By Canadian Streams

Fifty-eight years after Champlain's voyage up the Saguenay, two Jesuit missionaries, Claude Dablon and Gabriel Druillettes, set forth from Tadoussac with a large party of Indians in forty canoes. Their object was to meet the northern Indians at Lake Nekouba, near the height of land, and if possible push on to Hudson Bay. It is clear from their narrative that French traders or missionaries had already ascended the Saguenay as far as Lake St. John, but beyond that Dablon and Druillettes entered upon a country which was hitherto unknown to the French. After suffering great hardships, the party at last arrived at Lake Nekouba, where they found a large gathering of Indians, representing many of the surrounding tribes. But while the missionaries were addressing the Indians, word came that a war party of Mohawks had penetrated even to these remote fastnesses. So overpowering was the dread which these redoubtable warriors had inspired among all the tribes of North-eastern America, that the gathering broke up in confusion. Every man made off to his own home, hoping that he might not meet an Iroquois at the portage; and as the Indians of Father Dablon's party were as fear-stricken as the rest, all idea of continuing the journey to Hudson Bay had to be abandoned, and the missionaries were obliged to retrace their steps to Tadoussac.

A decade later, another missionary, Father Albanel, with a Colonial officer, Denys de Saint Simon, were more fortunate. Following Dablon's route to the height of land, they pushed on to Lake Mistassini, and descended Rupert's River to Hudson Bay, where they found a small vessel flying the English flag, and two houses, but the English themselves were apparently away on some trading expedition.

The Jesuit missionaries seemed to have discovered at an early date the advantages of Lake St. John as the site of one of their missions. In 1808 the ruins of their settlement were still visible on the south side of the lake. James McKenzie, of the North-West Company, who visited the "King's Posts" in that year, says that "the plum and apple trees of their garden, grown wild through want of care, yet bear fruit in abundance. The foundation of their church and other buildings, as well as the churchyard, are still visible. The bell of their church, two iron spades, a horseshoe, a scythe and a bar of iron two feet in length, have lately been dug out of the ruins of this apparently once flourishing spot, and, adjoining, is an extensive plain or meadow on which much timothy hay grows." Elsewhere Mr. McKenzie mentions that the Fathers had mills on Lake St. John, some of the materials used in their construction having been found there by officers of the North-West Company. He adds that an island in the lake, not far from where the mission formerly stood, swarms with snakes, which a local tradition credited to the power of the worthy Jesuits. The Fathers found them inconveniently numerous about their settlement, and conjured them on to the island.

A settlement of some kind was made at Chicoutimi, on the Saguenay, early in the eighteenth century. A chapel and store, still standing in 1808, bore an inscription that they had been built in 1707. Father Coquart records that in 1750 there was a saw-mill on the River Oupaouétiche, one and a half leagues above Chicoutimi, which worked two saws night and day.

III

THE RIVER OF ACADIA

Along my fathers' dykes I roam again,
Among the willows by the river-side.
These miles of green I know from hill to tide,
And every creek and river's ruddy stain.
Neglected long and shunned, our dead have lain.
Here, where a people's dearest hope has died,
Alone of all their children scattered wide,
I scan the sad memorials that remain.

    HERBIN.
Some time about the middle of the seventeenth century, an Acadian, sailing perhaps from Port Royal in search of peltries or of mere adventure, brought his little vessel by great good luck safely through that treacherous channel, guarded at one end by Cape Split and at the other by the frowning crest of Blomidon, and found himself upon the placid waters of the Basin of Minas. Champlain had sailed across the mouth of the basin in 1604, and had called it the Port des Mines, because of certain copper-mines which he had been led to expect there. This Acadian found something better than copper-mines. Safely past Blomidon, he came to a land which nature seemed to have set apart as the home of an industrious and peace-loving people. Somewhere about the mouth of the Gaspereau he built his home. Others followed, and in time a long, straggling village grew up; willows were planted, which stand to-day as a memorial of this Acadian colony; and after years of toil they completed that still more impressive monument of Acadian industry, the "long ramparts of their dykes," by which they fenced out the sea from the rich and fertile lowlands, and turned these once tide-swept flats into green meadows.

The Gaspereau country must have been beautiful enough when the Acadians first came to make their home there, but in the years of their occupation they gave to the landscape, quite unconsciously no doubt, certain subtle touches that turned it into something little less than an earthly paradise. Standing upon the ridge and looking down into the valley of the Gaspereau, one sees a scene that it not very materially changed from the days of the Acadians-after one has eliminated such modern excrescences as railways and bridges. The village of Grand Pré would have to be rearranged, no doubt. There was less of it in the first half of the eighteenth century; it did not cover quite the same ground; but no doubt a traveller who came that way in 1750 would have seen in the vale beneath many such picturesque cottages embowered in the self-same trees, and the rest of the scene would have been much the same as he would see to-day. Charles Roberts, the Canadian poet, novelist, and historian, has made a word-picture of it. "The picture is an exquisite pastoral. Among such deep fields, such billowy groves, and such embosomed farmsteads might Theocritus have wrought his idylls to the hum of the heavy bees. Along the bottom of the sun-brimmed vale sparkles the river, between its banks of wild rose and convolvulus, with here and there a clump of grey-green willows, here and there a red-and-white bridge. As it nears its mouth the Gaspereau changes its aspect. Its complexion of clear amber grows yellow and opaque as it mixes with the uprushing tides of Minas, and its widened channel winds through a riband of dyked marshes."

This is the valley of the Gaspereau, one of the most beautiful spots in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia. This, too, in that far-off autumn of 1755, was the scene of one of the most pathetic and tragic incidents in the history of America. It would serve no useful purpose to discuss that much-debated question of the whys and wherefores of the expulsion of the Acadians. The story of the actual tragedy is all we have space for here. That story is alone sufficient to make the Gaspereau famous among rivers of Canada, and it is best told in the language of Francis Parkman. Governor Lawrence had summoned the deputies of the Acadian settlements to appear before him at Halifax, to take the oath of allegiance and fidelity. They came, but flatly refused to take the oath. The Governor and Council thereupon decided that the only thing that remained to be done was to deport them from the colony. John Winslow, a Colonial officer from Massachusetts, was charged with the duty of securing the inhabitants about the Basin of Minas. On August 14, 1755, he set forth from his camp at Fort Beausejour, with a force of but two hundred and ninety-seven men. He sailed down Chignecto Channel to the Bay of Fundy. "Here, while they waited the turn of the tide to enter the Basin of Minas," says Parkman, "the shores of Cumberland lay before them dim in the hot and hazy air, and the promontory of Cape Split, like some misshapen monster of primeval chaos, stretched its portentous length along the glimmering sea, with head of yawning rock, and ridgy back bristled with forests. Borne on the rushing flood, they soon drifted through the inlet, glided under the rival promontory of Cape Blomidon, passed the red sandstone cliffs of Lyon's Cove, and descried the mouths of the Rivers Canard and Des Habitants, where fertile marshes, diked against the tide, sustained a numerous and thriving population. Before them spread the boundless meadows of Grand Pré, waving with harvests, or alive with grazing cattle; the green slopes behind were dotted with the simple dwellings of the Acadian farmers, and the spire of the village church rose against a background of woody hills. It was a peaceful, rural scene, soon to become one of the most wretched spots on earth."

After conferring with his brother officer, Murray, who was encamped with his men on the banks of the Pisiquid, where the town of Windsor now stands, Winslow returned to Grand Pré. The Acadian elders were told to remove all sacred things from the village church, and the building was then used as a storehouse. The men pitched their tents outside, while Winslow took possession of the priest's house. A summons was sent to the male inhabitants of the district, over ten years of age, to attend at the church in Grand Pré, on the fifth of September, at three of the clock in the afternoon, "that we may impart what we are ordered to communicate to them; declaring that no excuse will be admitted on any pretence whatsoever, on pain of forfeiting goods and chattels in default."

"On the next day," continues Parkman, "the inhabitants appeared at the hour appointed, to the number of four hundred and eighteen men. Winslow ordered a table to be set in the middle of the church, and placed on it his instructions and the address he had prepared." It ran partly as follows: "The duty I am now upon, though necessary, is very disagreeable to my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you, who are of the same species. But it is not my business to animadvert on the orders I have received, but to obey them; and therefore without hesitation I shall deliver to you His Majesty's instructions and commands, which are that your lands and tenements and cattle and live-stock of all kinds are forfeited to the Crown, with all your other effects, except money and household goods, and that you yourselves are to be removed from this his province. The peremptory orders of His Majesty are that all the French inhabitants of these districts be removed; and through His Majesty's goodness I am directed to allow you the liberty of carrying with you your money and as many of your household goods as you can take without overloading the vessels you go in. I shall do everything in my power that all these goods be secured to you, and that you be not molested in carrying them away, and also that whole families shall go in the same vessel; so that this removal, which I am sensible must give you a great deal of trouble, may be made as easy as His Majesty's service will admit; and I hope that in whatever part of the world your lot may fall, you may be faithful subjects, and a peaceable and happy people."

After weary weeks of delay, which tried Winslow's patience to the utmost, the transports at last arrived at the mouth of the Gaspereau, and the work of embarkation began. Up to the very last the Acadians could not believe that the order of deportation was serious, and when they finally realised their fate and knew that they must bid farewell for ever to their homes-the homes of their fathers, the land that they loved so well-their grief was indescribable. "Began to embark the inhabitants," says Winslow in his Diary, "who went off very solentarily and unwillingly, the women in great distress, carrying off their children in their arms; others carrying their decrepit parents in their carts, with all their goods; moving in great confusion, and appeared a scene of woe and distress." It was late in December before the last transport left the mouth of the Gaspereau. Altogether more than twenty-one hundred Acadians were exiled from Grand Pré and the country round about. They were distributed along the Atlantic coast, from Massachusetts to Georgia. Some made their way to Louisiana; some escaped and reached Canada. "Some," says Parkman, "after incredible hardship, made their way back to Acadia, where, after the peace, they remained unmolested, and, with those who had escaped seizure, became the progenitors of the present Acadians, now settled in various parts of the British maritime provinces." Few of them, however, returned at any time to Grand Pré, and that once thriving settlement remained desolate for several years, until at last British families straggled in and took up the waste lands of the unfortunate Acadians.

IV

THE WAR-PATH OF THE IROQUOIS

The story of the Richelieu River is a story of war and conflict. It opens just three hundred years ago, when Champlain set out from Quebec to join a war-party of Algonquins and Hurons, who had determined to seek the Iroquois in their own country, and had begged him to aid in the expedition. In consenting to do so, Champlain no doubt felt that he had good and sufficient reasons, but if he could have foreseen the consequences of his act he would surely have left the Algonquins and Iroquois to settle their difficulties in their own way, for from this first act of aggression dates the implacable hatred of the Iroquois for the French, and a century and more of ferocious raids into every corner of the struggling colony.

Champlain, with his little party of French and a horde of naked savages, reached the mouth of the Richelieu, or the River of the Iroquois as it was then called, about the end of June 1609. The Indians quarrelled among themselves, and three-fourths of their number deserted and made off for home. The rest continued their course up the waters of the Richelieu. When they reached the rapids, above the Basin of Chambly, it was found impossible to take the shallop in which the French had travelled any farther. Sending most of his men back to Quebec, he himself, with two companions, determined to see the adventure through. After many days' hard paddling, the flotilla of canoes swept out on to the bosom of the noble lake which perpetuates the name of Champlain, and in the evening of the twenty-ninth of July they discovered the Iroquois in their canoes, near the point of land where Fort Ticonderoga was long afterwards built. The Iroquois made for the shore, and as night was falling it was mutually agreed to defer the battle until the following morning. The Iroquois threw up a barricade, while Champlain and his native allies spent the night in their canoes on the lake.

In the morning Champlain and his two men put on light armour, and the whole party landed at some distance from the Iroquois. "I saw the enemy go out of their barricade," says Champlain, "nearly two hundred in number, stout and rugged in appearance. They came at a slow pace towards us, with a dignity and assurance which greatly amused me, having three chiefs at their head. Our men also advanced in the same order, telling me that those who had three large plumes were the chiefs, and that I should do what I could to kill them. I promised to do all in my power.

"As soon as we had landed, they began to run for some two hundred paces towards their enemies, who stood firmly, not having as yet noticed my companions, who went into the woods with some savages. Our men began to call me with loud cries; and in order to give me a passage-way, they opened in two parts, and put me at their head, where I marched some twenty paces in advance of the rest, until I was within about thirty paces of the enemy, who at once noticed me, and, halting, gazed at me, as I did also at them. When I saw them making a move to fire at us, I rested my musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their men was so wounded that he died some time after. I had loaded my musket with four balls. When our side saw this shot so favourable for them, they began to raise such loud cries that one could not have heard it thunder. Meanwhile, the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, although they were equipped with armour woven from cotton thread, and with wood which was proof against their arrows. This caused great alarm among them. As I was loading again, one of my companions fired a shot from the woods, which astonished them anew to such a degree that, seeing their chiefs dead, they lost courage, and took to flight, abandoning their camp and fort, and fleeing into the woods, whither I pursued them, killing still more of them. Our savages also killed several, and took ten or twelve prisoners. The remainder escaped with the wounded.

"After gaining the victory, our men amused themselves by taking a great quantity of Indian corn and some meal from their enemies, also their armour, which they had left behind that they might run better. After feasting sumptuously, dancing and singing, we returned three hours after, with the prisoners."

On the return journey, the Algonquins tied one of the prisoners to a stake, and tortured him with such refinement of cruelty as to arouse the disgust and resentment of Champlain. Finally, they allowed him to put the wretched Iroquois out of his misery with a musket-ball. Arrived at the rapids, the Algonquins and Hurons returned to their own country, with loud protestations of friendship for Champlain, while the latter continued his journey down to Quebec.

If anything remained to heap the cup of Iroquois resentment to the brim, it was provided the following year, when Champlain again lent his assistance to the Algonquins and Hurons, and, encountering a war-party of Iroquois, a hundred strong, near the mouth of the Richelieu, killed or captured every one of them. The day was to come when the tables would be turned with a vengeance, when the war-cry of the Iroquois would be heard under the walls of Montreal and Quebec, and the death of each of the hundred warriors avenged a hundredfold.

But the sanguinary story of the Richelieu is not limited to Indian wars, or the conflict between Indian and French. In later years it was to become the road of war between white and white, between New England and New France, and again between the revolted colonists of New England and the loyal colonists of Canada. On the very spot where Champlain and his Algonquins had defeated the Iroquois, one hundred and fifty years later another conflict took place, curiously similar in some respects, though different enough in others. Again one side fought behind a barricade, while the other gallantly rushed to the assault, and again the defeat was overwhelming; but there the resemblance ends. Behind the impregnable breastwork at Ticonderoga stood Montcalm with his three or four thousand French; without stood Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand British regulars and Colonial militia. Abercrombie's one and only idea was to carry the position by assault, and throughout the long day he hurled regiment after regiment up the deadly slope, only to see them mown down by hundreds and thousands before the breastwork. Champlain's victory was one of civilisation over savagery; Montcalm's was one of skill over stupidity.

Seventeen years after the battle of Ticonderoga, the Richelieu once more became the road of war. Down its historic waters came Montgomery, with his three thousand Americans, to capture Montreal and to be driven back from the walls of Quebec. Among all the singular circumstances that led up to and accompanied this disastrous attempt to relieve Canadians of the British yoke, none was more remarkable, or more significant, than the fact that the bulk of the plucky little army with which Guy Carleton successfully defended England's northern colony consisted of French-Canadians-the same down-trodden French-Canadians on whose behalf Congress had sent an army to drive the British into the sea. As for the Richelieu, having served for the better part of two centuries as the pathway of savage and civilised war, its energies were at length turned into channels of peaceful commerce.

V

THE RIVER OF THE CATARACT

That dread abyss! What mortal tongue may tell
The seething horrors of its watery hell!
Where, pent in craggy walls that gird the deep,
Imprisoned tempests howl, and madly sweep
The tortured floods, drifting from side to side
In furious vortices.

    KIRBY.
Father Louis Hennepin, in his New Discovery of a Vast Country in America, gives the earliest known description of the river and falls of Niagara. "Betwixt the Lake Ontario and Erie," he says, "there is a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the Universe does not afford its Parallel. 'Tis true, Italy and Suedeland boast of some such Things; but we may as well say they are but sorry Patterns, when compar'd to this of which we now speak. At the foot of this horrible Precipice, we meet with the River Niagara, which is not above half a quarter of a League broad, but is wonderfully deep in some places. It is so rapid above this Descent that it violently hurries down the wild Beasts while endeavouring to pass it to feed on the other side, they not being able to withstand the force of its Current, which inevitably casts them down headlong above Six hundred foot. This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which Fall from this vast height, do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the Wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen Leagues off. The River Niagara having thrown itself down this incredible Precipice, continues its impetuous course for two Leagues together, to the great Rock, with an inexpressible Rapidity: But having passed that, its Impetuosity relents, gliding along more gently for two Leagues, till it arrives at the Lake Ontario, or Frontenac."

This same year, 1678, when Hennepin visited the great falls, La Salle, with his lieutenants Tonty and La Motte, were busy with preparations for their western explorations, and in these the Niagara River was to play an important part. It was about the middle of November when La Motte, with Father Hennepin and sixteen men, sailed from Fort Frontenac (Kingston) in a little vessel of ten tons. "The winds and the cold of the autumn," says Hennepin, "were then very violent, insomuch that our crew was afraid to go into so little a vessel. This oblig'd us to keep our course on the north side of the lake, to shelter ourselves under the coast against the north-west wind." On the twenty-sixth they were in great danger, a couple of leagues off shore, where they were obliged to lie at anchor all night. The wind coming round to the north-east, however, they managed to continue their voyage, and arrived safely at an Iroquois village called Tajajagon, where Toronto stands to-day. They ran their little ship into the mouth of the Humber, where the Iroquois came to barter Indian corn, and gaze in open-mouthed wonder at the marvellous inventions of the white men. Contrary winds and trouble with the ice kept them there until the fifth of December, when they crossed the lake to the mouth of the Niagara. "On the 6th, being St. Nicholas's Day," says Hennepin, "we got into the fine River Niagara, into which never any such Ship as ours enter'd before. We sung there Te Deum, and other prayers, to return our thanks to Almighty God for our prosperous voyage." After examining the river as far as Chippewa Creek, La Motte, Hennepin and the men set to work to build a cabin, surrounded by palisades, two leagues above the mouth of the river. The ground was frozen, and hot water had to be used to thaw it out before the stakes could be driven in. The Iroquois, who according to Hennepin had been very friendly on their arrival at the mouth of the river, presenting them with fish, imputing their good fortune in the fisheries to the white men, and examining with interest and astonishment the "great wooden canoe," grew sullen and suspicious when they saw the strangers building a fortified house on what they considered peculiarly their own territory. La Motte and Hennepin went off to the great village of the Senecas, beyond the Genesee, to obtain their consent to the building of the fort, but without much success. Soon after their departure, La Salle and Tonty reached the Seneca village, on their way from Fort Frontenac to the Niagara. More persuasive, or more fortunate than his lieutenant, La Salle secured permission not only for the fortified post at the mouth of the river, but also for a much more important undertaking which he had planned, the building of a vessel at the upper end of the Niagara River, to be used in connection with his western explorations.

During the winter the necessary material for the Griffin, as the new vessel was to be called, was carried over the long portage to the mouth of Cayuga Creek, above the falls, where a dock was prepared and the keel laid. La Salle sent the master-carpenter to Hennepin to desire him to drive the first bolt, but, as he says, his profession obliged him to decline the honour. La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac, leaving Tonty to finish the work. The Iroquois, in spite of their agreement with La Salle, watched the building of the Griffin with jealous dissatisfaction, and kept the little band of Frenchmen in a state of constant anxiety. Fortunately, one of their expeditions against the neighbouring tribes took the majority of them off, and the work was pushed forward with redoubled zeal, so that it might be completed before their return. The Indians that remained behind were too few to make an open attack, but they did their utmost to prevent the completion of the ship. One of them, feigning drunkenness, attacked the blacksmith and tried to kill him, but was driven off with a red-hot bar. Hennepin naïvely remarks that this, "together with the reprimand he received from me," obliged him to be gone. A native woman warned Tonty that an attempt would be made to burn the vessel. Failing in this, the Senecas tried to starve the French by refusing to sell them corn, and might have succeeded but for the efforts of two Mohegan hunters, who kept the workmen supplied with game from the surrounding forest. Finally, the Griffin was launched, amid the shouts of the French and the yelpings of the Indians, who forgot their displeasure in the novel spectacle. She was towed up the Niagara, and on the seventh of August, 1679, La Salle and his men sailed out over the placid waters of Lake Erie, the booming of his cannon announcing the approach of the first ship of the upper lakes. In the Griffin La Salle sailed through Lakes Eric, St. Clair, and Huron, to Michilimackinac, and thence crossed Lake Michigan to the entrance to Green Bay, where some of his men, sent on ahead, had collected a quantity of valuable furs. These he determined to send back to Canada, to satisfy the clamorous demands of his creditors, while he continued his voyage to the Mississippi. The Griffin set sail for Niagara on the eighteenth of September. She never reached her destination, and her fate has remained one of the mysteries of Canadian history.

VI

THE HIGHWAY OF THE FUR TRADE

Dear dark-brown waters, full of all the stain
Of sombre spruce-woods and the forest fens,
Laden with sound from far-off northern glens
Where winds and craggy cataracts complain,
Voices of streams and mountain pines astrain,
The pines that brood above the roaring foam
Of La Montague or Des Erables; thine home
Is distant yet, a shelter far to gain.
Aye, still to eastward, past the shadowy lake
And the long slopes of Rigaud toward the sun.
The mightier stream, thy comrade, waits for thee,
The beryl waters that espouse and take
Thine in their deep embrace, and bear thee on
In that great bridal journey to the sea.

    LAMPMAN.
While Champlain was in Paris, in 1612, a young man, one Nicolas de Vignau, whom he had sent the previous year to visit the tribes of the Ottawa, reappeared, with a marvellous tale of what he had seen on his travels. He had found a great lake, he said, and out of it a river flowing north, which he had descended and reached the shores of the sea, where he had seen the wreck of an English ship. Seventeen days' travel by canoe, said Vignau, would bring one to the shores of his sea. Champlain was delighted, and prepared immediately to follow up this important discovery. He returned to Canada, and about the end of May 1613 set out from Montreal with Vignau and three companions. The rest of the story is better told in Parkman's words-and Parkman is here at his very best.

"All day they plied their paddles, and when the night came they made their campfire in the forest. Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced, with eyes of flame, the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky. Now a fervid light touched the dead top of the hemlock, and, creeping downward, bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the breathless air. Now, a fiercer spark beamed from the east; and now, half risen on the sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness.

"The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course. Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam; islets of froth floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on their left, the falling curtain of the Rideau shone like silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in front, white as a snow-drift, the cataracts of the Chaudière barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down its sheeted rocks, foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude with the hoarse outcry of its agony and rage."