River City Read Free Page B

ahead. Indians at Stadacona had foretold this place, and the French mariner Jacques Cartier knew that he was soon to be confronted by the limit of his exploration for the summer. Cold weather approached, and the Indians had impressed upon him that the island lay surrounded by treacherous rapids. Only the exceptionally brave or the ardently reckless need persevere beyond this threshold, and none by ship.
    Masts creaked, sails flogged as the wind shifted, waves gently lapped at the prow. Overhead, geese by the tens of thousands flew in V-formations from one horizon to the next, wave upon wave across the sky, their bellies lit bright orange by the setting sun, their manic honking incessant.
    South with Verrazano, Cartier had already proven his mettle, and this was his second exploration with his own command to the north latitudes, to most minds an act of foolhardiness. Both stubborn and astute, he believed that the challenges that faced him here and beyond this island would be greatly superseded by the riches they sheltered.
    The trick would be to survive.
    Jacques Cartier readily followed his instincts, but he was no fool. A year earlier, he had sailed the coast of an impressive island on a broad, magnificent sea bound by imposing coastlines and an abundance of birdlife and fish. Combining his wits and experience with stories gleaned from Indians, he’d deduced that the current indicated a great river flowing to the sea. Winter stood guard against him, and with the season the wild, frigid winds of the north Atlantic. Having returned to France without exploring what lay ahead, he had spoken of his belief with sufficient zeal—and produced two Indians to corroborate his opinions—that his second voyage was financed and its scale increased. His calculation proved shrewd, for on this next journey he sailed into the inland waterway, which he declined to name. (An anomaly of which his crew took notice. Cartier named an insignificant bay for St. Lawrence, anchoring there on that saint’s day, but the mightiest river known to him, the only river upon which he’d sailed a vessel intended for the sea, went unnamed. Most of his men, but not all those aboard, remained puzzled by this.) After a brief sojourn at the native village of Stadacona, he left two ships there and approached, more than a hundred nautical miles south, the place the Iroquois called Hochelaga. In the shank of the evening, with a distant silhouette of the mountain behind which the sun had set, the Émérillon dropped anchor to weigh the adventures of morning.
    Ducks descended from the sky like a darkening rain and fell upon the broad bays and out from the river’s shore.
    Cartier stood upon the deck while his men struck sail. In the distance, elevated on a squat mountain, he observed tiny specks. Fires within the Iroquois fortifications. Evidence of habitation in this vast domain bewildered and excited him, and he listened to the robust silence of a continent awakening to his presence.
    “Jacques.” Only the king’s man presumed to speak to him without proper formality.
    “Gastineau,” acknowledged the captain. Neither did he return the appropriate recognition, failing to use the king’s man’s Christian name or to address him as monsieur. If the courtier considered him a boor for being a mariner, he would allow the opinion to stand, and behave, whenever he felt the need, boorishly.
    The two men stood side by side in the vast twilight while seamen worked aloft and along the deck. They were not the sole inhabitants of their planet, but in this realm it was easy to imagine that they persevered among the scant few.
    “Come sunrise, Jacques, what are your expectations? What do you hope to find here? In this … Hochelaga. The way you speak the name … the reverence in your voice. This place is important to you.”
    Cartier considered a response. How could he explain the magic in the word? Or dare reveal that Indian stories describing the Land of the Saguenay,