ith channels of
entrance and exit in all winds." Cartier named it "Baye Saint Laurens,"
because he entered it on 10th August--the feast of St. Lawrence.

Do any of the English men and women who steam up the Gulf of St. Lawrence
in the great ocean steamers to-day, on their way to Canada, ever give
a thought to the little pioneer French ships that four hundred years
ago thought they were sailing toward Cathay?

"Savages," as Cartier calls the Indians, told him that he was near
the mouth of the great river Hochelaga (now the St. Lawrence), which
became narrower "as we approach towards Canada, where the water is
fresh."

"On the first day of September," says Cartier, "we set sail from the
said harbour for Canada." Canada was just a native word for a town
or village. It seems strange to read of the "lord of Canada" coming
down the river with twelve canoes and many people to greet the first
white men he had ever seen; strange, too, to find Cartier arriving
at "the place called Hochelaga--twenty-five leagues above Canada,"
where the river becomes very narrow, with a rapid current and very
dangerous on account of rocks. For another week the French explorers
sailed on up the unknown river. The country was pleasant, well-wooded,
with "vines as full of grapes as they would hang." On 2nd October,
Cartier arrived at the native town of Hochelaga. He was welcomed by
hundreds of natives,--men, women, and children,--who gave the
travellers as "friendly a welcome as if we had been of their own nation
come home after a long and perilous absence." The women carried their
children to him to touch them, for they evidently thought that some
supernatural being had come up from the sea. All night they danced
to the light of fires lit upon the shore.

[Illustration: CANADA AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE, SHOWING QUEBEC
(KEBEC). From Lescarbot's _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, 1609.]

The next morning Cartier, "having dressed himself splendidly," went
ashore with some of his men. All were well armed, though the natives
seemed peacefully disposed. They marched along a well-beaten track
to the Indian city, which stood in the midst of cultivated fields of
Indian corn and maize. Again the inhabitants met them with signs of
joy and gladness, and the King was carried shoulder high, seated on
a large deer-skin with a red wreath round his head made of the skins
of hedgehogs instead of a crown.

A curious scene then took place. The King placed his cr