The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
CHRONOLOGY
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Bjarni was a young merchant of Iceland who made it a rule to voyage and traffic a year, and in alternate years to remain at home with his father. But once, upon returning, the son found that Hjerulf, his father, had gone with Erik the Red to help colonise Greenland. So he went to seek him, sailing, so he supposed, toward the great island that lay to the west. Many days passed, and each day Bjarni thought to see what had been described as the "high ice hills" of Greenland. But instead, as he continued a westerly course, he came in view of a flat wooded shore which later navigators have identified with the coast that extends from Connecticut to Massachusetts. Bjarni's companions were eager to land, but this wild, unwanted country had no enticements for him. He was of a mind to find Greenland, and his father. So he re-shaped his course according to the principles of navigation at his command,—the Northmen of that time sailed without compass or quadrant—and coasted by other strange shores, past the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland of our day, and at last reached the place where his father was. This first voyage to the Western Continent, as recorded in Icelandic runes, occurred in the year 986.
Leif, not so uncurious as Bjarni, inherited the vigour of his father, Red Erik. The reports of the new lands so casually come upon, impelled him to buy the ship of his friend and to set forth with thirty-five comrades just eight years after Bjarni's return. They "sailed out into the sea . . . and found that land first which Bjarni had found last." They saw icebergs and a sloping plain strewn with flat stones from, sea to mountains. So they called it the land of Hella—"a flat stone." This was the first name given to what was without doubt the shore of Labrador and Newfoundland.
Leif, son of Erik, disembarked, and set foot on the new continent; then he sailed again and came to more land, cast anchor, put off boats and went ashore. Here, the surrounding country was level, and covered with wood and white sands. Then said Leif, according to a troubadour's tale inscribed in the thirteenth century, "This land shall be named after its qualities and called Markland." This is presumed to have been the coast of Nova Scotia.
When Leif renewed his voyage, winter was approaching. There are reasons to believe that he and his crew passed Nantucket Island and went into camp near the Pocasset River, in Massachusetts. This country was named by them Vinland, the Good. There they found wheat "that grew without planting" and other bounties of nature sung during a decade of centuries by Scandian bards.
The earliest reference to Vinland is found in an account written by Adam, a bishop's assistant from Bremen, of a visit paid to the Danish court in 1073. On that occasion he was informed of western explorations which had been undertaken less than a hundred years previous to the date of his chronicle.
A first translation of Icelandic manuscripts preserved in the Royal and University Libraries at Copenhagen was published in 1837 by Professor Rafn; upon such data is based the assertion of this eminent authority that the shores of northeastern America were colonised by the Norsemen about the year 1000. His opinions, and those of Torfaeus, who wrote in 1705 on the same subject, have never been convincingly refuted.
Columbus visited Iceland in February, 1477, with the undoubted purpose of searching the archives of this viking isle, which had been a centre of learning when Europe was yet steeped in illiteracy. It is believed that he received sufficient confirmation of the existence of a western continent to encourage the pursuit of the long-deferred dream finally achieved in 1492.
Basque and Breton voyagers are said to have crossed to the coasts of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island before the Genoese discoverer found for Spain the islands of America. To his last hour Columbus thought he had reached "an unfamiliar part of India," and for this reason he had named the indigines Indians. Deceived, perhaps, by the bruited discovery of the "West Indies," a Venetian merchant, by name John Cabotto, set out from Bristol on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1497, with the hope of finding, by going to the west, a sea-route to India. In the same year, Vasco da Gama, sailed to the east on the same mission, and was successful.
But in place of a tropic strand, the forbidding coast of Newfoundland was the first that Cabot sighted. Choosing a landfall on the eastward shore, he disembarked from the good ship Matthew and possessed himself of the island in the name of his patron, the seventh Henry of England. During a subsequent voyage, in the year 1498, he and his son Sebastian explored the coast from Labrador to the Carolinas.
Two Portuguese brothers named Cortoreal refound northern America in 1500, and as early as 1504, French and Spanish fishermen baited cod in the waters off Newfoundland and Cape Breton. Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World, written in 1516 and translated from French to English in 1555, affirms that "the Brytons and Frenche men are accustomed to take fysshe in the coastes of these landes, where is fownd great plenty of Tunnies which the inhabytauntes caul Baccalaos, whereof the lande was so named."
Baccalaos was the Biscayan word for cod. Early map-makers designated present-day Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Newfoundland as the "Baccalaos Landes."
After Cabot, Jean Denys discovered and explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sable Island, off the Nova Scotian coast, was colonised in 1518 by de Léry, a French baron. In 1524, Verrazzano the Florentine visited the "Bretones' Country," and about this time a Portuguese expedition attempted the colonisation of Cape Breton. Ten years later, on the twentieth day of April, 1534, there sailed from the Brittany harbour of St. Malo two ships bearing "le Capitaine Jacques Quartier" and his co-venturers to the continent across the sea. They also were lured by the wish to find a westerly passage to golden India.
On the tenth of May they arrived at the Cap de Bonne Vue (Bonavista) near the rocky gate of the harbour that first sheltered Cabot. In his Discours du Voyage, Cartier narrates further adventures which occurred during the progress of his two sixty-ton ships along the coast and among the islands of the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Chaleur. Prince Edward Island he described as "low, and full of beautiful trees and meadows." The Golfe de la Chaleur was so named by its discoverer because on the July day he entered it he found this country "hotter than Spain," though "the most beautiful it is possible to see." Cartier landed near the site of Douglastown, Gaspé Peninsula, and planted a cross and a lily shield.
During the second of his three voyages, in 1535, he continued up the great river which he hoped was to lead him to the Orient, and came to two Indian villages which occupied the future sites of Quebec and Montreal. The natives of Stadaconé (Quebec) first taught white men, in the persons of Cartier and his companions, the word kannatha, "a settlement," of which "Canada" is supposedly the corruption. According to a recent historian,[1] the name was first applied officially in 1540, when Francis I commissioned Roberval "Vice-roy and Lieutenant-General in Canada"—a domain then thought to be part of Asia.
Following the northern voyages of Cartier, of Roberval, Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert came the expedition captained by Pierre du Gua, Lord de Monts, a gentleman of Saintonge, who with an illustrious crew left Havre de Grace, March 7, 1604, in the Acadie.[2] Champlain was the royal geographer, Lescarbot, who arrived in 1606, the chronicler of this enterprise, "the most courageous of all those undertaken by the French in the New Lands," whose aim was the colonisation of New France.
The Acadie first sighted land off Cape La Have on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, then entered the harbour of the town now called Liverpool, made a brief stop at Port Mouton and rounded Cape Sable on the way to St. Mary's Bay and the Bay of Fundy, which was named by the newcomers la Baie Françoise. Directing their vessel between the pillars of a narrow passage to the east of the Bay, de Monts and his followers found themselves within a spacious basin surrounded by a ridge of hills. They sailed the length of it and "after having searched from side to side" chose "an isolated spot around which were low meadows and good springs." On this site, near the present village of Granville, and six miles below Annapolis, was established in 1605 the first settlement of white men north of the Gulf of Mexico.[3] For the beauty of its environment it was called le port royal.
Minas Basin was explored as far as Partridge Island. The St. John River was discovered and named, likewise L'isle Saincte Croix in Passamaquoddy Bay, where the colonists passed their first winter.
De Monts granted Port Royal and neighbouring territory to Poutrincourt, one of his companions, who seeded a farm on the present site of Annapolis fort, and in 1607, the year Jamestown was settled, took samples of the grain to Paris to demonstrate the fertility of the land.
The successful establishment of these first Acadian settlements incited further voyages by the English, who thus far had made no attempts to colonise their possessions in North America.
In 1613 a British force captained by Samuel Argall of Jamestown destroyed the Port Royal fort. The French were scattered for a time to the outer limits of Acadian territory, and Scotch colonists under Sir William Alexander settled, after 1621, in the country which the new governor proclaimed should be called Nova Scotia. The present province of New Brunswick which, with Gaspé Peninsula, also came under this grant, was named New Alexandria, but was politically a part of New Scotland. Lord Ochiltree, in 1629, brought other Scotch settlers to Cape Breton Island. About this time and during the next forty years, the expeditions of Claude and Charles La Tour, Isaac de Razilly, d'Aunay de Charnisay, Nicolas Denys and Villebon arrived in the New World. The younger La Tour was father of the first European settlement in New Brunswick (1631).
Contests which resulted from conflicting grants to French and English pioneers culminated in a decisive victory for the latter in 1710. Three years later the treaty signed at Utrecht gave Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to England, and Cape Breton and the Miquelon Islands to France. Cape Breton Island was re-named L'isle Royale. Louisbourg, which commanded the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits, was made the chief fortress and fishing-port of French territory.
The French colony at Port Royal had been absorbed by the English village of Annapolis,—Anne's Town,—in 1710. In 1715, after Louis XV had ceded Acadie to England's queen, a group of Acadians established the first settlement on Prince Edward Island, then the Island of St. John. It is not generally remembered that the Dutch, who in 1673 were at war with Great Britain, stormed and seized several Acadian forts and (1674-5) attempted to confirm their possession of the country which they duly named "New Holland."
Though millions of francs had been spent to fortify Louisbourg, the supposedly unconquerable stronghold succumbed in 1745 to a fifty-day siege by Massachusetts colonists whose resentment had been aroused by French interference with their fishing pursuits. The amazing success of the
THE WELL AND THE WILLOWS, GRAND PRÉ
doughty New Englanders was the first to give them confidence in their power to ultimately free the colonies from British domination.
George III, who held Louisbourg four years, or until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, gave it back to France in exchange for the island of Madras. The fortress and town of Halifax were established in 1749 on Chebucto Bay, the site having been chosen at the instance of the Massachusetts colony following the well-planned but poorly executed attempt of d'Anville's fleet to attack the coast of New England with this harbour as a base.
During the years 1751—3 a company of German immigrants were allotted a free tract of land on the coast below Halifax, where the town of Lunenburg was founded. The same year the seat of British North American government was transferred from Annapolis to Halifax.
In 1755 occurred the final eviction of the French Neutrals, the Acadians who refused to bear arms for their British over-lords but who wished also not to be drawn into the cause of the French soldiery and their Indian allies.
As their enemies across the border of Cape Breton ceaselessly harassed and elsewhere showed themselves hostile, the English resolved upon a conclusive blow. In the year 1758 Louisbourg was re-taken, Wolfe being chief in command. Cape Breton was annexed to Nova Scotia in 1763, the year in which the Canadas were finally ceded by France to Great Britain following the convention at Paris.
L'isle St. Jean was created a separate British province in 1770, and thirty years later was given the name of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent.
The year 1783, in which the boundary between the United States and Canada was fixed, witnessed a historic exodus from the new-born republic. Thousands of colonists whose sympathies were with the Crown came by ship to New Brunswick and laid the corner-stone of the city of St. John. In the following year New Brunswick was divorced from Nova Scotia and made an independent province, and a short time afterward Fredericton became the seat of New Brunswick government. Immigrants from Old and New England continued to arrive in Nova Scotia and permanent settlements were established whose names still abide. From 1776 to 1784 and during the Napoleonic wars Halifax was the centre of considerable naval and military agitation. In 1793 a provincial regiment was enlisted and precautions were taken for the defence of the capital against a sea attack by the French.
In 1794, Prince Edward, son of George IV, arrived in Halifax. In his capacity as commandant of the local garrison, he undertook the reconstruction of the citadel whose foundations underlie the present fort. In 1800 Halifax had a population of 9000. Its inhabitants not infrequently witnessed the arrival of French prizes captured by -privateers which had been fitted out by local merchants. Many French prisoners were quartered in the town, among them the Governor of the Miquelon Islands and army officers of high rank. Alarms of impending invasion, riotous gangs sent through the city to impress crews for waiting sloops-of-war, courts martial for mutiny and desertion, a visit from Aaron Burr, who came under an assumed name, and, above all, rumours of an Anglo-American rupture served during the first twelve years of the new century to allay monotony in Halifax.
The Belvidere, the first British frigate to be engaged in the war, entered the harbour on June 27th, 1812, with three American prizes. Now, more than ever, the port was the scene of thrilling episodes. Prize courts, the movement of troops, the arrival of victory ships, balls at Government House, rejoicings on the common supplied daily diversion. It was into the harbour of Halifax that the Shannon led the wounded Chesapeake, of which Captain Lawrence had been in command. In 1814, following the capture of Washington, the brig Jasper and a transport ship brought numbers of deserting slaves from Virginia estates whose descendants still populate negro colonies on the outskirts of the capital. The provincial expedition against the state of Maine set out from Halifax the same year, and returned there victorious. On March third, 1815, peace between England and America was proclaimed at Halifax, and the affairs of the municipality resumed a normal course, punctuated by such incidents as the arrival of the packet which bore news of the Battle of Waterloo, the completion of the Province Building, the installation of new Governors and garrison commandants and the opening of roads to other towns in the province.
Scotch colonists came in increasing numbers to Prince Edward Island, to Cape Breton and New Brunswick. In the latter province they formed settlements along the Fundy shore which were given names reminiscent of their native land.
The first steamboat to run on the River St. John was the General Smyth which inaugurated a service in 1816 between St. John City and Fredericton. The Saint John was the first steam craft to cross the Bay of Fundy. On its maiden trip, in 1827, it anchored in Digby harbour amid great excitement. The Royal Tar maintained the original service between St. John and Boston, beginning in 1836. The first railway to be operated in the Maritime Provinces (some say on the continent) was a mining road between Albion and Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia. According to the memory of an old inhabitant, the initial trip in 1827 was celebrated by free rides for all, a barbecue, a parade and a ball. It was not until nine years afterward that the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad was laid between Laprairie (opposite Montreal) and St. John's on the Richelieu River, a distance of sixteen miles. The first train was drawn over wooden rails by teams of horses. In 1853, the Grand Trunk Railway, pioneer of the greater Canadian roads, began operations. It was several years later, in 1876, that the Provinces were joined to Lower Canada by the Intercolonial system.
On August 31, 1831, there arrived in Halifax harbour, via Miramichi, the 363-ton steamship Royal William from Quebec. Among the incorporators of the Quebec and Halifax Navigation Company were Henry, Samuel and Joseph Cunard. After making several trips over this route, the steamer left Quebec in August, 1833, coaled at Pictou, Nova Scotia, and set out for Gravesend, England. The little craft arrived about a month later, having performed and being the first vessel to perform the entire trans-Atlantic voyage by steam and without the aid of Boreas.
When Samuel Cunard organised in 1840 the first regular steam passenger service across the Atlantic, Halifax was made the calling port on this side of the ocean.
In 1851 the population of New Brunswick was 194,000, and that of Nova Scotia 277,000.
After twenty-five years of discussion and political bitterness these provinces were united in 1867 with those of Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec) to form the Dominion of Canada. In 1873 Prince Edward Island joined the Confederation.
During the War of the Rebellion Nova Scotian ports were enlivened by the presence of blockade runners, and of traders who profited by the war to found enduring fortunes.
In 1870 a raid from Vermont was attempted against Eastern Canada by filibusters of the Fenian Brotherhood, whose revolutionary organisation had spread from Ireland to America and whose cry, "On to Canada!" had first been answered by a foray against the Niagara frontier in 1866. Many of the invaders had recently been in the ranks of the Union and Confederate forces in the Civil War, and still lusted for strife. The second raid, which threatened the south coast of Nova Scotia, was repelled, as was the first, by native volunteers aided by British regulars.
Railway expansion, industrial development, fisheries disputes, treaties and tariff legislation have constituted the main features of Provincial history during the last four decades.
In 1914 and 1915 Halifax, as the military and naval headquarters of British America, was again the base of war-like activities, and many German prisoners were interned on well-guarded islands of the Bay and Arm.
- ↑ See The Tercentenary History of Canada, by F. B. Tracy.
- ↑ Gastaldi, an Italian map-maker of the 16th century, designated the territory of the Maritime Provinces as Larcadia, others called it Lacadia or L'Acadie. The root of the name is not French, but Micmac, Akade signifying, according to different authorities, "a place where," or "a place of abundance."
- ↑ St. Augustine, Florida, was chosen as the site of a settlement by Menendez in 1565. Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. New York was settled by the Dutch in 1614.