Newfoundland. The snaky-like line represents a sandbank,
which was then thought, and agreed, to be the limit of fishing. Montreal
(Port Real) will be noticed on the coast.]

May found them free once more and making for home with the great news
that, though they had not found the way to Cathay, they had discovered
and taken a great new country for France.

A new map of the world in 1536 marks Canada and Labrador, and gives
the river St. Lawrence just beyond Montreal. A map of 1550 goes further,
and calls the sea that washes the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador
the "Sea of France," while to the south it is avowedly the "Sea of
Spain."

[Illustration: THE "DAUPHIN" MAP OF THE WORLD. MADE BY PIERRE
DESCELIERS, 1546, TO THE ORDER OF FRANCIS I., FOR THE DAUPHIN (HENRI
II. OF FRANCE). This map gives a remarkably clear and interesting view
of geographical knowledge in the first half of the sixteenth century.
(It is to be noted that all objects on one side of the Equinoctial
are reversed.)]

CHAPTER XXXII

SEARCH FOR A NORTH-EAST PASSAGE

England was now awaking from her sleep--too late to possess the Spice
Islands--too late for India and the Cape of Good Hope--too late, it
would seem, for the New World. The Portuguese held the eastern route,
the Spaniards the western route to the Spice Islands. But what if there
were a northern route? All ways apparently led to Cathay. Why should
England not find a way to that glorious land by taking a northern
course?

"If the seas toward the north be navigable we may go to these Spice
Islands by a shorter way than Spain and Portugal," said Master Thorne
of Bristol--a friend of the Cabots.

"But the northern seas are blocked with ice and the northern lands
are too cold for man to dwell in," objected some.

"_There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea unnavigable_," was the
heroic reply.

"It was in this belief, and in this heroic temper, that England set
herself to take possession of her heritage, the north. But it was not
till the reign of Edward VI. that a Company of Merchant Adventurers
was formed for the discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and
places unknown," with old Sebastian Cabot as its first governor, and
not till the year 1553 that three little ships under Sir Hugh Willoughby
and Richard Chancellor were fitted out for a northern cruise. They
carried letters of introduction from the boy-king of England to "all
Kings, Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governors