42 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
But the English, true to their traditions, were satisfied with the seaboard 
so long as it served the purpose of their trade. Thirty years after 
Cabot’s landfall at Cape Breton, the first letter ever sent from the 
New World to the Old was, so to speak, “posted” at St. John’s, New- 
foundland, on the 3rd of August, 1527. Nine years later Newfoundland 
was still the happy hunting ground of English exploitation, when 
“Master Hore” and thirty lawyers of the “Innes of Court and Chan- 
cerie” came out to make their fortune. Were any briefless barristers, 
before or since, ever engaged in such extravaganza? How on earth 
did they expect to make money when there were no other people to 
make it out of? They acquired some useful experience; but everything 
else was a disastrous failure. They stole a ship to get home, and only 
ate one lawyer for the general good when forced to live on each other. 
IX. We are so accustomed to Newfoundland as the oldest of English 
colonies, and to Canada as the senior British Dominion beyond the 
Seas that we forget how long the St. Lawrence was a French river. 
It has been British for only one hundred and fifty years; but it was 
French for two hundred and twenty-five, just half as long again. And 
those parts of it which were most intimately associated with the four 
French heroes—Cartier, Champlain, Frontenac and Montcalm—are full 
of French speech and memories to the present day. 
What a seaman Cartier was! Think of the tiny flotilla with which 
he explored the St. Lawrence in 1535,—three vessels, with a combined 
tonnage less than that of a modern ferry-boat! He coasted Labrador 
without a graze, searching everywhere to find the westward passage 
to Cathay; for he actually intended to sail through an unexplored New 
World, with his handful of men, to reach the most distant part of the Old! 
If anyone with seafaring tastes would like to read a pithy book of ad- 
venture, let me recommend him to try Jacques Cartier’s Brief Recit, 
& succincte narration, de la navigation faicte es ysles de Canada, Hochelage 
& Saguenay & autres, avec particulieres meurs, langaige, & ceremonies 
des habitans d’icelles: fort delectable a veoir. Paris, 1545. There is a 
good reprint by Tross: Paris: 1863. This famous book is really quite 
as fort delectable to read as Cartier thought the country was to see. 
It is short enough to finish at one steady sitting, and no harder in French 
than Shakespeare is in English. 
Jacques Cartier is one of those men you can’t help liking. You 
would somehow infer that he was “a jolly good fellow,” even if you 
had never heard of the entry respecting him at a baptismal féte:— 
Jacques Cartier et autres bons biberons. Yet he was as careful and skil- 
ful as he was bold and genial. The mere record of his voyages is proof 
positive of his having been a born leader of men. He never lost a vessel, 
though many were the ones he piloted through unknown waters. His 
