beheld it plainly.[210]

"Nor is this island delineated merely in ancient maps of the time of Columbus. It is laid down as one of the Canary Islands in a French map published in 1704; and Mons. Gautier, in a geographical chart annexed to his Observations on Natural History, published in 1759, places it five degrees to the west of the Island of Ferro, in the 29th degree of north latitude.[211]

"Such are the principal facts existing relative to the island of St. Brandan. Its reality was for a long time a matter of firm belief. It was in vain that repeated voyages and investigations proved its non-existence: the public, after trying all kinds of sophistry, took refuge in the supernatural to defend their favorite chimera. They maintained that it was rendered inaccessible to mortals by divine providence or by diabolical magic. Most inclined to the former. All kinds of extravagant fancies were indulged concerning it:[212] some confounded it with the fabled island of the Seven Cities, situated somewhere in the bosom of the ocean, where, in old times, seven bishops and their followers had taken refuge from the Moors. Some of the Portuguese imagined it to be the abode of their last king, Sebastian. The Spaniards pretended that Roderic, the last of their Gothic kings, had fled thither from the Moors after the disastrous battle of the Guadalete. Others suggested that it might be the seat of the terrestrial paradise—the place where Enoch and Eliiah remained in a slate of blessedness until the final day; and that it was made at times apparent to the eyes, but invisible to the search of mortals. Poetry, it is said, has owed to this popular belief one of its beautiful fictions; and the garden of Armida, where Rinaldo was detained enchanted, and which Tasso places in one of the Canary Islands, has been identified with the imaginary San Borondon.[213]

"The learned father Feyjoo[214] has given a philosophical solution to this geographical problem. He attributes all these appearances, which have been so numerous and so well authenticated as not to admit of doubt, to certain atmospherical deceptions, like that of the Fata Morgana, seen at times in the Straits of Messina, where the city of Reggio and its surrounding country is reflected in the air above the neighboring sea; a phenomenon which has likewise been witnessed in front of the city of Marseilles. As to the tales of the mariners who had landed on these forbidden shores, and been hurried from thence in whirlwinds and tempests, he considers them as mere fabrications.

"As the populace, however, reluctantly give up any thing that partakes of the marvelous and mysterious, and as the same atmospherical phenomena which first gave birth to the illusion may still continue, it is not improbable that a belief in the island of St. Brandan may still exist among the ignorant and credulous of the Canaries, and that they at times behold its fairy mountains rising above the distant horizon of the Atlantic."—Washington Irving, Life of Columbus.

FOOTNOTES:

No. III.

The following lines in Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore" afford probably the most circumstantial prediction that is to be found of the existence of a Western World. The devil, alluding to the vulgar superstition respecting the Pillars of Hercules, thus addresses Rinaldo:

"Know that this theory is false; his bark The daring mariner shall urge far o'er The western wave, a smooth and level plain, Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel. Man was in ancient days of grosser mold, And Hercules might blush to learn how far Beyond the limits he had vainly set, The dullest sea-bird soon shall wing her way. Men shall descry another hemisphere, Since to one common center all things tend. So earth, by curious mystery divine, Well-balanced hangs amid the starry spheres. At our antipodes are cities, states, And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore. But see, the sun speeds on his western path, To glad the nations with expected light."

Canto xxv., st. 229, 230.

Dante, two centuries before, had indicated more vaguely his belief in an undiscovered quarter of the globe:

"De' vostri sensi, ch'é del rimanente Non vogliate negar l'esperienza Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente."

Inferno, Canto xxvi., st. 115.

The prophetic lines of Seneca are well known:

"Nil, qua fuerat sede, reliquit Pervius orbis. Indus gelidum potat Araxem, Albim Persæ, Rhenumque bibunt Venient annis sæcula seris Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nec sit terris ultima Thule."

Medea, Act II., v. 371, et seq. Chorus in Fine. Ed. Bip.

On which the learned Acosta remarks:

"Sed utrum divinarit Seneca, an fortuito ac temere cecinerit, quæri potest. Mihi verò divinasse videtur, sed eo genere divinationis, quod prudentes viri familiare habent."

Acosta further on writes thus:

"Scribit Hieronymus in epistolam ad Ephesios—'Quærirmus quoque quid sit. In quibus aliquando ambulastis secundum sæculum sit mundi hujus utrumnam et aliud quod non pertineat ad mundum istum, sed ad mundos alios, de quibus et Clemens in epistolâ suâ scribit, oceanus et mundi qui transipsum sunt.'"—J. Acosta, Societatis Jesu, De Naturâ Novi Orbis, lib. i., cap. xi.

"Lorsq' Alfonso V. permit en 1461 à Dom Henry de peupler les îles Açores, on trouva en celle de Cuervo une statue représentant un cavalier qui, de la main gauche, tenoit la bride de son cheval, et de la droite montroit l'occident, précisément du côte d'Amerique—on voyoit sur le roc une inscription en caractères inconnus, dont il seroit à souhaiter qu'on eût pris soin d'aporter l'empreinte en Europe; mais ces premiers navigateurs cherchoient des trésors et non des nouvelles lumières."—Histoire de France, par M. de Villaret, vol. xvi., p. 376.

No. IV.

The fable of Welsh Indians is of very old date. In the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, a confused report was spread over England that on the coast of Virginia the Welsh salutation had been heard; has, honi, iach. Owen Chapelain relates that in 1669, by pronouncing some Celtic words, he saved himself from the hands of the Indians of Tuscarora, by whom he was on the point of being scalped. The same thing, it is pretended, happened to Benjamin Beatty, in going from Virginia to Carolina. This Beatty asserts that he found a whole Welsh tribe, who preserved the tradition of the voyage of Madoc ap Owen, which took place in 1170. John Filson, in his "History of Kentucky," has revived these tales of the first travelers. According to him, Captain Abraham Chaplain saw Indians arrive at the post of Kaskasky, and converse in the Welsh language with some soldiers, who were natives of Wales. Captain Isaac Stewart asserts that on the Red River of Natchitoches, at the distance of 700 miles above its mouth, in the Mississippi, he discovered Indians with a fair skin and red hair, who conversed in Welsh, and possessed the titles of their origin. "They produced, in proof of what they said of their arrival on the eastern coast, rolls of parchment, carefully wrapped up in otter skins, and on which great characters were written in blue, which neither Stewart, nor his fellow-traveler, Davey, a native of Wales, could decipher." We may observe, first, that all these testimonies are extremely vague for the indication of places. The last letter of Mr. Owen, repeated in the journals of Europe (of the 11th February, 1819), places the posts of the Welsh Indians on the Madwaga, and divides them into two tribes, the Brydones and the Chadogians. "They speak Welsh with greater purity than it is spoken in the principality of Wales(!), since it is exempt from Anglicisms; they profess Christianity, strongly mixed with Druidism." We can not read such assertions without recollecting that all those fabulous stories which flatter the imagination are renewed periodically under new forms. The learned and judicious geographer of the United States, Mr. Warden, inquires justly, why all the traces of Welsh colonies and the Celtic tongue have disappeared, since less credulous travelers, and who, in some sort, control one another, have visited the country situated between the Ohio and the Rocky Mountains. Mackenzie, Barton, Clarke, Lewis, Pike, Drake, Mitchill, and the editors of the "New Archæologia Americana," have found nothing, absolutely nothing, which denotes the remains of European colonies of the 12th century.—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. vi., p. 326. See Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 1; Powell's History of Wales, p. 196, &c.

Lord Lyttleton, in his notes to the 5th book of his "History of Henry II.," p. 371, has invalidated the story of Madoc's discoveries by arguments of great weight; and Mr. Pennant, in "Philosophical Transactions," vol. lviii., p. 91, has overthrown many of the arguments upon which the existence of a Welsh settlement among the Indians was founded. General Bowles, the Cherokee, was questioned when in England as to the locality of the supposed descendants of Madoc: he laid his finger on one of the branches of the Missouri. Pike's "Travels" had lessened the probability of finding such a tribe; and Lewis and Clarke's "Travels to the Source of the Missouri" have entirely destroyed it, as acknowledged by Mr. Southey in his "Madoc."—See note to the Preface of Madoc.

"It is much to be wished, that in our days, when a healthy tone of criticism is very much in use, without assuming a scornful character, the ancient inquiries of Powell ('Powell's History of Wales,' p. 196) and Richard Hakluyt ('Voyages and Navigations,' vol. iii., p. 4) might again be taken up in England. I do not participate in the notion of rejecting inquiries, by which the traditions of nations are frequently observed; I prefer much to hold the firm conviction that, with more diligence and perseverance, many of the historical problems which have hitherto remained unknown to us will one day be cleared up by actual discoveries."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 456.

By some antiquarians traces have been supposed to have been found of the discovery of America by the Irish before the year 1000. The Esquimaux related to the Normans who were settled in Winland, that further southward, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay, there dwelt "white men, who walked about in long white clothes, before them sticks to which white cloths were attached, and crying with a loud voice." This account was interpreted by the Christian Normans to signify processions, in which they carried flags and sang hymns. In the oldest traditions, and in the historical narrative of Thorfinn Karlsefue, and the Iceland Landnama Book, these southern coasts, between Virginia and Florida, are indicated by the name of "Whiteman's Land." They were, in the country itself, certainly called "Great Ireland" (Irland it Mikla), and it was supposed that they were peopled by the Irish. According to testimony extending as far back as the year 1064, before Leif discovered Winland, Ari Marsson, of the powerful Iceland race of Ulf, on a voyage southward from Iceland, was driven by a storm upon the coasts of "Great Ireland," and there baptized as a Christian, and not being allowed to go away, was subsequently recognized there by people from the Orkneys and Iceland. It is the present opinion of some northern antiquarians that Iceland was not peopled immediately from Europe, but from Virginia and Carolina (that is, from Great Ireland), by the Irish, who had early migrated to America.... The assiduous attempt to diffuse religious doctrines paved the way, at one time, for warlike undertakings, at another for the spread of peaceful ideas and commercial intercourse. The zeal which is so peculiar to the religions systems of India, Palestine, and Arabia, and which is altogether free from the indifference of Grecian and Roman polytheism, kept alive the study of geography in the first half of the Middle Ages. Letronne, the commentator of the Irish monk Dicuil, has proved, in an acute way, that after the Irish missionaries were driven out of the Färöe Islands by the Normans, they began to visit Iceland about the year 795. The Normans, when they came to Iceland, found there Irish books, bells for ringing for mass, and other objects, which former strangers, who were called Papar, had left behind. These Papæ (fathers) were the Clerici of Dicuil. Now if, as we must suppose from his testimony, those objects belonged to the Irish monks, who came from the Färöe Islands, the question is, why are the monks (Papar) called in their native traditions "Westmen"—men who have come from the west over the sea? Respecting the connection of Prince Madoc's voyage to a great western country in 1170, with the "Great Ireland" of the Iceland traditions, all accounts are enveloped in deep obscurity. Compare the inquiries in Rafn Antiq. Amer., p. 203, 206, 446, 451; and Wilhelmi upon Iceland, Hvitramannaland, the Land of White Men, p. 75, 81; Letronne, Récherches Géog. et Crit. sur le Livre de Mensurâ Orbis Terræ, composé en Irelande par Dicuil, 1814, p. 129, 146.

The celebrated stone of Taunton River may date its hieroglyphics from the time that Norwegian navigators visited the shores of "Great Ireland." "Anglo-American antiquaries have made known an inscription, supposed to be Phœnician, and which is engraved on the rocks of Dighton, near the banks of Taunton River, twelve leagues south of Boston.... The natives who inhabited these countries at the time of the first European settlements preserved an ancient tradition, according to which strangers in wooden houses had sailed up Taunton River, formerly called Assoonet. These strangers, having conquered the red men, had engraved marks on the rock, which is now covered by the waters of the river. Count de Gebelin does not hesitate, with the learned Dr. Stiles, to regard these marks as a Carthaginian inscription. He says, with that enthusiasm which is natural to him, but which is highly injurious in discussions of this kind, that this inscription comes happily at the moment from the New World to confirm his ideas on the origin of nations, and that it is clearly demonstrated to be a Phœnician monument, a picture which in the foreground represents an alliance between the American people and the foreign nation, coming by the winds of the north from a rich and industrious country. I have carefully examined the four drawings of the celebrated stone of Taunton River, which M. Loot published in England in the Memoirs of the Antiquarian Society." (Archæologia, vol. viii., p. 296.) "Far from recognizing a symmetrical arrangement of simple letters and syllabic characters, I discover a drawing scarcely traced, like those that have been found on the rocks of Norway, and in almost all the countries inhabited by the Scandinavian nations." (Suhm, Samlinger til ten Danske Historic, b. ii., p. 215.) "In the sketch we distinguish, from the form of the heads, five human figures surrounding an animal with horns, much higher in the fore than in the hind part of the body."—Humboldt's Researches in America, vol. i., p. 153.

No. V.

"The great and splendid work of Marco Polo (Il Milione di Messer Marco Polo), as we see in the corrected edition of Count Baldelli, is wrongly called a book of travels: it is chiefly a descriptive, and, we may add, a statistical work, in which it is difficult to distinguish what the traveler himself saw and what he derived from others, or gathered from the topographical descriptions which are so plenty in Chinese literature, and which he had an opportunity of attaining through his Persian interpreter. The striking similarity of the report of the travels of Hinan-tschang, the Buddhist pilgrim of the seventh century, with that of Marco Polo, of the Pamir Highlands, in 1277, early attracted my attention.... However much the more recent travelers have been inclined to enter into an account of their own personal adventures, Marco Polo, on the other hand, endeavors to mix up his own observations with the official accounts communicated to him, which were probably numerous, as he held the post of governor of the town of Zangui. The plan of compiling adopted by the famous traveler renders it intelligible how he was able to dictate his book to his fellow-prisoner and friend, Messer Rustigielo, of Pisa, from the documents before him, while in prison in Genoa in 1295."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 400.

Humboldt elsewhere says, that "it has frequently been supposed, and declared with remarkable decision, that the truthful Marco Polo had a great influence upon Columbus, and even that he was in possession of a copy of Marco Polo's work upon his first voyage of discovery."—Navarrete, Collecion de los Viajos y Descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Españoles, vol. i., p. 261.

Marco Polo is called by Malte Brun "the creator of modern Oriental geography—the Humboldt of the thirteenth century."

"The work of Marco Polo is stated by some to have been originally written in Latin, though the most probable opinion is that it was written in Italian. Copies of it in manuscript were multiplied, and rapidly circulated; translations were made into various languages, until the invention of printing enabled it to be widely diffused throughout Europe. In the course of these translations and successive editions, the original text, according to Purchas, has been much vitiated, and it is probable many extravagances in numbers and measurements with which Marco Polo is charged may be the errors of translators and printers. Francis Pepin, author of the Brandenburgh version, styles Polo a man commendable for his devoutness, prudence, and fidelity. Athanasius Kircher, in his account of China, says that none of the ancients have described the kingdoms of the remote parts of the East with more exactness. Various other learned men have borne testimony to his character, and most of the substantial points of his work have been authenticated by subsequent travelers. It is manifest, however, that he dealt much in exaggeration. The historical part of his work is full of errors and fables. He confuses the names of places, is very inexact as to distances, and gives no latitude of the places he visited."—Washington Irving's Columbus, vol. iv., p. 294.

Marco Polo returned from Tartary to his native city, Venice, in 1295, having pursued his mercantile peregrinations in Asia upward of twenty-six years.

No. VI.

"Sir John Mandeville was born in the town of St. Alban's. He was devoted to study from his earliest childhood, and, after finishing his general education, applied himself to medicine. He left England in 1332, and, according to his own account, visited Turkey, Armenia, Egypt, Upper and Lower Libya, Syria, Persia, Chaldea, Ethiopia, Tartary, Amazonia, and the Indies, residing in their principal cities. He wrote a history of his travels in three languages, English, French, and Latin. The descriptions given by Mandeville of the Grand Khan, of the province of Cathay, and the city of Camhalee, are scarcely less extravagant than those of Marco Polo. The royal palace was more than two leagues in circumference; the grand hall had twenty-four columns of copper and gold; there were more than 300,000 men occupied, and living in and about the palace, of which more than 100,000 were employed in taking care of the elephants, of which there were 10,000, &c., &c.

"Mandeville has become proverbial for indulging in a traveler's exaggerations; yet his accounts of the countries which he visited have been found far more veracious than had been imagined. His descriptions of Cathay and the wealthy province of Mangi, agreeing with those of Marco Polo, had great authority with Columbus."—Washington Irving's Columbus, vol. iv., p. 308.

No. VII.

"The Western nations, the Greeks, and the Romans, knew that magnetism could be communicated for a length of time to iron ('sola hæc materia ferri vires à magneti lapide accipit, retinetque longo tempore.'—Plin., xxxiv., 14). The great discovery of the terrestrial directive force, therefore, depended alone on this, that no one in the West happened to observe that a longish piece of magnetic iron ore, or a magnetized iron rod, floated at liberty upon water by means of a piece of wood, or balanced and suspended freely in the air by means of a thread. But a thousand years and more before the commencement of our era, in the dark epoch of Codru, and the return of the Heraclidæ to the Peloponnesus, the Chinese had already magnetic cars, upon which the movable arm of a human figure pointed invariably to the south, as a means of finding the way through the boundless grassy plains of Tartary. In the third century, indeed, of the Christian era, at least 700 years, therefore, before the introduction of the ship's compass upon European seas, Chinese craft were sailing the Indian Ocean under the guidance of magnetic southern indication. This early knowledge and application of the magnetic needle gave the Chinese geographers great advantages over those of early Greece and Rome, to whom, for example, the true course of the Apennines and Pyrenees was never known.

"Magnetism is one of the numerous forms in which electricity manifests itself. The ancient suspicion of the identity of electrical and magnetical attraction has been demonstrated in the present age. 'If electrum (amber),' says Pliny, in the sense of the Ionic natural philosophy of Thales, 'becomes inspired by friction and warmth, it attracts bark and dried leaves, exactly like the magnetic iron stone.'[215] The same words occur in the discourse laudatory of the magnet of the Chinese natural philosopher Kuopho, who lived in the fourth century. It was not without surprise that I myself observed, among the children at play on the woody banks of the Orinoco, the offspring of native tribes in the lowest grade of civilization, that the excitement of electricity by friction was known. The boys rubbed the dry, flat, and shining seeds of a creeping leguminous plant (probably a negretia) until they attracted fibers of cotton wool and chips of the bamboo. This amusement of these coppery children is calculated to leave a deep and solemn impression behind it. What a chasm lies between the electrical play of these savages and the discovery of the lightning conductor, of the chemically decompounding pile, of the light-evoking mechanical apparatus! In such gulfs, millenniums in the history of the intellectual progress of mankind lie buried."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. i., p. 180; Klaproth, Lettre à M.A. de Humboldt, sur l'Invention de la Boussole, p. 125. 1834.

"The application of the magnetic needle's direction toward the north and south, that is, the use of the mariner's compass in Europe, is probably due to the Arabs, who have to thank the Chinese for their knowledge of it. The Arabic words 'Zohron' and 'Aphron,' meaning north and south, like the numerous Arabic names of the stars in use at the present day, testify the route through which the West became acquainted with it. In European Christendom, the use of the magnetic needle is spoken of as something well known, first in a political and satirical poem, entitled 'La Bible,' written by Guyot of Provence in 1190, and in the description of Palestine, by Jacob of Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais, between the years 1204 and 1215. Also Dante (Paradiso, xii., 29) mentions in a simile the needle (ajo) 'which points southward.' The discovery of the mariner's compass was for a long time attributed to Flavius Gioja: he probably made some improvements in the apparatus for managing it in 1302. A much earlier employment of the compass in the European seas is seen in a naval work by Raymundus Lullus of Majorca, a wonderfully talented and scientific man. In his book, entitled 'Fenix de las Maravillas del Orbe,' published in 1286, Lullus says that the mariners of his times made use of the magnetic needle. Navarrete, in his 'Discurso Historico sobre los Progressos del Arte de Navegar en Espana,' p. 28, 1802, records a remarkable passage in the Leyes de las Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century: 'The needle which guides the mariner in the dark night, and shows him in good and bad weather the direction which he must take, is the mediatrix (medianera) between the magnetic stone (la piedra) and the north star."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 291, 462.

FOOTNOTES:

No. VIII.

"In the fifteenth century almost all the mercantile nations sought for slaves at the Canary Islands, as we seek them at present on the Coast of Guinea. Every individual made prisoner before he received the rite of baptism was a slave. At this period no attempt had yet been made to prove that the blacks were an intermediary race between men and animals. The swarthy Guanche and the African negro were sold simultaneously in the market of Seville, without a question whether slavery ought to weigh only on men with a black skin and frizzled hair. The archipelago of the Canaries was divided into several small states hostile to each other. The trading nations kept up intestine warfare; one Guanche then became the property of another, who sold him to the Europeans; several, who preferred death to slavery, killed themselves and their children. What remained of the Guanches perished mostly in 1494, in the terrible pestilence called the modorra, which was attributed to the quantity of dead bodies left exposed to the air by the Spaniards after the battle of La Laguna. The nation of the Guanches was therefore extinct at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is very certain that no native of pure race exists in the whole island; and some travelers, who may otherwise be relied upon, are mistaken when they assert that their guides to the Peak were some of those slender and nimble-footed Guanches. (It is asserted that they could seize the rabbit or wild goat in its course.) It is true that a few Canarian families boast of their relationship to the last shepherd king of Guimar; but these pretensions do not rest on very solid foundations, and are renewed from time to time, when some Canarian of a more dusky hue than his countrymen is prompted to solicit a commission in the service of the King of Spain.

"The Guanches, famed for their tall stature, were the Patagonians of the Old World. I never saw Guanche mummies but in the cabinets of Europe. A considerable number, however, might be found, if miners were employed to open the sepulchral caverns which are cut in the rock on the eastern slope of the Peak. These mummies are in a state of desiccation so singular, that whole bodies with their integuments, frequently do not weigh above six or seven pounds, or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the same size recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians.... The only monument that can throw some light on the origin of the Guanches is their language; but, unhappily, there are not above 150 words remaining. It has long been imagined that the language of the Guanches had no analogy with the living tongues; but since the travels of Hornemann, and the ingenious researches of Marsden and Venturi, have drawn the attention of the learned to the Berbers, who, like the Sarmatic tribes, occupy an immense extent of country in the north of Africa, we find that several Guanche words have common roots with words of the Chilha and Gebali dialects. This is at least an indication of the ancient connection between the Guanches and Berbers, a tribe of mountaineers, in which the Numidians, the Getuli, and the Garamanti are confounded, and who extend themselves from the eastern extremity of Atlas by Harutsch and Fezzan, as far as the Oasis of Siwah and Angela. The description which Scylax gives in his 'Periplus' of the inhabitants of Cerne, a shepherd people of a tall stature and long hair, reminds us of the features which characterize the Canary Guanches.... The people who succeeded the Guanches descended from the Spaniards, and in a less degree from the Normans. Though these two races have been exposed during three centuries past to the same climate, the latter is distinguished by a whiter skin. The descendants of the Normans inhabit the Valley of the Teganana. The names of Grandville and Dampierre are still pretty common in this district. The whole archipelago does not contain 160,000 inhabitants, and the Islennos are perhaps more numerous in the Spanish settlements of America than in their own country."—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. i., p. 280.

No. IX.

"Pomponius Mela, qui vivoit à une époque assez rapprochée du temps de Cornelius Nepos, raconte, et Pline répète que Metellus Celer, tandis qu'il étoit proconsul dans les Gaules, avoit reçu en cadeau, d'un roi des Boii (Pline le nomme roi des Suèves) quelques Indiens qui, chassés des mers de l'Inde par des tempêtes, avoient abordé sur les côtes de la Germanie...... Il ne peut rester aucun doute que Pomponius Mela n'ait cru que les Indiens étoient arrivés sur les côtes nord-est de l'Allemagne par la circumnavigation de l'Asie orientale et boréale. Il dit, 'Vi tempestatum ex Indieis æquoribus abrepti.'..... Comme il est reconnu que malgré le grand perfectionnement de la navigation moderne, l'accumulation des glaces s'oppose à toute navigation par le détroit de Behring le long des îles de la Nouvelle Zemble on a soulevé la question de savoir de quelle race peuvent avoir été les hommes de couleur que le proconsul Metellus Celer a pris pour des Indiens. Gomara dit que, 'Les Indiens de Quintus Metellus Celer etoient peut-être de la Terre du Laboureur, et l'on se trompe (sur leur vraie origine) à cause de leur couleur.'...... Il paraissoit peu probable que des Eskimaux fussent venus aux côtes d'Allemagne; et tandis que Vossius, le savant commentateur de Mela, ne voyait dans les Indiens de Cornelius Nepos que des Bretons, dont le corps étoit fardé de pastel, d'autres commentateurs adoptant l'explication de Gomara et de Wytfleet, substituoient au Suevorum Rex, un prince Scandinave qui avoit recueillé des naufragés sur les côtes de Norwège. L'analogie du fait non contesté de l'arrivée d'Eskimaux aux îles Orcades, semble jeter une vive lumière sur le fait que nous examinons ici; et quand on considère les nombreux exemples d'individus tombés entre les mains des barbares et traînés comme captifs de nation à nation loin du lieu du naufrage, on trouve moins surprenant que des étrangers aient été conduits dans les Gaules, en passant des îles Britanniques en Batavie et on Germanie: mais ce qui est bien étrange, c'est que dans des évènemens semblables et également énigmatiques, du moyen-âge, il ne soit toujours questions que de côtes Germaniques. Ces évènemens sont rapportés aux règnes des Othons et de Frédéric Barberousse; ils sont, par conséquent, du dixième et du douzième siècle. 'Nos apud Othonem legimus,' dit le pape Æneas Sylvius, 'sub imperatoribus teutonicis indicam navem et negotiatores Indos in Germanico littore fuisse deprehensos.' Et dans Gomara, on lit, 'On assure aussi que, du temps de l'empereur Frédéric Barberousse on amena à Lubec certains Indiens dans un canot.' Sir Humphrey Gilbert après avoir discutí prolixement en trois chapitres le passage de Cornelius Nepos, ajoute 'L'an 1160, quelques Indiens arrivèrent, sous le règne de Frédéric Barberousse, upon the coast of Germanie.' J'ai perdu beaucoup de temps dans de vaines recherches sur la première source de ces faits curieux. D'où Gomara, historien généralement très exact, a-t-il su que, 'Les Indiens ont été amenés à Lubec?' Comment les continuateurs des Annales d'Othon de Freising, et le Franciscain Ditmar, auteur de l'excellente Chronique de Lubec, n'ont ils rien sur de ces prétendus Indiens?... à la maison où se réunit la corporation des marins de Lubec on conserve un canot groenlandois dans lequel se trouve une figure d'Eskimau en bois. Le canot a été reparé plusieurs fois; la première inscription ne porte que l'année 1607; mais d'après une tradition très vague, un navire de Lubec doit avoir capturé ce pêcheur Eskimau, il y a trois cent ans, dans les mers de l'ouest. On agrandit la pensée, en renaissant, sous un pointe de vue général, les preuves de ces communications lointaines, favorisées par le hazard; on voit comment les mouvemens de l'océan et de l'atmosphère ont pu, dès les époques les plus reculées, contribuer à répandre les différentes races d'hommes sur la surface du globe; on comprend avec Colomb (sida del Almirante, cap. viii.) comme un continent a pu ses révéler a l'autre."—Humboldt's Examen Critique du Géographie du Nouveau Continent, vol. ii., p. 278.

No. X.

Herodotus relates that a Phœnician fleet, fitted out by Necho, king of Egypt, took its departure about six hundred and four years before the Christian era, from a port in the Red Sea, doubled the southern promontory of Africa, and, after a voyage of three years, returned by the Straits of Gades to the mouth of the Nile. Eudoxus of Cyzicus is said to have held the same course, and to have accomplished the same arduous undertaking.—Herod., lib. iv., cap. xlii.; Plin., Nat. Hist., lib. ii., cap. lxvii.

These voyages, if performed in the manner narrated, may justly be reckoned the greatest efforts of navigation in the ancient world; and if we attend to the imperfect state of the art at that time, it is difficult to determine whether we should most admire the courage and sagacity with which the design was formed, or the conduct and good fortune with which it was executed. But, unfortunately, all the original and authentic accounts of the Phœnician and Carthaginian voyages, whether undertaken by public authority or in prosecution of their private, have perished. Whatever acquaintance with the remote regions of the earth the Carthaginians or Phœnicians may have acquired, was concealed from the rest of mankind with a mercantile jealousy. Every thing relating to the course of their navigation was not only a mystery of trade, but a secret of state. Extraordinary facts are recorded concerning their solicitude to prevent other nations from penetrating into what they wished should remain undivulged (Strab., Geogr., lib. iii., p. 265; lib. xviii., p. 1154). Many of their discoveries seem accordingly to have been scarcely known beyond the precincts of their own states. The navigation round Africa, in particular, is recorded by the Greek and Roman writers rather as a strange, amusing tale, which they either did not comprehend or did not believe, than as a real transaction which enlarged their knowledge and influenced their opinion. As neither the progress of the Phœnician and Carthaginian discoveries, nor the extent of their navigation, were communicated to the rest of mankind, all memorials of their extraordinary skill in naval affairs seem, in a great measure, to have perished when the maritime power of the former was annihilated by Alexander's conquest of Tyre, and the empire of the latter was overturned by the Roman arms. The Periplus Hannonis is the only authentic monument of the Carthaginian skill in naval affairs, and one of the most curious fragments transmitted to us by antiquity. Montesquieu and De Bougainville have established its authenticity by arguments that appear to me unanswerable. Hanno sailed from Gades to the island of Cerne in twelve days. This is probably what is known to the moderns by the name of the island of Arguim. His furthest advance was to a promontory, which he named the South Horn, manifestly Cape de Tres Puntas, about five degrees north of the line.—Robertson's America, vol. i., p. 9-250.

No. XI.

The importance of this discovery, and of the European settlements consequent upon it, is chiefly interesting with regard to the intellectual and moral effects produced by the sudden increase in the stock of ideas upon the improvement and the social condition of mankind. Since that grand era, a new and active state of the intellect and feelings, bold wishes and hopes scarcely to be restrained, have gradually penetrated into the whole of civil society; the scanty population of a hemisphere, especially the coasts opposite Europe, favored the settlement of colonies, which, in rendering themselves extensive and independent in position, have overturned unlimited states by their choice of a free form of government; and, lastly, the Reformation, a forerunner of vast political revolutions, had to pass through different phases of its development in one country which had become the place of refuge for all religious opinions, and for the most varied ideas of divinity. The boldness of the Genoese mariner is the first link in the immeasurable chain of these pregnant events.... We might be induced to suppose that the value of these great discoveries, and of the double victory in the physical and intellectual world, was first acknowledged in our times, since the history of the civilization of the human race has been treated in a philosophical way. Such a supposition is refuted by Columbus's cotemporaries. The most talented of them anticipated the influence which the events of the latter years of the fifteenth century would exercise upon mankind. "Each day," says Peter Martyr, in his letters of the years 1493 and 1494, "bring us new wonders from a new world, from the Western antipodes, which a certain Genoese traveler has discovered.... Our friend Pomponius Lætus could scarcely restrain his tears of joy when I communicated to him the first accounts of so unexpected an event.... What aliment more delicious than such tidings can be set before an ingenious mind.... It is like an accession of wealth to a miser. Our minds, soiled with vices, become meliorated by contemplating such glorious events."

"Sebastian Cabot mentioned that he was in London when news was brought there of the discovery, and that it caused great talk and admiration in the court of Henry VII., being affirmed to be a thing more divine than human."—Hakluyt, p. 7.

"The mind of men became sharpened in order to comprehend the boundless store of new phenomena, to work them out, and by comparison to employ them for the attainment of general and higher views of the creation. If we carefully examine the original works of the earliest historians of the Conquista, we are astonished at finding, in a Spanish author of the sixteenth century, the germs of so many important physical truths. Upon the occasion of the discovery of a continent, which appeared to be separated from all the other regions of the creation, in the distant solitude of the ocean, a great number of the same questions with which we are employed at the present day occurred to the excited curiosity of the travelers, and to those who were collected together by their narratives; these questions were, Of the unity of the human race, and the derivation of its varieties from a common original form; of the migration of nations, and the affinities of language; of the possibility of varieties in the species of plants and animals; of the causes of the trade winds, and of the constant currents in the ocean; of the regular decrease of temperature at the declivities of the Cordilleras, and in the various strata of water at different depths of the ocean; and of the respective effects of chains of volcanic mountains, and their influence upon the frequency of earthquakes, and the extension of the range of the volcanic forces. The foundation of what is at the present day called physical geography is, exclusive of mathematical considerations, found in the works of the Jesuit, Joseph Acosta, and in the work of Oviedo, which appeared scarcely twenty years after the death of Columbus. In no other period of time since the existence of man in a social condition has the range of ideas in respect to the external world, and the relations of different places, been so suddenly and so wonderfully extended, or the necessity of observing natural phenomena in different latitudes and at different elevations above the level of the sea, or of multiplying the means of examining them, so deeply felt."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 295-337.

No. XII.

More than ten places have disputed the glory of having given birth to Columbus: Genoa, Cogoleto (Cucchereto, Cugureo, Cogoreo, Cucurco d'Herrera, et Cugurco de Puffendorf), Bugiasco, Finale, Quinto et Nervi, dans la Riviera di Genova, Savone, Palestrella, et Arbizoli, Cosseria, la vallée d'Oneglia, Castello di Cuccaro, la ville de Plaisance, et Pradello. "Le nombre de ces lieux s'est accru progressivement avec l'illustration du héros, car ses contemporains, Pierre Martyr, le cura de los Palacios, Geraldine, Pietro Coppo da Isola, l'évêque Giustiniani, le chancelier Antonio Gallo et Senerega l'ont unanimement appellé Génois.... Un voyageur moderne, dit en parlant de Cogoleto: Ce lieu n'a pas renoncé à l'honneur d'avoir vu naître Colomb, malgré la multitude de recherches et de dissertations d'aprês lesquelles le grand homme paroît tout simplement Génois. On prétend même á Cogoleto indiquer sa maison, espèce de cabanne, sur le bord de la mer, que je trouvai assex convenablement occupée par un gardecôte, et sur laquelle on lit, à la suite d'autres inscriptions pitoyables, ce beau vers improvisé par M. Gagliuffi.

"Unus erat Mundus; Duo sint, nit iste: fuere."

Voyages Hist. et Littér. en Italie de M. Valery, tom. v., p. 73.

No. XIII.

"Christophe Colomb, Cortez et Raleigh ont eprouvé que le genie ne régne que sur l'avenir et que son pouvoir est tardive. Ils ont pendant quelques tems, excité au plus haut degré l'admiration de leurs contemporains; mais la bienveillance publique a abandonné leur viellesse, on ne s'est souvenu d'eux que pour les affliger dans leur isolement.[216] Le siècle qui les a vus naître n'a pas compris ce que leur action successive a produit et préparê de changements dans l'état des peuples de l'occident. L'influence que ces peuples exercent sur tous les points du globe ou leur présence se fait sentir simultanément, la prépondérance universelle qui en est la suite, ne datent que de la découverte de l'Amérique et du voyage de Gama. Les évènemens qui appartiennent à un petit group de six années (1492-1498) ont determiné pour ainsi dire le partage du pouvoir sur la terre. Dés-lors le pouvoir de l'intelligence, geographiquement limité, restreint dans des bornes étroites a pu prendre un libre essor; il a trouvé un moyen rapide d'étendre, d'entretenir, de perpétuer son action. Les migrations des peuples, les expéditions guerrières dans l'intérieur d'un continent, les communications par caravanes sur des routes invariablement suivies depuis des siècles, n'ont produit que des effets partiels et généralement moins durables. Les expéditions les plus lontaines ont été dévastatrice, et l'impulsion a été donnée par ceux qui n'avoient rien à ajouter aux trésors de l'intelligence déjà accumulés. Au contraire, les évènemens de la fin du quinzième siècle, qui ne sont séparés que par un intervalle de six ans, ont été longuement préparés dans le moyen-âge, qui à son tour avoit été fécondé par les idées des siècles antérieures, excité par les dogmes et les rêveries de la géographie systématique des Hellènes. C'est seulement depuis l'époque que nous venons de signaler que l'unité homérique de l'océan s'est fait sentir tous son heureuse influence sur la civilisation du genre humain. L'élément mobile qui baigne toutes les côtes en est devenu le lien moral et politique, et les peuples de l'occident, dont l'intelligence active a créé ce lien et qui ont compris son importance, se sont élevés à une universalité d'action qui détermine la prépondérance du pouvoir sur le globe."—Humboldt's Géographie du Nouveau Continent, vol. iv., p. 23.

FOOTNOTES:

No. XIV.

"Per necessità d'acque mandammo il battello a terra con venticinque huomini: dove per le grandissime e frequente onde che gettava il mare al lito per esser la spiaggia aperta, non fu possibile che alcuno potesse smontare in terra senza pericolo di perder il battello: vedemmo quivi molte genti che venivano al lito, facendo varij segni d'amicizia e dimostrando contentezza che andassimo a terra, e per pruova li conoscemmo molto umani e cortesi come per il successo caso V.M. intenderà. Per mandarli delle cose nostre, e da Indiani communimente molto desiderate, e apprezzate come sono fogli di charta, specchi, sonagli e altri simile cose, mandammo a terra un giovane de nostri marinari, quale ponendosi a nuoto, nell' approssimarsi (ritrovandosi in acqua da tre, o quattro braccia di terra lontano) di lor non confidandosi gliele getto nel lito, poi nel voler ritornar a dietro, dall onde con tanta furèa fu traportato alla riva, che vi si trovò di modo straccho, e sbattuto, che vi resto quasi morto. Il che veduto da gli Indiani corsero a pigliarlo, e tiratolo fuora lo portarono alquanto dal mare lontano. Risentito il giovane e vedendosi da lor portato, alla disgrazia prima vi s'aggiunse il spavento, per il quale metteva grandissimi gridi, e il simile facevano gl' Indiani che l'accompagnavano, nel volerlo assicurare e li davano cuore di non temere: di poi avendolo posto in terra al piè d'un picciolo colle in faccia del sole, con atti d'admirazione lo riguardavano, maravigliandosi della bianchezza della sua carne, e ignudo spogliatolo lo fecero ad un grandissimo fuoco restaurare, non senza timore di noi altri, che eramo nel battello restati, che a quel fuoco arrostendolo, lo volessero divorare. Riavute le forze il giovane, e con loro avendo alquanto dimorato, con segni li dimostrò voler alla nave far ritorno: da quali con grandissimo amore, tenendolo sempre stretto, con varij abbracciamenti, fu accompagnato sino al mare, e per più assicurarlo, allargandosi andarono sopra un colle eminente, e quivi fermatislo stellero a riguardare sino che nel battello fu entrato."—Verazzano in Ramusio, tom, iii., p. 420.

No. XV.

"Commission de François I. à Jacques Quartier, pour l'établissement du Canada, du 17^e Octobre, 1540.[217]

"François, par la grace de Dieu, Roi de France: à tous ceux que ces présentes lettres verront, salut. Comme pour le désir d'entendre et avoir connoissance de plusieurs pays qu'on dit inhabités, et autres être possédés par gens sauvages, vivant sans connoissance de Dieu et sans usage de raison, eussions dès pie-ça, à grands frais et mises envoyé découvrir les dits pays par plusieurs bons pilotes, et autres nos sujets de bons entendement, savoir et expérience, qui d'iceux pays nous avoient amené divers hommes que nous avons par long-tems tenus en notre royaume, les faisant instruire en l'amour et crainte de Dieu et de sa sainte loix et doctrine Chrétienne en intention de les faire ramener ès dits pays en compagnie de bon nombre de nos sujets de bonne volonté, afin de plus facilement induire les autres peuples d'iceux pays à croire en notre sainte foi; et entr'autres y eussions envoyé notre cher et bien aimé Jacques Quartier, lequel auroit découvert grands pays des terres de Canada et Hochelaga faissant un bout de l'Asie du côte de l'Occident; lesquels pays il trouvé (comme il nous a rapporté), garnis de plusieurs bonnes commodités, et les peuples d'iceux bien fournis de corps et de membres; et bien disposé d'esprit et d'entendement; desquels il nous a semblablement amené aucun nombre, que nous avons par long-tems fait voir et instruire en notre dite sainte foi avec nos dits sujets: en considération de quoi, et de leur bonne inclination, nous avons avisé et delibéré de renvoyer le dit Quartier ès dits pays de Canada et Hochelaga, et jusques en la terre de Saguenai (s'il peut y aborder) avec bonne nombre de navires, et de toutes qualités, arts et industrie pour plus avant entrer ès dits pays, converser avec les peuples d'iceux, et avec eux habiter (si besoin est) afin de mieux parvenir à notre dite intention et à faire chose agréable à Dieu nôtre Créateur et Rédempteur, et que soit à l'augmentation de son saint et sacré nom, et de Nôtre Mère Sainte Église Catholique, de laquelle nous sommes dits et nommés premier fils; par quoi soit besoin pour meilleur ordre et expédition de la dite entreprise, députer et établir un Capitaine Général et Maître pilote des dits navires, qui ait regard à la conduite d'iceux, et sur les gens, officiers et soldats y ordonnés et établis; savoir faisons, que nous à plein confians de la personne du dit Jacques Quartier et de ses sens, suffisance, loyauté, prud'hommie hardiesse, grande diligence et bonne expérience, icelui pour ces causes et autres à ce nous, mouvans, avons faits constitué et ordonné, faisons, constituons, ordonnons et établissons par ces présentes, Capitaine Générale et Maître pilote de tous les navires et autres vaisseaux de mer, par nous ordonnés être menés pour la dite entreprise et expédition, pour le dit état et charge de Capitaine Générale et Maître Pilote d'iceux navires et vaisseaux, avoir tenir, et exercer par le dit Jacques Quartier aux honneurs, prérogatives, pré-éminences, franchises, libertés, gages et bienfaits tels que par nous lui seront pour ce ordonnés, tant qu'il nous plaira. Et lui avons donné, et donnons puissance et autorité de mettre, établir, et instituer aux dits navires tels lieutenants, patrons, pilotes et autres ministres nécessaires pour le fait et conduite d'iceux, en tel nombre qu'il verra et connoîtra être besoin et nécessaire pour le bien de la dite expédition. Si donnons en mandement par ces dites présentes, à nôtre Admiral au Vice Admiral que prins et reçue du dit Jacques Quartier le serment pour ce on est accoutumé, icelui mettent et instituent on fassent mettre et instituer de par nous en possession et saisine du dit état de Capitaine Générale et Maître Pilote; et d'icelui, ensemble des honneurs, prérogatives, pré-éminences, franchises, libertés, gages et bienfaits, tels que par nous lui seront pour ce ordonnés, le fassent, souffrent et laissent, jour et user pleinement et paisiblement et à lui obéir et entendre de tous ceux, et ainsi qu'il appartiendra ès choses touchant et concernant le dit état et charge: et outre lui fasse, souffre et permette prendre le petit galion, appellé l'Emérillon que de présent il a de nous, lequel est jà vieil et caduc, pour servir à l'adoub de ceux des navires qui en auront besoin, et lequel nous voulons être prins et appliqué par le dit Quartier pour l'effet dessus dit, sans qu'il soit tenus en rendre aucun autre compte et reliquat; et duquel compte et reliquat nous l'avons déchargé et déchargeons par icelles présentes: par lesquels nous mandons aussi à nos Prévôts de Paris; Bailliffs de Rouen, de Caen, d'Orleans, de Blois, et de Tours; Sénéchaux du Maine, d'Anjou, et Guienne, et à tous nos autres Bailliffs, Sénéchaux, Prévôts, Alloués, et autres nos Justiciers et officiers, tant de notre royaume que de notre pays de Brétagne uni à icelui pardevers lesquels sont aucuns prisonniers, accusés, ou prévenus d'aucuns crimes quels qu'ils soient, fors de crimes de lèze-Majesté divine et humaine envers nous, et de faux monnoyeurs qu'ils aient incontinent à délivrer, rendre et bailler ès mains du dit Quartier, ou ces commis ou députés partans ces présentés, on le duplicate d'icelles pour notre service en la dite entreprise et expédition, ceux des dits prisonniers qu'il connoîtra être propres, suffisans, et capables pour servir en icelle expédition jusqu'au nombre de cinquante personnes, et selon le choix que le dit Quartier en fera, iceux premièrement jugés et condamnés selon leur démérites et la gravité de leurs méfaits, si jugés et condamnés ne sont; et satisfaction aussi préalablement ordonnée aux parties civiles et intéressés, si fait n'avoit été: Pour laquelle toutefois nous ne voulons la déliverance de leur personne ès dites mains du dit Quartier (s'il les trouve de service) être rétardée ne retenue; mais se prendra la dite satisfaction sur leurs biens seulement: et laquelle délivrance des dits prisonniers accusés ou prévenus, nous voulons être faite ès dites mains du dit Quartier pour l'effet dessus dits par nos dits justiciers et officiers respectivement, et par chacun d'eux en leur regard, pouvoir et jurisdiction, nonobstant oppositions ou appellations quelconque faites ou à faire, relevées, ou à relever, et sans que par le moyen d'icelles, icelle délivrance en la manière dessus dite, soit aucunement différée; et afin que le plus grand nombre n'en soit tiré, outre les dits cinquante, nous voulons que la délivrance que chacun de nos dits officiers en fera au dit Quartier soit écrite et certifiée en la marge de ses présentes, et que neanmoins registre en soit par eux fait et envoyée incontinent pardevers notre âme et fial Chancellier, pour connoître le nombre et la qualité de ceux qui auront été baillé et délivrés: Car tel est notre plaisir. En témoin de ce, nous avons fait mettre notre scel à ces dites présentes. Donné à Saint Pris le dix septième jour d'Octobre, l'an de grâce, mil cinq cent quarante, et de notre règne le vingt-septième.

"Ainsi signé sur le repli, par le Roi, vous Monseigneur le Chancellier et autres persons.

"De la Chesnaie.

"Et scellé sur le repli à simple queue de cire jaune."

FOOTNOTES:

No. XVI.

The following account of the romantic expedition of De Gourgues is extracted from the "Picture of Quebec:"

"The French and Spaniards had been long at bitter enmity, and the wars between them were carried on with all the exasperation of ancient rivalry and mutual hatred. The encroachments of the former upon the territories claimed by the Spaniards in Florida raised the liveliest indignation in the minds of a people not less martial and chivalrous than the French; and when we add that these encroachments had been chiefly made by the Huguenots, a race held in sovereign detestation by the Catholic Spaniard, and persecuted to a degree of intensity by Philip II., the height of animosity to which they were excited can easily be conceived. Nor were the French less susceptible of angry and vindictive feelings, to which may be added the poignant stings of offended national pride. They had never forgiven the captivity of their popular and gallant prince, Francis I.; the memory of this supposed disgrace still rankled in the population; nor was it even wholly eradicated until adequate reparation was made to the national honor by the accession of a French prince to the throne of Spain many years afterward. Notwithstanding a short cessation of the warfare between these two great powers, the passions we have attempted to describe remained in full force.

"Laudonnière passed the winter of 1564 in the fort which he had built near the mouth of St. Mary's River, and which he called La Caroline. In August, 1565, having experienced the mutinous disposition of part of his force, superadded to the horrors of famine, he was preparing to abandon the enterprise and to return to France, when he was joined by Ribaut with seasonable supplies. On the 4th of September, they were surprised by the appearance in the road of six large vessels, which proved to be a Spanish fleet, under the command of Don Pedro Menendez. Hostilities were immediately commenced; and the French, having an inferior force of four vessels, were obliged to put to sea, chased by the Spaniard. The former, however, being the better sailors, after distancing their opponents, returned to the coast, and relanded their troops about eight leagues from the fort of La Caroline. Three of the Spanish vessels kept the open sea, while the others lay in the road watching an opportunity to attack the French fort. Ribaut, who was a brave but obstinate man, persisted in his resolution to put to sea again, for the purpose of meeting and fighting with the Spanish vessels. The season was extremely tempestuous, and Laudonnière, having first vainly endeavored to dissuade his colleague from the rash attempt, fortified himself, and made every preparation to resist the attack which he anticipated. At length, notwithstanding the very heavy and long-continued rains, the Spaniards were descried by the French sentinels advancing to the assault on the 29th of September. The ramparts, maintained with spirit by a small force, were soon surmounted and carried—the gallant defenders slain in the breaches. Laudonnière, fighting his way bravely, was the last to leave the fort, and succeeded in escaping to the woods, where he rallied a few of his straggling countrymen, and whence he ultimately returned to France. The remainder, with the fort, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Nor did the disasters of the French end here. The vessels commanded by Ribaut were driven on shore by the storms then prevalent—many of the people lost—the survivors and their commander became prisoners to the Spaniards. The French were cruelly, and with bitter taunts, put to death. Several were hung from neighboring trees with this insulting legend: 'Ceux-ci n'ont pas été traité de la sorte en qualité de François, mais comme hérétiques et ennemis de Dieu.'

"Ample chastisement was, however, about to be inflicted. Champlain, who writes of this transaction with the blunt and honest indignation of a soldier, in his own familiar and quaint style, observes, 'Ceux-ci furent payés de la même monnaye, qu'ils avoient payés les François' ('they were repaid in the same coin with which they had paid the French').

"So Shakspeare truly says,

'In these cases, We still have judgment here: that we but track Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.'

"This outrage excited the deepest indignation in France, but the avowed hatred of the court toward Coligny and the Huguenots prevented public satisfaction being demanded from Philip II. The instrument of a just retribution was not wanting to the emergency, but it was reserved for a private individual to redeem the honor of the French name. 'En l'an 1567,' says Champlain, 'se presenta le brave Chevalier de Gourgues, qui plein de valeur et de courage, pour venger cet affront fait à la nation François, et recognoissant qu'aucun d'entre la noblesse, dont la France foisonne, ne l'offroit pour tirer raison d'une telle injure, entreprint de le faire.' ('In the year 1567, there presented himself the brave Chevalier de Gourgues, who, full of valor and courage, to avenge the insult on the French nation, and observing that none among the nobility, with whom France abounded, offered to obtain satisfaction for such an injury, undertook himself to do so.') He was a gentleman of Gascony, and there were at that period few inferior officers in France, or perhaps in all Europe, who had acquired a more brilliant reputation in war, or had undergone greater vicissitudes. When very young he had served in Italy with honor; and on one occasion, having the command of a small band of thirty men, near Sienna in Tuscany, he was able for a considerable time to withstand and repulse the assault of a part of the Spanish army, until, all his men being slain, he yielded himself prisoner. Contrary to the usage of war among generous foes, he was sent to the galleys in chains as a robber-slave. The galley to which the indignant De Gourgues was condemned was afterward captured by the Turks on the Sicilian coast, and sent into Rhodes. Again putting to sea with a Turkish crew, it was encountered and taken by the galleys of the Knights of Malta, and De Gourgues recovered his liberty and his sword. He afterward made several passages to Brazil and the coast of Africa, still treasuring up vengeance on the Spaniards; and he had just returned to France from one of his voyages, with the reputation of the bravest and most able among her navigators, when he heard of the disastrous tale of La Caroline, and the disgraceful manner in which his countrymen had been put to death by the Spaniards. Like a patriot, he felt keenly for the honor of his country; and as a man, he burned for an opportunity of satiating his long-dormant revenge on the perfidious Spaniards for their unworthy treatment of himself. At this time, too, there was circulated in France a narrative, entitled the 'Supplication of the Widows and Children of those who had been massacred in Florida,' calculated to rouse the national feeling to the highest pitch. These united motives urged De Gourgues to a chivalrous undertaking—no less than to chase the murderous invaders from the coasts of Florida, at the sword's point, or to die in the attempt. He accordingly proceeded to make his preparations, which, however, were concealed with great skill and address. He raised a considerable sum by selling his property, and by loans obtained from his friends; and, disguising his real purpose, gave out that he was bound, as before, to the African coast. The squadron consisted of three vessels, with crews amounting to 250 souls, amply provided for twelve months. Thus equipped, he sailed, on the 23d of August, 1567, from Bordeaux, and after some time began to unfold his real design, expatiating in glowing language on the glory of the attempt and the righteousness of the quarrel.

"Speech of De Gourgues, from Champlain: 'Mes compagnons et fidèles amis de ma fortune, vous n'estes pas ignorans combien je cheris les braves courages comme vous, et l'avez assez tesmoigné par la belle resolution que vous avez prise de me suivre et assister en tous les perils et hazards honorables que nous aurons à souffrir et essuyer, lorsqu'ils se presenteront devant nos yeux, et l'estat que je fais de la conservation de vos vies; ne desirant point vous embarquer au risque d'un enterprise que je ne sçaurois réussir, à une ruine sans honneur: ce seroit à moy une trop grand et blamable témérité, de hazarder vos personnes à un dessein d'un accez si difficile; ce que je ne croy pas estre, bien que j'aye employé une bonne partie de mon bien et de mes amis, pour équipper ces vaisseaux et les mettre en mer, estant le seul entrepreneur de tout le voyage. Mais tout cela ne me donne pas tant de sujet de m'affliger, comme j'en ay de me resjouir, de vous voir tous resolus à une autre entreprise, que retournera à votre gloire, sçavoir d'aller venger l'injure que nostre nation a receüe des Espagnols, qui ont fait une telle playe à la France, qu'elle saignera à jamais, par les supplices et traictemens infames qu'ils ont fait souffrir à nos François, et excercé des cruautez barbares et inouis en leur endroit. Les ressentimens que j'en ay quelquefois, m'en font jetter des larmes de compassion, et me relevent le courage de telle sort, que je suis resolu avec l'assistance de Dieu, et la vostre, de prendre une juste vengeance d'une telle felonnie et cruauté Espagnolle, de ces cœurs laches et poltrons, qui ont surpris mal-heureusement nos compatriots, qu'ils n'eussent osé regarder sur la défense de leurs armes. Ils sont assez mal logez, et les surprendrons aisément. J'ay des hommes en mes vaisseaux qui cognaissent tres-bien le pais, et pouvous y allez en seureté. Voicy, chers compagnons, un subject de relever nos courages, faites paroietre que vous avez autant de bonne volonté à éxécuter ce bon dessein, que vous avez d'affection à me suivre: ne serez vous pas contents de remporter les lauriers triomphans de la despouille de vos ennemis?'

"'Companions, and faithful friends of my fortunes, you are not ignorant how highly I value brave men like yourselves. Your courage you have sufficiently proved by your noble resolution to accompany me in all the dangers which we shall have to encounter, as they successively present themselves: my regard for you I have shown by the care I have taken for the safety of your lives. I desire not to embark you in any enterprise which may result in dishonorable failure: it would be in me a far too great and blamable temerity to hazard your safety in any design so difficult of accomplishment, which, however, I do not consider this one to be, seeing that I have employed in it a good part of my own fortune, and that of my friends, in equipping these vessels, and putting to sea, myself being the sole undertaker of the voyage. But all this does not give me so much cause for regret, as I have reason to rejoice, seeing you all resolved upon another enterprise, which will redound to your glory, namely, to avenge the insult suffered by our nation from the Spaniards, who have inflicted an incurable wound upon France by their infamous treatment, and the barbarous and unheard-of cruelties they have exercised upon our countrymen. The description of these wrongs has caused me to shed tears of pity, and inspires me now with such determination, that I am resolved, with the assistance of God and your aid, to take a just revenge for this felonious outrage on the part of the Spaniards—those base and cowardly men, who unhappily destroyed our friends by surprise, whom, with arms in their hands, they dared not to have looked in the face. The enemy is poorly lodged, and may be easily surprised. I have on board persons who know the country well, and we can reach it in safety. Here, my dear companions, here is a subject to rouse our courage! Let me see that you have as good will to perform this noble design, as you had affection to follow my person! Will you not rejoice to bear away triumphant laurels, bought by the spoil and ruin of our enemies?'

"This enthusiastic speech produced its full effect. Each soldier shouted assent to the generous proposal, and was ready to reply with Euryalus,

'Est hic, est animus lucis contemptor, et istum Qui vita bene credat emi, quo tendes, honorem!' 'Like thine, this bosom glows with martial flame, Burns with a scorn of life, and love of fame; And thinks, if endless glory can be sought On such low terms, the prize is cheaply bought.'

"Having thus obtained the full co-operation of his gallant band, De Gourgues steered for the coast of Florida, and passed some time in reconnoitering the position of the Spaniards, and in acquiring from the Indians full particulars of their strength and resources. These were, indeed, sufficiently formidable, amounting to 400 fighting men, provided with every munition of war. No way discouraged by this superiority of numbers and of position, De Gourgues made a furious attack upon the two forts, on the day before the Sunday called the Quasimodo, in April, 1658, intending to capture them by escalade. The Spaniards offered a very gallant resistance; but the fury and impetuosity of the French, stimulated by national antipathy, by the particular nature of the revenge which they contemplated, and fired by the valor and personal example of their heroic chief, soon surmounted all opposition. 'Nostre genereux Chevalier De Gourgues,' says Champlain, exultingly, 'le coutelas à la main, leur enflamme le courage, et comme un lion à la teste des siens, gaigne le dessus du rampart, repousse les Espagnols, se fait voye parmi eux.' 'Our brave Chevalier De Gourgues, sword in hand, inflames their courage, and, like a lion at the head of his troop, mounts the rampart, overthrows the Spaniards, and cuts his way through them.' The fate of the Spaniards was sealed; many were killed in the forts, the rest taken, or put to death by the Indians. De Gourgues, thus crowned with victory, and having fully succeeded in an enterprise which to him seemed so truly glorious, brought all the prisoners to the spot where the French had been massacred, and where the inscription of Menendez yet remained. Alter reproaching his fallen enemies with their cruelty and perfidy, he caused them to be hung from the same trees, affixing this writing in the place of the former: 'Je n'ay pas fait pendre ceux-ci comme Espagnols, mais comme traitres, voleurs, et meurtriers.' 'I hang these persons, not as being Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers.'

"De Gourgues, on developing his real design and destination to Florida, which he did in the first instance to his chosen friends, had pathetically complained that ever since he had heard of the Spanish outrage at La Caroline, he had been unable, however wearied with toil, to obtain his usual rest by night; that his imagination was ever occupied by the semblance of his countrymen hanging from the trees of Florida; that his ears were startled with piercing cries for vengeance; and that sleep, 'Nature's soft nurse,' would never visit him again—

'No more would weigh his eyelids down, And steep his senses in forgetfulness'—

until he had won her offices by a full and exquisite revenge on the Spaniards. The accomplishment of his cherished purpose must have been a high and vivifying relief to an ardent spirit like De Gourgues. He now declared with exulting delight, that sleep, that 'balm of hurt minds,' had once more deigned to visit his couch, and that his rest was now sweet, like that of a man delivered from a burden of misery too great to bear!

"Having accomplished this remarkable expedition, and inflicted, in a spirit accordant with that of the times, a terrible retribution on the Spaniards, De Gourgues sailed from the coast of Florida on the 3d of May, and arrived in France on the 6th of June, where he was received by the people with every token of joy and approbation. In consequence, however, of the demand of the King of Spain for redress, he was compelled to absent himself for some time, until the anger of the court permitted him to reappear. The narrative of this expedition was long preserved in the family of De Gourgues.

"Champlain, in whose Voyages this romantic story is to be found, seems to have been a passionate admirer of the conduct of De Gourgues, and thus enthusiastically concludes his account of the expedition:

"'Ainsi ce genereux chevalier repara l'honneur de la nation Françoise, que les Espagnols avoient offensée; ce q'autrement eust été un regret à jamais pour la France, s'il n'eust vengé l'affront receu de la nation Espagnolle. Entreprise généreuse d'un gentilhomme qui l'executa à ses propres cousts et despens, seulement pour l'honneur, sans autre espérance: ce qui lui a réussi glorieusement, et ceste gloire est plus à priser que tous les tresors du monde.' 'Thus did this brave knight repair the honor of the French nation, insulted by the Spaniards, which otherwise had been an everlasting subject of regret to France, if he had not avenged the affront received from the Spanish people. A generous enterprise, undertaken by a gentleman, and executed at his own cost, for honor's sake alone, without any other expectation, and one which resulted in obtaining for him a glory far more valuable than all the treasures of the world.'"

No. XVII.

"Un ancien missionnaire, le Père Paul le Jeune, a fait une description de la manière de vie des missionnaires parmi les sauvages du Canada. Il parle ici des Montagnais qu'il a suivi dans une chasse pendant l'hiver, je vais transcrire sa relation presque mot pour mot:

"'Ces sauvages habitent un pays extrêmement rude et inculte, mais il ne l'est pas encore autant que celui, qu'ils choisissent pour leurs chasses. Il faut marcher long-tems pour y arriver, et porter sur son dos tout ce dont ou peut avoir besoin pendant cinq ou six mois, par des chemins quelquefois si affreux, que l'on ne comprend pas comment les Bêtes Fauves peuvent y passer; si on n'avoit pas la precaution de se fournir d'écorces d'Arbres, ou ne trouveroit pas de quoi se mettre à couvert de la pluye et de la neige pendant le chemin. Dès qu'on est parvenu au terme on s'accommode un peu mieux, mais ce mieux ne consiste, qu'en ce qu'on n'y est pas sans cesse exposé à toutes les injures de l'air.

"'Tout le monde y travaille, et les missionnaires, qui dans ces commencemens n'avoient personne pour les servir, et pour qui les sauvages n'avoient aucune considération, n'étoient pas plus épargnés que les autres, on ne leur donnait pas même de cabanne séparée, et il falloit qu'ils se logeassent dans la première, où l'on vouloit bien les recevoir. Ces cabannes, parmi la plûpart des Nations Algonquines, sont à peu près de la figure de nos Glacières, rondes, et terminées en cone; elles n'ont point d'autres soûtiens, que de perches plantés dans la neige, attachées ensemble par les extrémités, et couvertes d'écorces assez mal jointes, et mal attachées aussi le vent y entre-t-il de toutes parts.

"'Leur fabrique est l'ouvrage d'une demie heure au plus, des branches de Sapin y tiennent lieu de nattes, et on n'y a point d'autres lits. Ce qu'il y a de commode, c'est qu'on peut les changer tous les jours; les neiges ramassées tout autour forment une espece de parapet, qui a son utilité, les vents n'y pénétrent point. C'est le long et à l'abri de ce parapet qu'on dort aussi tranquillement sur ces branchages, couverts d'une mechante peau que dans le meilleur lit; il en coûte à la verité au missionnaires pour s'y accoétumer, mais la fatigue et la necessité les y reduisent bientôt. Il n'en est pas tout-à-fait de même de la fumée, que presque toujours remplit tellement le haut de la cabanne, qu'on ne peut y être de bout, sans avoir la tête dans une espèce de tourbillon. Cela ne fait aucune peine aux sauvages, habitués dès l'enfance à être assis à terre, ou couchés tout le tems, qu'ils sont dans leurs cabannes, mais c'est un grand supplice pour les François, à qui cette inaction ne convient pas.

"'D'ailleurs le vent, qui entre comme je l'ai remarqué, par tous les côtés, y souffle un froid, qui transit d'une part, tandis qu'on étouffe, et qu'on est grillé de l'autre. Souvent on ne se voit point à deux ou trois pieds, on perd les yeux à force de pleurer, et il y a des tems, où, pour respirer un peu, il faut se tenir couché sur le ventre, et avoir la bouche presque collée contre la terre; le plus court seroit de sortir dehors, mais la plûpart du tems on ne le peut pas; tantôt à cause d'une neige si épaisse, qu'elle obscurcit le jour, et tantôt par ce qu'il souffle un vent sec, qui coupe le visage, et fait éclater les arbres dans les fôrets. Cependant un missionnaire est obligé de dire son office, de célébrer la messe, et de s'acquitter de toutes les autres fonctions de son ministere.

"'A toutes ces incommodités il en faut ajouter une autre, qui d'abord vous paroitra peu de chose, mais qui est réellement tres-considérable; c'est la persécution des chiens. Les sauvages en ont toujours un fort grand nombre, qui les suivent par tout, et leur sont très-attachés; peu caressans, par ce qu'on ne les caresse jamais, mais hardis et habiles chasseurs: j'ai déjà dit qu'on les dresse de bonne heure pour les différentes chasses, ausquelles on veut les appliquer; j'ajôute qu'il faut en avoir beaucoup pour chacune, parce-qu'il en périt un grand nombre par les dents et par les cornes des Bêtes fauves, qu'ils attaquent avec un courage, que rien ne rebute. Le soin de les nourrir occupe très-peu leurs maîtres, ils vivent de ce qu'ils peuvent attraper, et cela ne va pas bien loin, aussi sont ils toujours fort maigres; d'ailleurs ils ont peu de poil, ce qui les rend fort sensibles au froid.'

"Pour s'en garantir, s'ils ne peuvent approcher du feu, où il est difficile qu'ils puissent tenir tous, quand même il n'y auroit personne dans la cabanne, ils vont se coucher sur les premiers, qu'ils rencontrent, et souvent on se réveille la nuit en sursaut, presque étouffé par deux ou trois chiens. S'ils étoient un peu plus discrets, et se plaçoient mieux, leur compagnie ne seroit pas trop fâcheuse, on s'en accommoderoit même assez, mais ils se placent où ils peuvent; on a beau les chasser, ils reviennent d'abord. C'est bien pis encore le jour; dès qu'il parôit quelque chose à manger, il faut voir les mouvemens qu'ils se donnent pour en avoir leur part. Un pauvre missionnaire est à demi couché auprès du feu pour dire son bréviaire, ou pour lire un livre, en luttant de son mieux contre la fumée, et il faut qu'il essuye encore l'importunité d'une douzaine de chiens, qui ne font que passer et repasser sur lui, en courant après un morceau de viande, qu'ils ont apperçu. S'il a besoin d'un peu de repos, à peine trouvera-t'il un petit recoin, où il soit à l'abri de cette véxation. Si on lui apporte à manger, les chiens ont plutôt mis le museau dans son plat, qu'il n'y a porté la main; et souvent tandis qu'il est occupé à défendre sa portion contre ceux, qui l'attaquent de front, il en vieut un par derriere, qui lui enlève la moitié, ou qui en le heurtant, lui fait tomber le plat des mains, et répandre sa sagamité dans les cendres.

"Assez souvent les maux, dont je viens de parler, sont effacés par un plus grand, et au prix duquel tous les autres ne sont rien; c'est la faim. Les provisions, qu'on a apportées, ne durent pas lontems, on a compté sur la chasse, et elle ne donne pas toujours. Il est vrai que les sauvages sçavent endurer la faim avec autant de patience, qu'ils apportent peu de précautions pour s'en garantir; mais ils se trouvent quelquefois réduits à une si grande extrémité, qu'ils y succombent. Le missionnaire, de qui j'ai tiré ce détail, fut obligé dans son premier hyvernement, de manger les peaux d'aguilles et d'élans, dont il avoit rapetassé sa soutanne; après quoi il lui fallut se nourrir des jeunes branches, et des plus tendres écorces des arbres. Il soutint néanmoins cette épreuve, sans que sa santé en fût alterée, mais tous n'en ont pas eu la force.

"La seule malpropreté des cabannes, et l'infection, qui en est une suite nécessaire, sont pour tout autre qu'un sauvage, un vrai supplice; il est aisé de juger jusqu'où l'une et l'autre doivent aller parmi des gens, qui ne changent de hardes, que quand les leurs tombent par lambeaux, et qui n'ont nul soin de les nettoyer. L'été ils se baignent tous les jours, mais ils se frottent aussitôt d'huile ou de graisse d'une odeur forte. L'hyver ils demeurent dans leur crasse, et dans tous les tems on ne peut entrer dans leurs cabannes, qu'on ne soit empesté.

"Non seulement tout ce qu'ils mangent est sans apprêt, et ordinairement fort insipide, mais il regne dans leurs repas une malpropreté, qui passe tout ce qu'on en peut dire: ce que j'en ai vû, et ce qu'on m'en raconte vous feroit horreur. Il y a bien peu d'animaux, qui ne mangent plus proprement.

"Comme les villages sont toujours situés, ou auprès des bois, ou sur le bord des eaux, dès que l'air commence à s'échauffer, les Maringonins et une quantité prodigieuse d'autres moucherons, excitent une persécution bien plus vive encore que celle de la fumée, qu'on est même souvent obligé d'appeller à son secours car il n'y a presque point d'autre rémède contre la piques de ces petites insectes, qui vous mettent tout le corps en feu, et ne vous permettent point de dormir en repos. Ajoutez à cela les marches souvent forcées, et toujours très rudes, qu'il faut faire à la suite de ces barbares, tantôt dans l'eau jusqu'à la ceinture, tantôt dans la fange jusqu'aux genoux; dans les bois aux travers des ronces et des épines, avec danger d'en être aveuglé; dans les campagnes, où rien ne garantit d'un soleil aussi ardent en été que le vent est piquant pendant l'hiver. Si l'on voyage en canot, la posture gênante, où il faut s'y tenir, l'inaction où l'on y est, le peu de société qu'on peut avoir avec des gens qui ne sçavent rien, qui ne parlent jamais quand ils sont occupés, qui vous infectant par leur mauvaise odeur, et qui vous remplissent de saletés et de vermine, les caprices et les manières brusques qu'il en faut essuyer, les avarices, aux quelles on est exposé de la part d'un ivrogne, ou d'un homme que quelque accident inopiné, un songe, un souvenir fâcheux, font entrer en mauvaise humeur, la cupidité qui naît aisément dans le cœur de ces barbares, et qui a coûté la vie à plus d'un missionnaire, et si la guerre est declarée entre les nations parmi lesquelles on se trouve, le danger qu'on court sans cesse, ou de se voir tout à coup réduit à la plus dure servitude, ou de périr dans les plus affreux tourmens. Voilà la vie qu'ont mené surtout les premiers missionnaires."—Charlevoix, vol. vi., p. 59.

The lives of hardship here described were in many cases terminated by horrible deaths. The following is one relation, out of many of the same nature:

"Ils avoient avec eux les PP. Jean de Brebœuf et Gabriel Lallemant, neveu des PP. Charles et Jerome Lallemant, dont nous avons parlé; et ils n'avoient pu engager ni l'un ni l'autre à se mettre en lieu de sûreté. Il eût pourtant été mieux qu'ils se fussent partagés et que le P. de Brebœuf eût usé de son autorité pour obliger son compagnon de suiver ceux, qui avoient pris la fuite; mais l'exemple tout récent du P. Daniel, et le danger, où étoient un grand nombre de catéchumènes de mourir sans Baptême, leur firent croire à tous les deux qu'ils ne devoient pas désemparer. Ils prirent donc leur poste chacun à une des extrémités de l'attaque, et ils furent toujours aux endroits les plus exposés, uniquement occupés à baptiser des mourans, et à encourager les combattans à n'avoir que Dieu en vûe.