book 2, chapters 2-4 (volume 1).

AMERICA: A. D. 1525. The Voyage of Gomez.

See CANADA (NEW FRANCE): THE NAMES.

AMERICA: A. D. 1526-1531. Voyage of Sebastian Cabot and attempted colonization of La Plata.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1515-1557.

AMERICA: A. D. 1528-1542. The Florida Expeditions of Narvaez and Hernando de Soto. Discovery of the Mississippi.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.

AMERICA: A. D. 1531-1533. Pizarro's Conquest of Peru.

See PERU: A. D. 1528-1531, and 1531-1533.

AMERICA: A. D. 1533. Spanish Conquest of the Kingdom of Quito.

See ECUADOR:

AMERICA: A. D. 1534-1535. Exploration of the St. Lawrence to Montreal by Jacques Cartier.

"At last, ten years after [the voyages of Verrazano], Philip Chabot, Admiral of France, induced the king [Francis I.] to resume the project of founding a French colony in the New World whence the Spaniards daily drew such great wealth; and he presented to him a Captain of St. Malo, by name Jacques Cartier, whose merit he knew, and whom that prince accepted. Cartier having received his instructions, left St. Malo the 2d of April, 1534, with two ships of 60 tons and 122 men. He steered west, inclining slightly north, and had such fair winds that, on the 10th of May, he made Cape Bonavista, in Newfoundland, at 46° north. Cartier found the land there still covered with snow, and the shore fringed with ice, so that he could not or dared not stop; He ran down six degrees south-southeast, and entered a port to which he gave the name of St. Catharine. Thence he turned back north. ... After making almost the circuit of Newfoundland, though without being able to satisfy himself that it was an island, he took a southerly course, crossed the gulf, approached the continent, and entered a very deep bay, where he suffered greatly from heat, whence he called it Chaleurs Bay. He was charmed with the beauty of the country, and well pleased with the Indians that he met and with whom he exchanged some goods for furs. ... On leaving this bay, Cartier visited a good part of the coasts around the gulf, and took possession of the country in the name of the most Christian king, as Verazani had done in all the places where he landed. {66} He set sail again on the 15th of August to return to France, and reached St. Malo safely on the 5th of September. ... On the report which he made of his voyage, the court concluded that it would be useful to France to have a settlement in that part of America; but no one took this affair more to heart than the Vice-Admiral Charles de Mony, Sieur de la Mailleraye. This noble obtained a new commission for Cartier, more ample than the first, and gave him three ships well equipped. This fleet was ready about the middle of May, and Cartier ... embarked on Wednesday the 19th." His three vessels were separated by violent storms, but found one another, near the close of July, in the gulf which was their appointed place of rendezvous. "On the 1st of August bad weather drove him to take refuge in the port of St. Nicholas, at the mouth of the river on the north. Here Cartier planted a cross, with the arms of France, and remained until the 7th. This port is almost the only spot in Canada that has kept the name given by Cartier. ... On the 10th the three vessels re-entered the gulf, and in honor of the saint whose feast is celebrated on that day, Cartier gave the gulf the name of St. Lawrence; or rather he gave it to a bay lying between Anticosti Island and the north shore, whence it extended to the whole gulf of which this bay is part; and because the river, before that called River of Canada, empties into the same gulf, it insensibly acquired the name of St. Lawrence, which it still bears. ... The three vessels ... ascended the river, and on the 1st of September they entered the river Saguenay. Cartier merely reconnoitered the mouth of this river, and ... hastened to seek a port where his vessels might winter in safety. Eight leagues above Isle aux Coudres he found another much larger and handsomer island, all covered with trees and vines. He called it Bacchus Island, but the name has been changed to Isle d'Orleans. The author of the relation to this voyage, printed under the name of Cartier, pretends that only here the country begins to be called Canada. But he is surely mistaken; for it is certain that from the earliest times the Indians gave this name to the whole country along the river on both sides, from its mouth to the Saguenay. From Bacchus Island, Cartier proceeded to a little river which is ten leagues off, and comes from the north; he called it Rivière de Ste Croix, because he entered it on the 14th of September (Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross); but it is now commonly called Rivière de Jacques Cartier. The day after his arrival he received a visit from an Indian chief named Donnacona, whom the author of the relation of that voyage styles Lord of Canada. Cartier treated with this chief by means of two Indians whom he had taken to France the year before, and who knew a little French. They informed Donnacona that the strangers wished to go to Hochelaga, which seemed to trouble him. Hochelaga was a pretty large town, situated on an island now known under the name of Island of Montreal. Cartier had heard much of it, and was loth to return to France without seeing it. The reason why this voyage troubled Donnacona was that the people of Hochelaga were of a different nation from his, and that he wished to profit exclusively by the advantages which he hoped to derive from the stay of the French in his country." Proceeding with one vessel to Lake St. Pierre, and thence in two boats, Cartier reached Hochelaga Oct. 2. "The shape of the town was round, and three rows of palisades inclosed in it about 50 tunnel shaped cabins, each over 50 paces long and 14 or 15 wide. It was entered by a single gate, above which, as well as along the first palisade, ran a kind of gallery, reached by ladders, and well provided with pieces of rock and pebbles for the defence of the place. The inhabitants of the town spoke the Huron language. They received the French very well. ... Cartier visited the mountain at the foot of which the town lay, and gave it the name of Mont Royal, which has become that of the whole Island [Montreal]. From it he discovered a great extent of country, the sight of which charmed him. ... He left Hochelaga on the 5th of October, and on the 11th arrived at Sainte Croix." Wintering at this place, where his crews suffered terribly from the cold and from scurvy, he returned to France the following spring. "Some authors ... pretend that Cartier, disgusted with Canada, dissuaded the king, his master, from further thoughts of it; and Champlain seems to have been of that opinion. But this does not agree with what Cartier himself says in his memoirs. ... Cartier in vain extolled the country which he had discovered. His small returns, and the wretched condition to which his men had been reduced by cold and scurvy, persuaded most that it would never be of any use to France. Great stress was laid on the fact that he nowhere saw any appearance of mines; and then, even more than now, a strange land which produced neither gold nor silver was reckoned as nothing."

_Father Charlevoix, History of New France (translated by J. G. Shea), book 1._

ALSO IN: _R. Kerr, General Collection of Voyages,