prevailed on and partly constrained to accompany Cartier to France. A handsome present was made to the family of Donacona, but it was with great reluctance that his friends parted with him, though Cartier prom. ised to bring him again at the end of twelve months. On the sixth of May they sailed from the port of St. Croix, and, having touched at St. Peter's in Newfoundland, they arrived at St. Malo, in France, the sixth of July, 1536.

Whether Cartier performed his vow to God the history does not tell us; certain it is, however, that he did not perform his promise to his passengers. The zeal for adventures of this kind began to abate. Neither gold nor silver were carried home. The advantages of the fur-trade were not fully understood, and the prospect of benefit from cultivation in the short summer of that cold climate was greatly overbalanced by the length and severity of a Canadian winter. The natives had been so often told of the necessity of baptism in order to salvation, that, on their arrival in France, they were, at their own request, baptized; but neither of them lived to see their native land again.

The report which Cartier brought home of

the fine country beyond the lakes* had, however, made such an impression on the minds of some, that, at the end of four years, another expedition was projected. Francis de la Roche, lord of Roberval,† was com missioned by the king as his lieutenant-gov. ernor in Canada‡ and Hochelaga, and Cartier

* [It is worth our while to notice with what partial and erroneous information, and, of course, unreasonable expectations, the expeditions of those days were undertaken. Gold and silver being the chief objects of desire, Cartier greedily received from the natives accounts of rich mines, and doubtless reported them with no diminution. They told him of a people in Saguenay "very honest, with many inhabited towns, and great store of gold."Hakluyt, iii., 225. Donacona had informed him of "infinite rubies, gold, and other riches" there, and "white men who clothe themselves with woollen cloth, as we doe in France."Ib., 228. They reported, too, a country distant a month's sail, perhaps down the Mississippi, of "oranges, almonds, cinnamon, and cloves."-Ib., 225, 232. The Indians who went with Cartier to France told similar stories to the king. Whether he or the natives were most deluded in these representations we do not know. Probably, early aware of the cupidity of the French, they had framed their stories to satisfy it.-H.]

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† [Hakluyt, iii., 232, calls him John Francis, &c. He was a nobleman of Picardy, of great weight in his own province, and on that account Francis I. used to call him "the little King of Vimieu."-Forster, 441.-H.]

[The name Canada, some say, was derived from a saying of Velasco, who, when he saw the barrenness of the country, no signs of gold or silver there, cried out "aca nada” (or aqui nada), "Nothing here." Some of the old maps have the name Cada-nada, or Cape Nothing. Others, say more probably, that the

was appointed his pilot, with the command of five ships. When they were ready to sail, Roberval had not finished his preparations, and was therefore detained. The king's orders to Cartier being positive, he sailed from St. Malo on the 23d of May, 1540.

The winds were adverse and the voyage tedious. The ships were scattered, and did not arrive at the place of their destination till the 23d of August, when they came to the port of St. Croix in the River of Canada.

The first inquiry made by the natives was for their countrymen who had been carried away. The answer was that Donacona was dead, and that the others had become great lords, were married in France, and refused to return. Neither sorrow nor resentment was shown on this occasion; but a secret jealousy, which had long been working, received strength from an answer so liable to suspicion.

The history of this voyage being imperfect, it is not possible to say in what particular name given by the natives to a town or village was Canada, which the French understood to be the name of the country. -Forster, 438, note, and Hakluyt, iii., 232.—H.]

The voyage

["Captain-general and leader of the shippes.' was made at the joint expense of Roberval and of the king, Francis I.-H.]

manner this jealousy operated. Cartier made another excursion up the river, and pitched on a place about four leagues above St. Croix to lay up three of his vessels for the winter. The other two he sent back to France to inform the king of what they had done, and that Roberval had not arrived.

At the new harbour which he had chosen for his ships was a small river, running in a serpentine course to the south. On the eastern side of its entrance was a high and steep cliff, on the top of which they built a fort, and called it Charleburg. Below, the ships were drawn up and fortified, as they had been in the former winter which he spent here. Not far from the fort were some rocks containing crystals, which they denominated diamonds; and on the shore were picked up certain specks of a yellow substance, which their imaginations refined into gold. Iron ore was found in abundance, and a kind of black slate, with veins of an apparent metallic substance.

In what manner they passed the winter, the defective accounts which we have do not inform us. In the spring of the following year, Cartier and his company, having heard nothing of Roberval, and concluding that they

were abandoned by their friends, and exposed to perish in a climate the most severe, and among people whose conduct towards them was totally changed, determined to return to France. Accordingly, having set sail at the breaking up of the ice, they arrived in the harbour of St. John in Newfoundland some time in June, where they met Roberval, who, with three ships and two hundred persons, male and female, had sailed from Rochelle in April,* and were on their way to establish a colony in Canada. Cartier went on board Roberval's ship, and showed him the diamonds and gold which he had found, but told him that the hostile disposition of the natives had obliged him to quit the country, which, however, he represented to him as capable of profitable cultivation. Roberval ordered him to return to Canada; but Cartier privately sailed out of the harbour in the night, and pursued his voyage to France.

Mortified and disappointed, Roberval continued some time longer at St. John's before he proceeded, and about the end of July ar

* [Roberval sailed April 16, 1542.-Hakluyt, iii., 240. The same author says that Cartier had gone "the year before." Cartier must have been there nearly two years when Roberval arrived.-H.]

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