than Newfoundland, and when he comes on a second voyage he is lost--some
say hanged as a pirate by the Spaniards for intruding on their seas.

In spite of the loss of the King's sea rover, the fisher folk of France
continue coming in their crazy little schooners, continue fishing in the
fogs of the Grand Banks from their rocking black-planked dories, continue
scudding for shelter from storm . . . here, there, everywhere; into the
south shore of Newfoundland; into the long arms of the sea at Cape
Breton, dyed at sundawn and sunset by such floods of golden light, these
arms of the sea become known as Bras d'Or Lakes--Lakes of Gold; into the
rock-girt lagoons of Gaspe; into the holes in the wall of Labrador . . .;
till there presently springs up a secret trade in furs between the
fishing fleet and the Indians.  The King of France is not to be balked by
one failure.  "What," he asked, "are my royal brothers to have _all_
America?"  Among the Bank fishermen were many sailors of St. Malo.
Jacques Cartier, master pilot, {8} now forty years of age, must have
learned strange yarns of the New World from harbor folk.  Indeed, he may
have served as sailor on the Banks.  Him the King chose, with one hundred
and twenty men and two vessels, in 1534, to go on a voyage of discovery
to the great sea where men fished.  Cartier was to find if the sea led to
China and to take possession of the countries for France.  Captain,
masters, men, march to the cathedral and swear fidelity to the King.  The
vessels sail on April 20, with the fishing fleet.

[Illustration: Jacques Cartier]

Piping winds carry them forward at a clipper pace.  The sails scatter and
disappear over the watery sky line.  In twenty days Cartier is off that
bold headland with the hole in the wall called Bona Vista.  Ice is
running as it always runs there in spring.  What with wind and ice,
Cartier deems it prudent to look for shelter.  Sheering south among the
scarps at Catalina, where the whales blow and the seals float in
thousands {9} on the ice pans, Cartier anchors to take on wood and water.
For ten days he watches the white whirl driving south.  Then the water
clears and his sails swing to the wind, and he is off to the north, along
that steel-gray shore of rampart rock, between the white-slab islands and
the reefy coast.  Birds are in such flocks off Funk Island that the men
go ashore to hunt, as the fisher folk anchor for bird shooting to-day.

Higher rises the rocky sky line; barer the shore wall, with never a break
to the eye till you turn some jagged peak and come on one of those snug
coves where the white fisher hamlets now nestle.  Reefs white as lace
fret line the coast.  Lonely as death, bare as a block of marble, Gull
Island is passed where another crew in later years perish as castaways.
Gray finback whales flounder in schools.  The lazy humpbacks lounge round
and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously.  A polar bear is seen on
an ice pan.  Then the ships come to those lonely harbors north of
Newfoundland--Griguet and Quirpon and Ha-Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless,
always windy, desolate, with an eternal moaning of the tide over the
fretful reefs.

[Illustration: WHERE THE FISHER HAMLETS NOW NESTLE, NEWFOUNDLAND]

{10} To the north, off a little seaward, is Belle Isle.  Here, storm or
calm, the ocean tide beats with fury unceasing and weird reechoing of
baffled waters like the scream of lost souls.  It was sunset when I was
on a coastal ship once that anchored off Belle Isle, and I realized how
natural it must have been for Cartier's superstitious sailors to mistake
the moan of the sea for wild cries of distress, and the smoke of the
spray for fires of the inferno.  To French sailors Belle Isle became Isle
of Demons.  In the half light of fog or night, as the wave wash rises and
falls, you can almost see white arms clutching the rock.

As usual, bad weather caught the ships in Belle Isle Straits.  Till the
9th of June brown fog held Cartier.  When it lifted the tide had borne
his ships across the straits to Labrador at Castle Island, Chateau Bay.
Labrador was a ruder region than Newfoundland.  Far as eye could scan
were only domed rocks like petrified billows, dank valleys moss-grown and
scrubby, hillsides bare as slate; "This land should not be called earth,"
remarked Cartier.  "It is flint!  Faith, I think this is the region God
gave Cain!"  If this were Cain's realm, his descendants were "men of
might"; for when the Montaignais, tall and straight as mast poles, came
down to the straits, Cartier's little scrub sailors thought them giants.
Promptly Cartier planted the cross and took possession of Labrador for
France.  As the boats coasted westward the shore rock turned to
sand,--huge banks and drifts and hillocks of white sand,--so that the
place where the ships struck across for the south shore became known as
Blanc Sablon (White Sand).  Squalls drove Cartier up the Bay of Islands
on the west shore of Newfoundland, and he was amazed to find this arm of
the sea cut the big island almost in two.  Wooded mountains flanked each
shore.  A great river, amber with forest mold, came rolling down a deep
gorge.  But it was not Newfoundland Cartier had come to explore; it was
the great inland sea to the west, and to the west he sailed.

July found him off another kind of coast--New Brunswick--forested and
rolling with fertile meadows.  Down a broad shallow stream--the
Miramichi--paddled Indians waving furs {11} for trade; but wind
threatened a stranding in the shallows.  Cartier turned to follow the
coast north.  Denser grew the forests, broader the girths of the great
oaks, heavier the vines, hotter the midsummer weather.  This was no land
of Cain.  It was a new realm for France.  While Cartier lay at anchor
north of the Miramichi, Indian canoes swarmed round the boats at such
close quarters the whites had to discharge a musket to keep the three
hundred savages from scrambling on decks.  Two seamen then landed to
leave presents of knives and coats.  The Indians shrieked delight, and,
following back to the ships, threw fur garments to the decks till
literally naked.  On the 18th of July the heat was so intense that
Cartier named the waters Bay of Chaleur.  Here were more Indians.  At
first the women dashed to hiding in the woods, while the painted warriors
paddled out; but when Cartier threw more presents into the canoes, women