FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION, 1867   . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  436
  From the painting by Hariss.




CANADA

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH


CHAPTER I

FROM 1000 TO 1600

Early voyages to America--Voyages of the Cabots--The French fisher
folk--Cartier's first voyage--Cartier's second voyage--Cartier's third
voyage--Marguerite Roberval


Who first found Canada?  As many legends surround the beginnings of
empire in the North as cling to the story of early Rome.

When Leif, son of Earl Eric, the Red, came down from Greenland with his
Viking crew, which of his bearded seamen in Arctic furs leaned over the
dragon prow for sight of the lone new land, fresh as if washed by the
dews of earth's first morning?  Was it Thorwald, Leif's brother, or the
mother of Snorri, first white child born in America, who caught first
glimpse through the flying spray of Labrador's domed hills,--"Helluland,
place of slaty rocks"; and of Nova Scotia's wooded meadows,--"Markland";
and Rhode Island's broken vine-clad shore,--"Vinland"?  The question
cannot be answered.  All is as misty concerning that Viking voyage as the
legends of old Norse gods.

Leif, the Lucky, son of Earl Eric, the outlaw, coasts back to Greenland
with his bold sea-rovers.  This was in the year 1000.

For ten years they came riding southward in their rude-planked ships of
the dragon prow, those Norse adventurers; and Thorwald, Leif's brother,
is first of the pathfinders in America to lose his life in battle with
the "Skraelings" or Indians.  Thornstein, another brother, sails south in
1005 with Gudrid, his wife; but a roaring nor'easter tears the piping {2}
sails to tatters, and Thornstein dies as his frail craft scuds before the
blast.  Back comes Gudrid the very next year, with a new husband and a
new ship and two hundred colonists to found a kingdom in the "Land of the
Vine."  At one place they come to rocky islands, where birds flock in
such myriads it is impossible to land without trampling nests.  Were
these the rocky islands famous for birds in the St. Lawrence?  On another
coast are fields of maize and forests entangled with grapevines.  Was
this part of modern New England?  On Vinland--wherever it was--Gudrid,
the Norse woman, disembarks her colonists.  All goes well for three
years.  Fish and fowl are in plenty.  Cattle roam knee-deep in pasturage.
Indians trade furs for scarlet cloth and the Norsemen dole out their
barter in strips narrow as a little finger; but all beasts that roam the
wilds are free game to Indian hunters.  The cattle begin to disappear,
the Indians to lurk armed along the paths to the water springs.  The
woods are full of danger.  Any bush may conceal painted foe.  Men as well
as cattle lie dead with telltale arrow sticking from a wound.  The
Norsemen begin to hate these shadowy, lonely, mournful forests.  They
long for wild winds and trackless seas and open world.  Fur-clad, what do
they care for the cold?  Greenland with its rolling drifts is safer
hunting than this forest world.  What glory, doomed prisoners between the
woods and the sea within the shadow of the great forests and a great
fear?  The smell of wildwood things, of flower banks, of fern mold, came
dank and unwholesome to these men.  Their {3} nostrils were for the whiff
of the sea; and every sunset tipped the waves with fire where they longed
to sail.  And the shadow of the fear fell on Gudrid.  Ordering the
vessels loaded with timber good for masts and with wealth of furs, she
gathered up her people and led them from the "Land of the Vine" back to
Greenland.

[Illustration: VIKING SHIP RECENTLY DISCOVERED.]

Where was Vinland?  Was it Canada?  The answer is unknown.  It was south
of Labrador.  It is thought to have been Rhode Island; but certainly,
passing north and south, the Norse were the first white men to see Canada.


Did some legend, dim as a forgotten dream, come down to Columbus in 1492
of the Norsemen's western land?  All sailors of Europe yearly fished in
Iceland.  Had one of Columbus's crew heard sailor yarns of the new land?
If so, Columbus must have thought the new land part of Asia; for ever
since Marco Polo had come from China, Europe had dreamed of a way to Asia
by the sea.  What with Portugal and Spain dividing the New World, all the
nations of Europe suddenly awakened to a passion for discovery.

[Illustration: DIVISION OF THE NEW WORLD BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.]

There were still lands to the north, which Portugal and Spain had not
found,--lands where pearls and gold might abound.  At Bristol in England
dwelt with his sons John Cabot, the Genoese master mariner, well
acquainted with Eastern-trade.  Henry VII commissions him on a voyage of
discovery--an empty honor, the King to have one fifth of all profit,
Cabot to bear all expense.  The _Matthew_ ships from Bristol with a crew
of eighteen in May of 1497.  North and west sails the tumbling craft two
thousand miles.  Colder grows the air, stiffer the breeze in the bellying
sails, till the _Matthew's_ crew are shivering on decks amid fleets of
icebergs that drift from Greenland in May and June.  This is no realm of
spices and gold.  Land looms through the mist the last week in June, {4}
rocky, surf-beaten, lonely as earth's ends, with never a sound but the