Montreal 1535-1914: Under the French Régime 1535-1760 and Under British Rule 1760-1914 (Complete)
9781465666499
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The story of Montreal, as far as authentic historical documents are concerned, begins with Saturday, October 2, 1535. On that day, the Indian natives of Hochelaga had been quickly apprised that two strange large vessels containing many palefaced wanderers, wonderfully attired and speaking an unknown tongue, had come up the river, and were now lying off its sloping margin. The people immediately prepare quickly to receive them with a hospitality of which we shall hear. The women busy themselves in preparing their presents while the men hurriedly run down the hill slope to the water's edge, to be soon also followed by the women and children. There they found a good gathering of swarthy and bronzed men of the sea, mariners from St. Malo, to the number of twenty-eight, simple men, but adored by the natives as superior beings. All hail to them! Would that of the seventy-four names we have preserved to us, of those who sailed from St. Malo, we had those of them who were privileged to come up to Hochelaga, as we must yet call it. Besides the sailors, there are, however, six whose dress and bearing mark them out as men of some distinction, as indeed they are; for one is Claude du Pont Briand, cup bearer to My Lord the Dauphin; the second and third, gentlemen adventurers of some rank, Charles de la Pommeraye and Jehan Gouion; the fourth and fifth are the bronzed and rugged captains of the small fleet lying down the river at Lake St. Peter, Guillaume le Breton, captain of the Emerillon, and Marc Jalobert, captain of the Petite Hermine, brother-in-law of the sixth. This last, a firm set man of forty-five years, and of commanding appearance, is none other than Jacques Cartier, captain of the Grande Hermine, pilot and captain general of the fleet, and he has come with a royal commission explore new seas and lands for his sovereign maste Francis I of France, whose flags proudly wave from the prows of either vessel now tossing in the Hochelagan waters. Jacques Cartier claims notice, for he is at once the discoverer and the first historian of Montreal. He is a mariner, of a dignified profession, and was born in 1491, though De Costa and others say, in 1494, at the seaport of St. Malo in Brittany, the fertile cradle of many hardy daring corsairs and adventurers on the waters. Early the young son of Jamet Cartier and Geseline Jansart seems to have turned his thoughts to a seafaring life as he met the bronzed mariners arriving at the wharves of St. Malo, and telling strange stories of their perils and triumphs. On the 2d of May, 1519, being now a master pilot, he married Catherine des Granches, the daughter of the high constable of the city.
