h sovereign, was determined to get a share of the New World. He
had already, in 1524, sent out Verrazano to seek a passage to the East
(See a sketch of this very interesting voyage in "The World's
Discoverers"), and now he was eager to back Cartier with men and money.

Accordingly, the next year we find the explorer back at the mouth of
the St. Lawrence, this time with three vessels and with a number of
gentlemen who had embarked in the enterprise, believing that they were
on their way to reap a splendid harvest in the Indies, like that of the
Spanish cavaliers who sailed with the conquerors of Mexico and Peru.
Entering, on St. Lawrence's day, the Gulf which he had discovered in
the previous year, he named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The river
emptying into it he called Hochelaga, from the Indian name of the
adjacent country. Then, guided by the two young natives whom he had
kidnapped the year before, whose home, though they had been seized near
its mouth, was high up the river, he sailed up the {58} wide stream,
convinced that he was approaching China.

In due time Stadacone was reached, near the site of Quebec, and Cartier
visited the chief, Donnaconna, in his village. The two young Indians
who acted as guides and interpreters had been filling the ears of their
countrymen with marvelous tales of France. Especially, they had "made
great brags," Cartier says, about his cannon; and Donnaconna begged him
to fire some of them. Cartier, quite willing to give the savages a
sense of his wonderful resources, ordered twelve guns fired in quick
succession. At the roar of the cannon, he says, "they were greatly
astonished and amazed; for they thought that Heaven had fallen upon
them, and put themselves to flight, howling and crying and shrieking as
if hell had broken loose."

Leaving his two larger vessels safely anchored within the mouth of the
St. Charles River, Cartier set out with the smallest and two open
boats, to ascend the St. Lawrence. At Hochelaga he found a great
throng of Indians on the shore, wild with delight, dancing and singing.
They loaded the strangers with gifts of fish and maize. At night the
dark woods, far and near, were {59} illumined with the blaze of great
fires around which the savages capered with joy.

The next day Cartier and his party were conducted to the great Indian
town. Passing through cornfields laden with ripening grain, they came
to a high circular palisade consisting of three r