to the lowlands of the eastern United States.
As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or smoked provisions—forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival had been greeted, the Amerindians—notably the two interpreters who had been to France and returned—showed at intervals signs of disquiet and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112 who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men, including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death. This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass.
Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter, Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called ameda.[9] Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin. The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were well and strong.
Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement, and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and other precious stones.
Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their great king, who would return him to his country with great presents. As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St. Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in 1541.
When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three, landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or "saults"—interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence—which he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration, returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal. Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships, abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately. The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter of 1542–3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences, putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that disease.[10]
However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to France.
Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and