ies and blocks upon blocks of massive stores and warehouses,
on the ocean steamers on their way to Europe by that very river which
Cartier would not ascend with the _Emerillon_; as we look on this
beauteous and inspiriting scene, we may well understand how it is that
Canada has placed on Montreal the royal crown which Cartier first gave
to the mountain he saw on a glorious October day when the foliage was
wearing the golden and crimson tints of a Canadian autumn.

On Cartier's return to Stadacona he found that his officers had become
suspicious of the intentions of the Indians and had raised a rude fort
near the junction of the river of St. Croix and the little stream {42}
called the Lairet. Here the French passed a long and dreary winter,
doubtful of the friendship of the Indians, and suffering from the
intense cold to which they were unaccustomed. They were attacked by
that dreadful disease, the scurvy, which caused the death of several
men, and did not cease its ravages until they learned from an Indian to
use a drink evidently made from spruce boughs. Then the French
recovered with great rapidity, and when the spring arrived they made
their preparations to return to France. They abandoned the little
_Hermine_, as the crew had been so weakened by sickness and death.
They captured Donnacona and several other chiefs and determined to take
them to France "to relate to the king the wonders of the world
Donnacona [evidently a great story-teller] had seen in these western
countries, for he had assured us that he had been in the Saguenay
kingdom, where are infinite gold, rubies, and other riches, and white
men dressed in woollen clothing." In the vicinity of the fort, at the
meeting of the St. Croix and Lairet, Cartier raised a cross,
thirty-five feet in height under the cross-bar of which there was a
wooden shield, showing the arms of France and the inscription

FRANCISCUS PRIMUS DEI GRATIA FRANCORUM REX REGNAT.

When three centuries and a half had passed, a hundred thousand French
Canadians, in the presence of an English governor-general of Canada, a
French Canadian lieutenant-governor and cardinal {43} archbishop, many
ecclesiastical and civil dignitaries, assisted in the unveiling of a
noble monument in memory of Jacques Cartier and his hardy companions of
the voyage of 1535-36, and of Jean de Brebeuf, Ennemond Masse, and
Charles Lalemant, the missionaries who built the first residence of the
Jesuits nearly a