rcely fly because of their small wings and their
exceeding fatness. The modern enquirer will recognize, perhaps, the
great auk which once abounded on the coast, but which is now extinct.
The sailors killed large numbers of the birds, and filled two boats
with them. Then the ships sailed on rejoicing from the Island of Birds
with six barrels full of salted provisions added to their stores.
Cartier's Island of Birds is the Funk Island of our present maps.

The ships now headed west and north to come into touch with land again.
To the great surprise of the company they presently met a huge polar
bear swimming in the open sea, and evidently heading for the tempting
shores of the Island of Birds. The bear was 'as great as any cow and as
white as a swan.' The sailors lowered boats in pursuit, and captured
'by main force' the bear, which supplied a noble supper for the
captors. 'Its flesh,' wrote Cartier, 'was as good to eat as any heifer
of two years.'

The explorers sailed on westward, changing their course gradually to
the north to follow the broad curve of the Atlantic coast of
Newfoundland. Jutting headlands and outlying capes must have
alternately appeared and disappeared on the western horizon. May 24,
found the navigators off the entrance of Belle Isle. After four hundred
years of maritime progress, the passage of the narrow strait that
separates Newfoundland from Labrador remains still rough and dangerous,
even for the great steel ships of to-day. We can imagine how forbidding
it must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the decks of
their small storm-tossed caravels. Heavy gales from the west came
roaring through the strait. Great quantities of floating ice ground to
and fro under the wind and current. So stormy was the outlook that for
the time being the passage seemed impossible. But Cartier was not to be
baulked in his design. He cast anchor at the eastern mouth of the
strait, in what is now the little harbour of Kirpon (Carpunt), and
there day after day, stormbound by the inclement weather, he waited
until June 9. Then at last he was able to depart, hoping, as he wrote,
'with the help of God to sail farther.'

Having passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, Cartier crossed over to
the northern coast. Two days of prosperous sailing with fair winds
carried him far along the shore to a distance of more than a hundred
miles west of the entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle. Whether he
actually touched on