adly in exchange for
the knives and iron tools given them by the sailors. Cartier presented
them also with 'a red hat to give unto their captain.' The Indians
seemed delighted with the exchange. They danced about on the shore,
went through strange ceremonies in pantomime and threw seawater over
their heads. 'They gave us,' wrote Cartier, 'whatsoever they had, not
keeping anything, so that they were constrained to go back again naked,
and made us signs that the next day they would come again and bring
more skins with them.'

Four more days Cartier lingered in the bay. Again he sent boats from
the ships in the hope of finding the westward passage, but to his great
disappointment and grief the search was fruitless. The waters were
evidently landlocked, and there was here, as he sadly chronicled, no
thoroughfare to the westward sea. He met natives in large numbers.
Hundreds of them--men, women, and children--came in their canoes to see
the French explorers. They brought cooked meat, laid it on little
pieces of wood, and, retreating a short distance, invited the French to
eat. Their manner was as of those offering food to the gods who have
descended from above. The women among them, coming fearlessly up to the
explorers, stroked them with their hands, and then lifted these hands
clasped to the sky, with every sign of joy and exultation. The Indians,
as Cartier saw them, seemed to have no settled home, but to wander to
and fro in their canoes, taking fish and game as they went. Their land
appeared to him the fairest that could be seen, level as a pond; in
every opening of the forest he saw wild grains and berries, roses and
fragrant herbs. It was, indeed, a land of promise that lay basking in
the sunshine of a Canadian summer. The warmth led Cartier to give to
the bay the name it still bears--Chaleur.

On July 12 the ships went north again. Their progress was slow.
Boisterous gales drove in great seas from the outer Gulf. At times the
wind, blowing hard from the north, checked their advance and they had,
as best they could, to ride out the storm. The sky was lowering and
overcast, and thick mist and fog frequently enwrapped the ships. The
16th saw them driven by stress of weather into Gaspe Bay, where they
lay until the 25th, with so dark a sky and so violent a storm raging
over the Gulf that not even the daring seamen of St Malo thought it
wise to venture out.

Here again they saw savages in great numbers, but belonging,