Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/450

 Grande Chartreuse, but they returned in 1816; they were again driven out under the Association Laws of 1901, and the community of the Grande Chartreuse is now settled in an old Certosa near Lucca. Of late years the community at the Grande Chartreuse had consisted of some 40 choir-monks and 20 lay brothers. Before the recent expulsions from France there were in all some 20 Charterhouses.

There have been since the middle of the 13th century a very few convents of Carthusian nuns, not more than ten; in recent times there have been but two or three, one situated a few miles from the Grande Chartreuse. The rule resembles that of the monks, but the isolation, solitude and silence are much less stringent. The habit of the Carthusians, both monks and nuns, is white.

A word may be added as to the famous liqueur, known as Chartreuse, made by the monks. At the Revolution the property of the Carthusians was confiscated, and on their restoration they recovered only the barren desert in which the monastery stood, and for it they had to pay rent. Thus they were for some years in want even of the needful means of subsistence. Then the liqueur was invented as a means of supplying the wants of the community; it became a great commercial success and produces a large yearly income. This income the monks have not spent on themselves, nor does it accumulate. The first charge is the maintenance of the Grande Chartreuse and the other Charterhouses, and out of it have been built and established the new monasteries of the order, as at Düsseldorf, Parkminster and elsewhere; but by far the largest portion has been spent on religious and charitable purposes in France and all over the world,—churches, schools, hospitals, almshouses, foreign missions. One thing is certain: the profits made no difference at all to the secluded and austere life of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse.

 CARTIER, SIR GEORGES ÉTIENNE, Bart. (1814–1873), Canadian statesman, was born in the province of Quebec on the 6th of September 1814. Called to the bar in 1835, he soon gained a large practice. He took part in the rebellion of 1837, and was forced for a time to fly the country. In 1848 he was elected to the Canadian parliament. His youthful ebullition of 1837 was soon repented of, and he became a loyal subject of the British crown. So greatly had he changed that in 1854 he became a leading member of the reconstructed Liberal-Conservative party. In 1855 he was appointed provincial secretary, and in 1857 attorney-general for Lower Canada. From 1858 to 1862 he and Sir John Macdonald were joint prime ministers of Canada, and their alliance lasted till the death of Cartier. He took the chief part in promoting many useful measures, such as the abolition of seigneurial tenure in Lower Canada (see ), and the codification of the civil law of that province (1857–1864). Above all he favoured the construction of railways, and to his energy and fearless, optimism are largely due the eventual success of the Grand Trunk railway, and the resolve to construct the Canadian Pacific. In the face of great opposition, he carried his native province into federation (1864–1867), which would have been impossible without his aid. In the first cabinet of Sir John Macdonald he sat as minister of militia and defence, and carried in 1868 an important act establishing the land forces of Canada on a sound basis. Though a devout Catholic, he became involved in a political quarrel with his church, and was defeated by clerical influence at the general election of 1872. Another seat was found for him, but his health failed and he died on the 20th of May 1873.

 CARTIER, JACQUES (1491–1557), French navigator, discoverer of the Canadian river St Lawrence, was born at St Malo in Brittany. Of his early life nothing is known. On the suppression by Admiral Chabot of the trade to Brazil, an expedition consisting of two ships and sixty-one men was despatched from St Malo under Cartier on the 20th of April 1534, to look for a north-west passage to the East. Cartier reached Newfoundland on the 10th of May, and at once entered the strait of Belle Isle, then known to the fishermen as the bay of Castles. While the ships renewed their supply of wood and water in Belles Amours harbour on the north side of the strait, the long-boats discovered that the coast farther west was barren, rocky and uninviting. In view of this Cartier set sail on Monday, the 15th of June, for the south side of the strait, by following which he was led down almost the whole west coast of Newfoundland. Off St George’s Bay a storm drove the ships out into the gulf, but on resuming his course Cartier fell in with the Bird Rocks. The island south of these he named Brion Island, after Chabot. Cartier mistook our Magdalen and Prince Edward Islands for the main shore on the south side of this inland sea. Following the coast of New Brunswick northward he was greatly disappointed to discover Chaleur Bay was not a strait. During a ten days’ stay in Gaspé Harbour Cartier made friends with a tribe of Huron-Iroquois Indians from Quebec, two of whom he carried off with him. A mirage deceived him into thinking the passage up the river south of Anticosti was a bay, whereupon he proceeded to coast the southern, eastern and northern shores of Anticosti. On discovering the passage between this island and the Quebec shore a council was held, at which it was decided to postpone the exploration of this strait until the following year. Heading eastward along the Quebec shore, Cartier soon regained the Strait of Belle Isle and, entering the Atlantic on the 15th of August, reached St Malo in safety on the 5th of September.

Cartier set sail again from St Malo with three vessels on the 16th of May 1536, and passing through the strait of Belle Isle anchored on the 9th of August in Pillage Bay, opposite Anticosti. The next day he named this the bay of St Lawrence. In course of time the name spread to the gulf and finally to the river. Proceeding through the passage north of Anticosti, Cartier anchored on the 1st of September at the mouth of the Saguenay, which the two Indians who had passed the winter in France informed him was the name of a kingdom “rich and wealthy in precious stones.” Again on reaching the island of Orleans, so named after the third son of Francis I., they told Cartier he was now in the kingdom of Canada, in reality the Huron-Iroquois word for village. Leaving his two larger vessels in the St Charles, which there enters the St Lawrence, Cartier set off westward with the bark and the long-boats. The former grounded in Lake St Peter, but in the latter he reached, on the 2nd of October, the Huron-Iroquois village of Hochelaga on the site of the city of Montreal. Further progress was checked by the Lachine Rapid. From the top of Mount Royal, a name still in use, Cartier beheld the St Lawrence and the Ottawa stretching away to the west. On his return to the St Charles, where during the winter twenty-five men died of scurvy, Cartier sought further information about the rich country called Saguenay, which he was informed could be reached more easily by way of the Ottawa. In order to give Francis I. authentic information of this northern Mexico, Cartier seized the chief and eleven of the headmen of the village and carried them off to France. This time he passed south of Anticosti and, entering the Atlantic through Cabot Strait, reached St Malo on the 16th of July 1537.

Francis I. was unable to do anything further until the spring of 1541, when Cartier set sail with five vessels and took up