Sieur Diereville
I came across information about Diereville’s voyage from La Rochelle France to Port Royal, and I was intrigue by it. Before I give you exerts from him journal or notes, here is a bit about him
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Before 1699 Dièreville seems to have studied surgery at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, if we are to believe a passage in his account, and before 1701 he published some poems in the Mercure galant. But the principal event in his life was his journey to Acadia. On 20 Aug. 1699 he left La Rochelle on board the Royalle Paix, in the capacity of supercargo, that is, of an agent appointed by the ship owner and responsible for watching over the cargo. He reached Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) in Acadia on 13 October, after a voyage of 54 days. He spent a year in the country in search of information about the region and the French and Amerindian populations; he also gathered plants. On 6 Oct. 1700 he sailed for Europe, and reached La Rochelle on 9 November. On 21 December of the following year he became a surgeon at the hospice of Pont-l’Évêque, a post which he was still occupying on 10 April 1711.
Apart from that, nothing is known of him. Only his account and the plants he gathered in Acadia contribute to his fame. He brought back specimens of Chelone acadiensis (today Chelone glabra), which were types used by Tournefort when he described the species in 1706, and also the Diervilla acadiensis (today Diervilla Lonicera), a species of a genus which Tournefort dedicated to him. In his description Tournefort pays tribute to Dièreville as follows: “I know only one species of this genus, which M. Dierville, a surgeon of Pont-l’Évêque and very knowledgeable on the subject of plants, has brought from Acadia.”
The account bears the title of Relation du voyage du Port Royal de l’Acadie, ou de la Nouvelle France, and was published at Rouen in 1708. The author describes in detail the life aboard ship, not forgetting the cabin boy who was whipped to calm the wind and the loss overboard of part of the cargo. He shows a particular interest in fauna, and recounts his hunting and fishing trips, the fine drifting snow (which he calls foudrille) of the Canadian winter, the methods of making spruce beer and maple sugar; he describes the country of the aboiteaux (dikes), the customs of the Indians (and particularly their way of reviving drowned people by enemas of tobacco smoke), and the cooking of the Amerindians, the Acadians, and the seafarers. Culinary memories stimulate this gourmet, and the space that he allots to them makes of his account the first important work in the gastronomical literature of Canada. The first thing I want to mention was that on his vessel it was mandatory for the sailors or seamen to baptize anyone who was on the ship not baptized. They placed a tub of water in the center of the deck. Three or four sailors took the one to be baptized by the arms and legs and dipped his butt in the water over and over again. They would mischievously leave him with his legs in the air and while he was trying to get away, other sailors would throw six or seven pails of water on him ending the ceremony and bursting out laughing. Next on to Port Royal.
“Docked at Port Royal our destination where it took us 54 days to arrive. Port Royal might have ½ leagues in length and just as much in width. The homes situated there are but made of hemp ,clay and straw with a clay chimney. I asked for the whereabouts of the church which I didn’t recognize and not built any different than the other houses. I would have taken it for another barn instead of the house of God. While I was there I giving thanks to God for the grace he had given me and arriving safe, I noticed the priest coming towards me. He led me to church where he blessed me with holy water. Then he showed me his home with different variety of apples. He later led me to where I was to stay for my duration. The house was the largest one, it had three rooms downstairs, an attic and a cellar. I saw two rivers the Dauphin which as large as the Seine River, with homes on both sides far apart from one another. There are nice fields and meadows. At the top of Port Royal there are also homes and some apple orchards. These homes go nearly as far as Goat Island and a distance from Port Royal. At the top of the island, the river forms a basin that goes out to sea. The other river called Moulin is much narrower, and has three mills along it one for corn, and two lumber mills. There are three or four houses.
Thinking I was in a nice and peaceful weather related climate, and thinking I would not have to deal with the harsh winds that I encountered on the ocean, the worse happened, the winds were never so strong in Port Royal as it was on this particular day according to the village elders. It blew so hard that it broke the cable holding our ship’s anchor and a canoe attached to the ship which was filled with merchandize to deliver the next day, capsized because of the strong winds. The climate is similar to France, about the same degree, the summer is plenty hot but winters are colder. It snows nearly every day in the season, and the winds are so cold, they freeze one’s face, we don’t dare go out in these times (the villagers called it soudrilles ) when the snow and gusty winds occur at the same time. If the snow melted like in France it would not be so cold, but the snow lasts 7 to 8 months on the ground ,especially in the woods and that is what makes the air bitterly cold. The Acadians have large families one neighbour had 18 kids the other 22. In nearly every family there are 5 or 6 kids sometimes more. The Acadians love their pork, they eat it twice a day and they enjoy partridge and rabbits. Their rivers contains smelts, plie (kind of fish) ,gasparot sturgeon eel, sardines ,trout, salmon and other fish.. The Acadians store a lot of their food in their cellar, for example their apples are stored there to eat during the winter months. They pick blackberries ,raspberries, strawberries and serve them with a clear sugar. (maple syrup). This is all for this time. I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog, the above were translated from French to English to the best of my ability so you can have a idea about our ancestors so long ago. Now I would like to share some of my products with you , you can find these ,Acadian products and much more at http://www.zazzle.com/allicor*
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