Contrast His Landing On The Flinty Rock At The Base Of
Cape Diamond, The 14th September, 1535, And Reception By A Few Gaping
Savages, With That Of The Present Governor-General, Sir Charles Metcalfe;
Amidst Acclaiming Thousands, On The 25th (Aug.
1843) - the manner of
passing a winter at Stadacone in 1535-6 and at the same place in 1842-3.
What changes have the three centuries wrought!
What recollections have
they left! And what changes will not the next three hundred years bring
about? More wonderful probably than those we admire to-day. But come what
may of that which men sometimes call great and glorious, nothing can
obliterate or eclipse the honors justly due to the memory of the
celebrated navigator and his comrades, who first "coasting the said island
(now Orleans) found at the end of it an expanse of water very beautiful
and pleasant, and a little bar harbour," ('hable,' as he calls it,) and
wintered there at about half a league northward of and under the highland
of Stadacone."
"During the dismal winter Jacques Cartier must have passed in his new
quarters at Ste. Croix, he lost, by sickness contracted, it is said,
from the natives, but more probably from scurvy, twenty-five of his
men. This obliged him to abandon one of his three vessels (La Petite
Hermine it is believed) which he left in her winter quarters, returning
with the two others to France. The locale of the debris or remains,
not only corresponds with the description given by Jacques Cartier of Ste.
Croix, but also with the attention and particular care that might be
expected from a skilful commander, in the selection of a safe spot in an
unknown region where never an European had been before him, for wintering
his vessels. They lie in the bottom of a small creek or gulley, known as
the ruisseau St. Michel, into which the tides regularly flow, on the
property of Charles Smith, Esq., on the north side of the St. Charles and
at about half a mile following the bends of the river above the site of
the old Dorchester Bridge. - They are a little up the creek at about an
acre from its mouth, and their position (where a sudden or short turn of
the creek renders it next to impossible that she should be forced out of
it by any rush of water in the spring or efforts of the ice,) evinces at
once the precaution and the judgment of the commander in his choice of the
spot. But small portions of her remaining timber (oak) are visible through
the mud, but they are bitumanised and black as ebony, and after reposing
in that spot 307 years, seem, as far as by chopping them with axes or
spades, and probing by iron rods or picks, can be ascertained, sound as
the day they were brought thither. The merit of the discovery belongs to
our fellow townsman, Mr. Joseph Hamel, the City Surveyor."
Quebec, 28th August, 1843.
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