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Read Ebook: Good Councell against the plague Shewing sundry present preseruatiues for the same by wholsome fumes drinks vomits and other inward receits: as also the perfect cure (by implaysture) of any that are therewith infected. Now necessary to be obserued of euer by Learned Phisition
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Ebook has 58 lines and 13023 words, and 2 pages
The French had little to do with Canada for the rest of the sixteenth century. Jacques Carrier's best successor as a hydrographer was Roberval's pilot, Saint-Onge, whose log of the voyage up the St Lawrence in 1542 is full of information. He more than half believes in what the Indians tell him about unicorns and other strange beasts in the far interior. And he thinks it likely that there is unbroken land as far as Tartary. But, making due allowance for his means of observation, the claim with which he ends his log holds good regarding pilotage: 'All things said above are true.'
The English then, as afterwards, were always encroaching on the French wherever a seaway gave them an opening. In 1578 they were reported to be lording it off Newfoundland, though they had only fifty vessels there, as against thirty Basque, fifty Portuguese, a hundred Spanish, and a hundred and fifty French. Their numbers and influence increased year by year, till, in 1600, they had two hundred sail manned by eight thousand men. They were still more preponderant farther north and farther south. Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and other Englishmen left their mark on what are now Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada. Hudson also sailed up the river that bears his name, and thus did his share towards founding the English colonies that soon began their ceaseless struggle with New France. But even before his time, which was just after Champlain had founded Quebec, two great maritime events had encouraged the English to aim at that command of the sea which they finally maintained against all rivals. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake sailed completely round the world. He was the first sea captain who had ever done so, for Magellan had died in mid-career fifty-seven years before. This notable feat was accompanied by his successful capture of many Spanish treasure ships. Explorer, warrior, enricher of the realm, he at once became a national hero. Queen Elizabeth, a patriot ruler who always loved a hero for his service to the state, knighted Drake on board his flagship; and a poet sang his praises in these few, fit words, which well deserve quotation wherever the sea-borne English tongue is known:
The Stars of Heaven would thee proclaim, If men here silent were. The Sun himself could not forget His fellow traveller.
Nine years later the English Navy fought the unwieldy Spanish Armada into bewildered flight and chased it to its death round the hostile coast-line of the British Isles.
Meanwhile the quickened interest in 'sea affairs' had led to many improvements in building, rigging, and handling vessels. Surprising as it may seem, most of these improvements were made by foreigners. Still more surprising is the fact that British nautical improvements of all kinds, naval as well as mercantile, generally came from abroad during the whole time that the British command of the sea was being won or held. Belated imitation of the more scientific foreigner was by no means new, even in the Elizabethan age. It had become a national habit by the time the next two centuries were over. English men, not English vessels, won the wars. The Portuguese and Spaniards had larger and better vessels than the English at the beginning of the struggle, just as the French had till after Trafalgar, and the Americans throughout the War of 1812. Even Sir Walter Raleigh was belated in speaking of the 'new' practice of striking topmasts, 'a wonderful ease to great ships, both at sea and in the harbour.'
SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE FLEURS-DE-LIS
But the French designs in shipbuilding were generally better than the English. The French, then and afterwards, were more scientific, the English more rule-of-thumb. Yet when it came to actual handling under sail, especially in action, the positions were reversed. The English seafaring class was far larger in proportion to population and it had far more practice at sea. Besides, England had more and more at stake as her oversea trade and empire extended, till at last she had no choice, as an imperial power, but either to win or die.
French Canada had all the natural advantages which were afterwards turned to such good account by the British. It had timber and population along a magnificently navigable river system that tapped every available trade route of the land. Had there only been a demand for ships New France might have also enjoyed the advantage of employing the scientific French naval architects. But the seafaring habit did not exist among the people as a whole. A typical illustration is to be found in the different views the French and British colonists took of whaling. The British on Nantucket Island first learned from the Indians, next hired a teacher, in the person of Ichabod Paddock, a famous whaling master from Cape Cod, and then themselves went after whale with wonderful success. The French in Canada, like the British on Nantucket Island, had both whales and whaling experts at their very doors. The Basques kept a station at Tadoussac, and whales were seen at Quebec. But, instead of hiring Basques to teach them, the French in Canada petitioned the king for a subsidy with which to hire the Basques to do the whaling for them. Of course the difference between the two forms of government counts for a good deal--and it is not at all likely that any paternal French ruler, on eit
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