cross at Gaspé, and, never doubting that he was on the high road to Cathay, advanced up the St. Lawrence till he saw the shores of Anticosti. But autumnal storms were gathering. The voyagers took counsel together, turned their prows eastward, and bore away for France, carrying thither, as a sample of the natural products of the New World, two young Indians, lured into their clutches by an act of villanous treachery. The voyage was a mere reconnaissance.

The spirit of discovery was awakened. A passage to India could be found, and a new France built up beyond the Atlantic. Mingled with such views of interest and ambition was another motive scarcely less potent. The heresy of Luther was convulsing Germany, and the deeper heresy of Calvin infecting France. Devout Catholics, kindling with redoubled zeal, would fain requite the Church for her losses in the Old World by winning to her fold the infidels of the New. But, in pursuing an end at once so pious and so politic, Francis the First was setting at naught the supreme Pontiff himself, since, by the preposterous bull of Alexander the Sixth, all America had been given to the Spaniards.

In October, 1534, Cartier received from Chabot1 another commission, and, in spite of secret but bitter opposition from jealous traders of St. Malo, he prepared for a second voyage. Three vessels, the largest not above a hundred and twenty tons, were placed at his disposal, and Claude de Pontbriand, Charles de la Pommeraye, and other gentlemen of birth, enrolled themselves for the adventure. On the sixteenth of May, 1535, officers and sailors assembled in the cathedral of St. Malo, where, after confession and mass, they received the parting blessing of the bishop. Three days later they set sail. The dingy walls of the rude old seaport, and the white

1 The Admiral of France. — ED.

rocks that line the neighboring shores of Brittany, faded from their sight, and soon they were tossing in a furious. tempest. The scattered ships escaped the danger, and, reuniting at the Straits of Belle Isle, steered westward along the coast of Labrador, till they reached a small bay opposite the island of Anticosti. Cartier called it the Bay of St. Lawrence, a name afterwards extended to the entire gulf, and to the great river above.1

To ascend this great river, and tempt the hazards of its

1 Cartier calls the St. Lawrence the "River of Hochelaga," or "the great river of Canada." He confines the name of Canada to a district extending from the Isle aux Coudres in the St. Lawrence to a point at some distance above the site of Quebec. The country below, he adds, was called by the Indians Saguenay, and that above, Hochelaga. In the map of Gérard Mercator (1569) the name Canada is given to a town, with an adjacent district, on the river Stadin (St. Charles). Lescarbot, a later writer, insists that the country on both sides of the St. Lawrence, from Hochelaga to its mouth, bore the name of Canada.

In the second map of Ortelius, published about the year 1572, New France, Nova Francia, is thus divided:- Canada, a district on the St. Lawrence above the River Saguenay; Chilaga (Hochelaga), the angle between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence; Saguenai, a district below the river of that name; Moscosa, south of the St. Lawrence and east of the River Richelieu; Avacal, west and south of Moscosa; Norumbega, Maine and New Brunswick; Apalachen, Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc.; Terra Corterealis, Labrador; Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida.

Mercator confines the name of New France to districts bordering on the St. Lawrence. Others give it a much broader application. The use of this name, or the nearly allied names of Francisca and La Franciscane, dates back, to say the least, as far as 1525, and the Dutch geographers are especially free in their use of it, out of spite to the Spaniards.

The derivation of the name of Canada has been a point of discussion. It is, without doubt, not Spanish, but Indian. In the vocabulary of the language of Hochelaga, appended to the journal of Cartier's second voyage, Canada is set down as the word for a town or village. "Ils appellent une ville, Canada." It bears the same meaning in the Mohawk tongue. Both languages are dialects of the Iroquois. Lescarbot affirms that Canada is simply an Indian proper name, of which it is vain to seek a meaning. Belleforest also calls it an Indian word, but translates it "Terre," as does also Thevet.

intricate navigation with no better pilots than the two young Indians kidnapped the year before, was a venture of no light risk. But skill or fortune prevailed; and, on the first of September, the voyagers reached in safety the gorge of the gloomy Saguenay, with its towering cliffs and sullen depth of waters. Passing the Isle aux Coudres, and the lofty promontory of Cape Tourmente, they came to anchor in a quiet channel between the northern shore and the margin of a richly wooded island, where the trees were so thickly hung with grapes that Cartier named it the Island of Bacchus.

Indians came swarming from the shores, paddled their canoes about the ships, and clambered to the decks to gaze in bewilderment at the novel scene, and listen to the story of their travelled countrymen, marvellous in their ears as a visit to another planet. Cartier received them kindly, listened to the long harangue of the great chief Donnacona, regaled him with bread and wine; and, when relieved at length of his guests, set forth in a boat to explore the river above.

As he drew near the opening of the channel, the Hochelaga again spread before him the broad expanse of its waters. A mighty promontory, rugged and bare, thrust its scarped front into the surging current. Here, clothed in the majesty of solitude, breathing the stern poetry of the wilderness, rose the cliffs now rich with heroic memories, where the fiery Count Frontenac cast defiance at his foes, where Wolfe, Montcalm, and Montgomery fell. As yet, all was a nameless barbarism, and a cluster of wigwams held the site of the rock-built city of Quebec. Its name was Stadaconé, and it owned the sway of the royal Donnacona.

Cartier set out to visit this greasy potentate, ascended the river St. Charles, by him called the St. Croix, landed,