the name of Aaron's Rock. Aaron founded a
settlement. To the same place came, about twenty years later, a bishop
of Castle Gwent, with a small band of followers. The leader of this
flock was known as St Malo, and he gave his name to the seaport.

But the religious character of the first settlement soon passed away.
St Malo became famous as the headquarters of the corsairs of the
northern coast. These had succeeded the Vikings of an earlier day, and
they showed a hardihood and a reckless daring equal to that of their
predecessors. Later on, in more settled times, the place fell into the
hands of the fishermen and traders of northern France. When hardy
sailors pushed out into the Atlantic ocean to reach the distant shores
of America, St Malo became a natural port and place of outfit for the
passage of the western sea.

Jacques Cartier first saw the light in the year 1491. The family has
been traced back to a grandfather who lived in the middle of the
fifteenth century. This Jean Cartier, or Quartier, who was born in St
Malo in 1428, took to wife in 1457 Guillemette Baudoin. Of the four
sons that she bore him, Jamet, the eldest, married Geseline Jansart,
and of their five children the second one, Jacques, rose to greatness
as the discoverer of Canada. There is little to chronicle that is worth
while of the later descendants of the original stock. Jacques Cartier
himself was married in 1519 to Marie Katherine des Granches. Her father
was the Chevalier Honore des Granches, high constable of St Malo. In
all probability he stood a few degrees higher in the social scale of
the period than such plain seafaring folk as the Cartier family. From
this, biographers have sought to prove that, early in life, young
Jacques Cartier must have made himself a notable person among his
townsmen. But the plain truth is that we know nothing of the
circumstances that preceded the marriage, and have only the record of
15199 on the civil register of St Malo: 'The nuptial benediction was
received by Jacques Cartier, master-pilot of the port of Saincte-Malo,
son of Jamet Cartier and of Geseline Jansart, and Marie Katherine des
Granches, daughter of Messire Honore des Granches, chevalier of our
lord the king, and constable of the town and city of Saint-Malo.'

Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no direct
descendants. But the branches of the family descended from the original
Jean Cartier appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Bria