and children swarmed out singing a welcome.  The Bay of Chaleur promised
no passage west, so Cartier again spread his sails to the wind and
coasted northward.  The forests thinned.  Towards Gaspe the shore became
rocky and fantastic.  The inland sea led westward, but the season was far
advanced.  It was decided to return and report to the King.  Landing at
Gaspe on July 24, Cartier erected a cross thirty feet high with the words
emblazoned on a tablet, _Vive le Roi de France_.  Standing about him were
the painted natives of the wilderness, one old chief dressed in black
bearskin gesticulating protest against the cross till Cartier explained
by signs that the whites would come again.  Two savages were invited on
board.  By accident or design, as they stepped on deck, their skiff was
upset and set adrift.  The astonished natives found themselves in the
white men's power, but food and gay clothing allayed fear.  They
willingly consented to accompany Cartier to France.  Somewhere north of
Gaspe the smoke of the French fishing fleet was seen ascending from the
sea, as the fishermen rocked in their dories cooking the midday meal.

August 9 prayers are held for safe return at Blanc Sablon,--port of the
white, white sand,--and by September 5 Cartier is {12} home in St. Malo,
a rabble of grizzled sailor folk chattering a welcome from the wharf
front.

He had not found passage to China, but he had found a kingdom; and the
two Indians told marvelous tales of the Great River to the West, where
they lived, of mines, of vast unclaimed lands.


Cartier had been home only a month when the Admiral of France ordered him
to prepare for another voyage.  He himself was to command the _Grand
Hermine_, Captain Jalobert the _Little Hermine_, and Captain Le Breton
the _Emerillon_.  Young gentlemen adventurers were to accompany the
explorers.  The ships were provisioned for two years; and on May 16,
1535, all hands gathered to the cathedral, where sins were confessed, the
archbishop's blessing received, and Cartier given a Godspeed to the music
of full choirs chanting invocation.  Three days later anchors were
hoisted.  Cannon boomed.  Sails swung out; and the vessels sheered away
from the roadstead while cheers rent the air.

Head winds held the ship back.  Furious tempests scattered the fleet.  It
was July 17 before Cartier sighted the gull islands of Newfoundland and
swung up north with the tide through the brown fogs of Belle Isle Straits
to the shining gravel of Blanc Sablon.  Here he waited for the other
vessels, which came on the 26th.

The two Indians taken from Gaspe now began to recognize the headlands of
their native country, telling Cartier the first kingdom along the Great
River was Saguenay, the second Canada, the third Hochelaga.  Near Mingan,
Cartier anchored to claim the land for France; and he named the great
waters St. Lawrence because it was on that saint's day he had gone
ashore.  The north side of Anticosti was passed, and the first of
September saw the three little ships drawn up within the shadow of that
somber gorge cut through sheer rock where the Saguenay rolls sullenly out
to the St. Lawrence.  The mountains presented naked rock wall.  Beyond,
rolling back . . . rolling back to an impenetrable wilderness . . . were
the primeval {13} forests.  Through the canyon flowed the river, dark and
ominous and hushed.  The men rowed out in small boats to fish but were
afraid to land.

As the ships advanced up the St. Lawrence the seamen could scarcely
believe they were on a river.  The current rolled seaward in a silver
flood.  In canoes paddling shyly out from the north shore Cartier's two
Indians suddenly recognized old friends, and whoops of delight set the
echoes ringing.

Keeping close to the north coast, russet in the September sun, Cartier
slipped up that long reach of shallows abreast a low-shored wooded island
so laden with grapevines he called it Isle Bacchus.  It was the Island of
Orleans.

Then the ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high
rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of
Montmorency leaping from precipice to river bed with roar of thunder.

Cartier had anchored near the west end of Orleans Island when there came
paddling out with twelve canoes, Donnacona, great chief of Stadacona,
whose friendship was won on the instant by the tales Cartier's Indians
told of France and all the marvels of the white man's world.

Cartier embarked with several young officers to go back with the chief;
and the three vessels were cautiously piloted up little St. Charles
River, which joins the St. Lawrence below the modern city of Quebec.
Women dashed to their knees in water to welcome ashore these gayly
dressed newcomers with the gold-braided coats and clanking swords.
Crossing the low swamp, now Lower Town, Quebec, the adventurers followed
a path through the forest up a steep declivity of sliding stones to the
clear high table-land above, and on up the rolling slopes to the airy
heights of Cape Diamond overlooking the St. Lawrence like the turret of
some castle above the sea.  Did a French soldier, removing his helmet to
wipe away the sweat of his arduous climb, cry out "Que bec" (What a
peak!) as he viewed the magnificent panorama of river and valley and
mountain rolling from his feet; or did their Indian guide point to the
water of the river narrowing like {14} a strait below the peak, and
mutter in native tongue, "Quebec" (The strait)?  Legend gives both
explanations of the name.  To the east Cartier could see far down the
silver flood of the St. Lawrence halfway to Saguenay; to the south, far
as the dim mountains of modern New Hampshire.  What would the King of
France have thought if he could have realized that his adventurers had
found a province three times the size of England, one third larger than
France, one third larger than Germany?  And they had as yet reached only
one small edge of Canada, namely Quebec.