Père Marquette/Chapter 1

When those mystery-laden words, Terra Incognita and Terra Inhabitabile disappeared from the maps of the world, geography lost its charm and traveling its most audacious inspiration. There are ancient globes in the library of the Vatican which show us in every dim line what chances of discovery lay in wait for the hardy voyager of the Middle Ages. Fleets of tiny ships sail over uncharted seas. Boreas blows gales from his swollen cheeks. Lions and elephants stroll through vast tracts of land, indicating by their presence the absence of more civilized inhabitants. A sense of spaciousness and wonder pervades these representations of what is to-day a familiar and congested earth. Small wonder that the adventurous boy who ​gazed at them six hundred years ago was consumed by the same spirit which now sends scientists to the jungle and aviators to the Pole.

And the maps, the wonderful, entrancing maps, free of crisscross railways, and huddled towns, and everything that blinds and confuses the unhappy school child of to-day. The Hereford map, sacredly guarded in Hereford Cathedral, dates from 1280. It was deemed of surpassing value, and was faithfully copied for two hundred years. It puts Jerusalem in the centre of the world, the place of honor; with the Terrestrial Paradise, beautifully battlemented, on a circular island near India, and the Tower of Babel midway between the two. Paris appears as bold as brass and just where it belongs; but there is no London in the smashed little England which does not afford room for a town. A vast Ethiopia gives breathing space and a chance for surmise; and a representation of the Last Judgment surmounts the whole. All the old maps show the Terrestrial Paradise; but its whereabouts was left to the fancy of the scholar artist. A crude map of the Ninth Century (one of the treasures of the Strassburg ​library) places it east of India, and an early Icelandic map fits it snugly into Ceylon.

Nearly two hundred years before the Hereford map was outlined, Roger of Sicily, the redoubtable "Great Count"—warrior, ruler, and something of a scholar as well—caused a map of the world to be engraved on a disk of silver which weighed four hundred pounds. Here were plainly marked the countries, inhabited or uninhabited, of the known earth; coast lines and table lands, seas, gulfs, and rivers. The Roman roads, or what was left of them, were measured by miles; and the distance by water from port to port was adroitly guessed at. It is to be forever regretted that this triumph of Eleventh Century scholarship should have been made of silver. A baser metal might have survived to this day; but Sicily was fought over for a thousand years, and the great disk was stolen by invaders, or melted down to pay for arms and soldiers.

When the Old World had ceased to be a mystery, the New World was discovered. When the old waterways had grown familiar, Columbus crossed the Atlantic, Vasco da Gama ​doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and Balboa discovered the Pacific. Here, indeed, were fresh fields of adventure. Here were seas for hardy navigators, lands of promise for intrepid exiles, freedom and space for the rover, wealth for the covetous, and souls to be saved for the missionary. How can we conceive the wonder which thrilled Europe when all these possibilities dawned upon its vision? How can we conceive the experience of sighting a new continent or a new ocean—the suffocating rapture of that moment, the trembling awe? Keats, being a poet, was able to feel in fancy these strange emotions, and to convey them, in some sort, to our souls:

Henry James confessed that, as a little boy, he was both mystified and thrilled by the phrase "east" or "west" of Greenwich. Why was Greenwich of such supreme importance that the rest of the world lay east or west of it? he asked himself again and again, having the distaste of an intelligent child for seeking information from ​adults. "The vague wonder that the childish mind felt on this point gave the place a mysterious importance, and seemed to put it into relation with the difficult and fascinating parts of geography,—the countries of unintentional outline, and the lonely-looking places on the atlas."

The fact that Charles the Second built the Greenwich Observatory, at the instigation of Sir Jonas Moore and Sir Christopher Wren, gives the lie to Rochester's oft-repeated witticism, and proves that his "sovereign lord" could and did do the wisest of wise things when he was so minded.

The early American maps have few "lonely looking places," because the untrammeled fancy of the cartographer filled them with pleasing and appropriate devices. In the Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Mr. Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard University, there are maps which would have stirred the heart of little Henry James, or of any other imaginative child. Wherever there is space to spare, we find Indians firing arrows, or bears strolling ominously. Fishes of terrifying aspect ​swim the seas. They are huge enough to swallow at a gulp the little ships with curly sails like the ships in illuminated manuscripts. On every side is a suggestion of the peril that was the daily portion of the exile. If there were freedom for all, it was paid for with audacity and endurance. Everybody had a chance to live dangerously and to die valorously. A great many people availed themselves of both privileges.

The vast scale on which nature had built this strange New World was overwhelming and terrifying to the pioneers. They came from the neighborly towns of Europe to boundless stretches of wilderness and black savage mountains. They exchanged the lovely little rivers which carried no hint of danger for fierce wide waters running they knew not whither, impeding progress, and threatening destruction. The French settlers in Canada learned the meaning of a word they had used lightly all their lives—cold. They found out how easily they could die of it in the frozen woods, and how short a time it took the ever-falling snow to bury them out of sight. And ever and always there was the menace of hostile Indians; tribe after tribe engaged in ​ceaseless warfare with one another, but predisposed to turn their arms against the invader. The red men taught the white men the full significance of another word, till then but dimly apprehended—cruelty. It was not a gentle age in which these wanderers lived. Terrible things were done in Europe under sanction of the law. But the Hurons and the Iroquois showed the reckless strangers precisely how much pain a human body could be made to bear before death signed its release. They illustrated this favorite theme with the help of Indian captives, compelling the attention of the French. They were prepared to extend the practice when time and opportunity served.

To all such dangers and privations the adventurers opposed a dauntless courage and a steady purpose. The great fur-trading corporation known as the Company of the Hundred Associates established itself firmly in Quebec, and controlled all New France—or as much of it, at least, as was controllable. Land was granted on terms so easy that the poorest farmer could buy. The woods were full of animals, and the trappers earned much money by their hard and ​perilous work. It has always been the boast of Canada that a man who could not make a living for himself and his family in that country was not worth keeping alive. This was as true in the Seventeenth Century as it is true in the Twentieth. But then, as now, men were needed for the purpose. It was no place for weaklings. And because the settlers were men, hardy, vigorous, fearless, abstemious, and ambitious men, they found interests that far exceeded profitable farming and trapping. French engineers, searching for copper, penetrated deeper and deeper into the wilderness. French priests, eager for converts, followed them step by step. And French explorers, fired by rumors of undiscovered lakes and rivers, of lands more fertile than the frost-bitten fields of Canada, of tribes richer and more civilized than the cruel savages who surrounded them, made journeys of astonishing length with pitifully meager outfits. The white man, like the red man, was expected to fend for himself in the wilds. He set forth, untroubled because undismayed; confident in his own prowess and in fate. The lure of the unknown drew him on.