it, he and his presents--the red
caps and the brass bowls sent direct from heaven--would be lost to them
for ever.

Be this as it may, no further opposition was offered to the departure
of the French. The two larger ships, with a part of the company as
guard, were left at their moorings. Cartier in the Emerillon, with Mace
Jalobert, Claude de Pont Briand, and the other gentlemen of the
expedition, a company of fifty in all, set out for Hochelaga.

CHAPTER VI

THE SECOND VOYAGE--HOCHELAGA

Nine days of prosperous sailing carried Cartier in his pinnace from
Stadacona to the broad expansion of the St Lawrence, afterwards named
Lake St Peter. The autumn scene as the little vessel ascended the
stream was one of extreme beauty. The banks of the river were covered
with glorious forests resplendent now with the red and gold of the
turning leaves. Grape-vines grew thickly on every hand, laden with
their clustered fruit. The shore and forest abounded with animal life.
The woods were loud with the chirruping of thrushes, goldfinches,
canaries, and other birds. Countless flocks of wild geese and ducks
passed overhead, while from the marshes of the back waters great cranes
rose in their heavy flight over the bright surface of the river that
reflected the cloudless blue of the autumn sky.

Cartier was enraptured with the land which he had discovered,--'as
goodly a country,' he wrote, 'as possibly can with eye be seen, and all
replenished with very goodly trees.' Here and there the wigwams of the
savages dotted the openings of the forest. Often the inhabitants put
off from shore in canoes, bringing fish and food, and accepting, with
every sign of friendship, the little presents which Cartier distributed
among them. At one place an Indian chief--'one of the chief lords of
the country,' says Cartier--brought two of his children as a gift to
the miraculous strangers. One of the children, a little girl of eight,
was kept upon the ship and went on with Cartier to Hochelaga and back
to Stadacona, where her parents came to see her later on. The other
child Cartier refused to keep because 'it was too young, for it was but
two or three years old.'

At the head of Lake St Peter, Cartier, ignorant of the channels, found
his progress in the pinnace barred by the sand bars and shallows among
the group of islands which here break the flow of the great river. The
Indians whom he met told him by signs that Hochelaga lay still farther
up-s