in North America.³¹

³¹ See above, note 23.

At the end of the fifteenth century, the consolidation of France had been completed by the marriage of Charles VIII with Anne of Brittany, and from this time France began to compete with Spain. Francis I came to the throne in 1515, and his personal rivalry with Charles V, German Emperor and Spanish King in one, quickened the competition between the French and Spanish peoples. Thus it was that the French court turned its attention to the work of exploration, and Francis sent forth the Italian Verrazano with four ships from Dieppe 'to discover new lands by the ocean.'³² Sailing at the end of 1523, Verrazano was driven back by tempest; but, starting again, he left Madeira to cross the Atlantic on January 17, 1524. He reached the shores of Carolina; then coasted northward, landing at various points; and, having sailed as far north as Newfoundland—'the land that in times past was discovered by the Britons (Bretons), which is in fifty degrees'—he 'concluded to return into France.'

³² From 'The relation of John Verarzanus,' given in Hakluyt's Divers Voyages, p. 55, and there also headed 'The Discovery of Morum Bega' (Norumbega). It is given too in the ordinary collection, vol. iii, p. 357.

He brought home to his King a sober and systematic report of the North American coast—a report which meant business, and was not tricked out with vague surmises and impossible tales; but, within a year from his return, the strength of France was for a while broken at the battle of Pavia. He himself died soon afterwards, hanged, it is said, by the Spaniards as a pirate; and for ten years there is no record of any French explorer following in his steps, though French ships found their way over the ocean to the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland.

The year 1534 is a memorable one in the annals alike of France and of North America. It is the year from which must be dated the first beginnings of New France on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The discoverer of Canada was Jacques Cartier, a Breton sailor of St. Malo. He went out to explore the unknown world, not at his own risk, but as the agent of Brian Chabot, High Admiral of France. Sailing from St. Malo, on April 20, 1534, he came to Newfoundland, passed through the straits of Belle Isle, and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He sailed into Chaleurs Bay under the July sun, describing the country as 'hotter than the country of Spain, and the fairest that can possibly be found';³³ and, having set up a cross on Gaspé Peninsula, he reached St. Malo again on September 5, bringing with him two Indian children as living memorials of his voyage.

³³ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 257.

He had discovered a hot, fair land, widely different from the bleak and rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the good report which he brought of his discoveries was more than enough to find him backing for a second venture. Accordingly, in the following year, on May 19, 1535, he sailed again from St. Malo, and, reaching the straits of Belle Isle after storm and tempest, took his way, the first of European explorers, up the great river of Canada. He moored his three ships below the rock of Quebec—then the site of Stadaconé, a native Indian village, and the dwelling-place of a chief Donnaconna, who is styled in the narrative the Lord of Canada. There he left his two larger vessels, and pushed on in his pinnace and boats to the town of Hochelaga. That town, the Indians had told him, was the capital of the land; and he found it, palisaded and fortified in native fashion, where Montreal now stands.³⁴ The Frenchmen were received as gods by the Indians; they were asked, like the Apostles of old, to touch and heal the sick; and, ever mindful of the duty of spreading the Christian religion, they read the gospel to their savage admirers in the strange French tongue, to cure their souls if they could not mend their bodies.

³⁴ As Mr. Parkman points out (Pioneers of France, p. 212), Quebec and Montreal were in old days, as now, the centres of population in Lower Canada. 'Stadaconé and Hochelaga, Quebec and Montreal, in the sixteenth century, as in the nineteenth, were the centres of Canadian population.'

Returning down stream to their ships, they passed the winter underneath Quebec, amid ice and snow, stricken with scurvy, and distrustful of their Indian neighbours; and at length, on the return of summer, they set sail for France, carrying away the Indian chief Donnaconna and some of his companions, to die in a far-off land. They reached St. Malo in the middle of July, 1536, and so ended Cartier's second voyage to 'the New found lands by him named New France.'³⁵

³⁵ End of the narrative of Cartier's second voyage in Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 285.

Between four and five years passed, and then the Breton sailor set out again. This time a definite scheme of settlement was projected, the instructions were more elaborate than before, the preparations were on a larger scale. The money was found by the crown, and the King was to receive one-third of the profits. A French nobleman, De Roberval, was to go out as the King's lieutenant in the New World, and was given the title of Lord of Norumbega,³⁶ while Cartier was appointed Captain-General. The objects of the expedition were to explore, to colonize, and to convert the heathen; and its leaders were, like Columbus, empowered to recruit colonists from the prisons at home. Cartier set out in advance of Roberval, in May, 1541. Again he sailed up the St. Lawrence, reached in his boats a point above Montreal, and, as before, wintered on the river; but this time at the mouth of the Cap Rouge, some way higher up than Quebec. His leader, Roberval, did not start till April, 1542; and, when in June he reached St. John's harbour in Newfoundland, he was met by Cartier, who had broken up his colony in disgust, and was on his way home to France. In spite of Roberval's remonstrances, Cartier left by night on his return voyage, and the Lord of Norumbega went on alone to the St. Lawrence. He planted his settlement at Cap Rouge, where Cartier had last sojourned, but it proved a miserable failure. The supplies were insufficient, the Governor turned out a savage despot, and after about a year the colony came to an end.

³⁶ As to Norumbega, see Parkman's Pioneers of France, pp. 216 and 253, notes, and Justin Winsor, vol. iii, chap. vi, on 'Norumbega and its English explorers.' The writer of this latter chapter (p. 185) says the territory of Norumbega never included Baccalaos, 'though Baccalaos, an old name of