"'On A Report Of This Visit, The Council Of The Literary And Historical
Society Assembled On Monday Last, And Resolved On Laying Open The
Debris, Leaving It To Mr. Faribault, The Vice-President, To Make,
With Mr. Hamel, The Necessary Arrangements For The Execution.
The members
of the Council having no funds at their disposal, that they can legally
apply to this purpose, have so far carried it on at their own expense.
"'Some valuable evidences of the ancient existence of this vessel have
been gathered. We shall speak of them in giving an account of the
exhumation in progress, under the direction of Messrs. Faribault and
Hamel. All those who can throw any light on the subject, either of their
own knowledge or by what they may have learnt by tradition, are earnestly
solicited to impart the same at the Office of Le Canadien.'
"Those gentlemen ought not to be allowed to carry on this work at their
sole expense. The country, the world, are interested in it. This continent
in 1535, from end to end one vast wilderness, the imagination can scarcely
figure to itself a more awful solitude than that in which, during the
winter of 1535-6 Cartier and his faithful followers, amidst savages in an
unknown country, during a Canadian winter, at a thousand leagues from
their native land, were buried in the dreary swamp (for it then must have
been little better) of Sainte Croix now the beautiful valley of the
St. Charles, covered with cheerful cottages and a redundant population.
Look to-day from the Citadel of Stadacone in all directions north,
south, east, west, than which under heaven, there is not a more splendid
panorama, and think of what it was when Cartier and his comrades first
looked upon it.
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