Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
PRE- AND EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE
arrived there on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The place is now called
the St. Charles River and at present the Recollect fathers and the Jesuit fathers
are stationed there to found a seminary for the instruction of youth. From there
Cartier went up the river some sixty leagues, as far as a place which was called
Ochelaga in his time and is now called Grand Sault St. Louis. It was inhabited
by savages who were sedentary and cultivated the soil. This they no longer do,
because of the wars that have made them withdraw into the interior. When Cartier,
according to his account, perceived the diculty of passing up the rapids and that
it was impossible, he returned where his vessels were; and the weather and the
season were so urgent that he was obliged to winter on the St. Croix River, in the
place where the Jesuits live now, on the border of another little river which empties
into the St. Croix, called the Jacques Cartier River, as his narratives testify.
Cartier was made so unhappy in this voyage, particularly by the ravages of
scurvy, of which the larger part of his men died, that when spring came he returned
to France, saddened and disturbed enough at this loss and at the little progress
that he thought he had made. He came to the conclusion, as a result of his winter’s
experience with the scurvy, which he called the disease of the country, that the
climate was so dierent from our own that we could not live in it without great
diculty.
So when he had made his report to the King and to the Sieur Admiral and De
Mailleres, who did not go deeply into the matter, the enterprise bore no fruit. But
if Cartier could have understood the cause of his sickness, and the benecial and
certain remedy for its prevention, although he and his men did receive some relief
from an herb called aneda? just as we did when we were
in the same plight, there is no doubt that the King from that time would not
have neglected to forward the plan, as he had already done: for at that time the
country was more peopled with sedentary tribes than now. It was this last fact that
led His Majesty to have this second voyage made and the undertaking carried on,
for he had a holy desire to send colonists there. This was what came of it.
This aair might well have been undertaken by some others than Cartier,
who would not have been so soon daunted and would not, on that account, have
abandoned an enterprise so well begun. For, to tell the truth, those who are the
leaders of explorations are oftentimes those who can put an end to the execution
of a praiseworthy project, if people stop to consider their reports. For, if they are
believed, it is thought that the enterprise is impossible or so involved in diculties
that it cannot be brought to completion without almost unendurable outlay and
trouble. This is the reason why this enterprise did not achieve success. Besides,
there are sometimes aairs of so much importance in a state as to cause others to
be neglected for awhile; or it may be that those who would gladly have gone on with
them, die, and so the years pass with nothing done.
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