Malo if he
could have seen that commercial capital of the north lying beneath the
mountain which still bears the name he gave it, and stretching far beyond
the bounds of the palisaded Hochelaga. It should please France to know
that nearly two hundred thousand French keep the place of the footprint of
the first pioneer, Jacques Cartier. When a few weeks before my coming to
France I was making my way by a trail down the side of Mount Royal through
the trees--some of which may have been there in Cartier's day--two lads,
one of as beautiful face as I have ever seen, though tear-stained, emerged
from the bushes and begged me, in a language which Jacques Cartier would
have understood better than I, to show them the way back to "rue St.
Maurice," which I did, finding that street to be only a few paces from the
place where Champlain had made a clearing for his "Place Royale" in the
midst of the forest three hundred years ago. That beautiful boy, Jacques
Jardin, brown-eyed, bare-kneed, in French soldier's cap, is to me the
living incarnation of the adventure which has made even that chill
wilderness blossom as a garden in Brittany.
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