2. The Mystic Saguenay
Pile on pile
The granite masses rise to left and right;
Bald, stately bluffs that never wear a smile....
And we must pass a thousand bluffs like these,
Within whose breasts are locked a myriad mysteries.
SANGSTER.
The Saguenay is first heard of in the narrative of Cartier's second voyage. On his way to Canada, the realm of the Iroquois sachem, Donnacona, he came, early in September 1535, to the mouth of a great river flowing into the St. Lawrence from the west. His native guides told him that this river, whose gloomy majesty was to be the theme of many later travellers, was the main road to the "kingdom of Saguenay." One may well believe that the adventurous captain of St. Malo would gladly have turned his ships between the towering portals of the Saguenay, for the pure joy of discovery, had not a greater project lured him toward the south-west.
While his vessels were anchored off the mouth of the river, his attention was drawn to a curious fish "which no man had ever before seen or heard of." The Indians called them adhothuys, and told him that they were found only in such places as this, where the waters of sea and river mingled. Cartier says they were as large as porpoises, had the head and body of a greyhound, and were as white as snow and without a spot. These white porpoises, as they are now called, are still found at the mouth of the Saguenay. At one time their capture formed an important part of the fisheries of Tadoussac.
There is a romantic tradition that de Roberval sailed up the Saguenay with a company of adventurers, about the year 1549, in search of a kingdom of fabulous riches, and that he and his men perished on the way. It is probable, however, that the expedition had as little foundation as the kingdom it was designed to exploit.
Half a century later the first settlement was made at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay. For many years this had been a meeting-place for the Basque traders and the Indians from the interior, but it was not until the year 1600 that anything in the nature of a permanent post had been established. In that year Pierre de Chauvin, Pont-Gravé, and de Monts, sailed for the St. Lawrence, built a house at Tadoussac, and left sixteen men there for the winter to carry on the fur-trade. The venture was not a success, and the place was abandoned the following year, but Tadoussac remained for many years an important point in the fur-trade. It is said that in 1648 the traffic amounted to 250,000 livres. A church built here by the missionaries a hundred years later is still standing. Tadoussac is chiefly known to-day as one of the favourite watering-places on the Lower St. Lawrence.
It was not until three years after de Chauvin built his trading-post at Tadoussac that the Saguenay was actually explored. Champlain and Pont-Gravé had sailed from Honfleur, in March 1603, on the
Bonne-Renommée, to explore the country and find some more suitable place than Tadoussac for a permanent settlement. After meeting a number of friendly Indians at Tadoussac, Champlain determined to explore the Saguenay, and actually sailed up to the head of navigation, a little above the present town of Chicoutimi. By shrewd questions he learned from the Indians that above the rapids the river was navigable for some distance, that it was again broken by rapids at its outlet from a big lake (Lake St. John), that three rivers fell into this lake, and that beyond these rivers were strange tribes who lived on the borders of the sea. This sea was the great bay, as yet undiscovered, where Henry Hudson was seven years later to win an imperishable name, and die a victim to the treachery of his crew.
In 1608 Champlain again visited Tadoussac, on his way up the St. Lawrence to lay the foundations of Quebec. His companion, Pont-Gravé, had arrived in another vessel a few days before, armed with the King's commission granting him a monopoly of the fur-trade for one year. When he reached Tadoussac he found the enterprising Basques already on the ground, and carrying on a brisk trade with the Indians. They treated the royal letters with contempt, ridiculed Pont-Gravé's monopoly, and, finally boarding his ship, carried off his guns and ammunition. The opportune arrival of Champlain, however, brought them to terms, and they finally agreed to return to their legitimate occupation of catching whales, leaving the fur-trade, for a time at least, to Pont-Gravé and Champlain.
The Indians who chiefly frequented Tadoussac at this time were of the tribe called Montagnais. Their hunting-ground was the country drained by the Saguenay, and they acted as middlemen for the tribes of the far north, bringing their furs down to the French at Tadoussac, and carrying back the prized trinkets of the white man, which they no doubt bartered to their northerly neighbours at an exorbitant profit.
"Indefatigable canoe-men," says Parkman, "in their birchen vessels, light as egg-shells, they threaded the devious tracks of countless rippling streams, shady by-ways of the forest, where the wild duck scarcely finds depth to swim; then descended to their mart along those scenes of picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles, they glided beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,--a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck."
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.