44 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
of action between the cranes and pigmies. But any Indian might 
well wax eloquent over such an astounding event, which he must have 
found quite as wonderful as we should find the arrival of a couple of 
lost friends in a flotilla of airships manned by a crew from Mars. Don- 
nacona was friendly, and did his best to dissuade Cartier from going 
higher up the River by telling him how ferocious the people were in 
the next kingdom. Cartier, however, pushed on till he arrived off 
the fortified capital of Hochelaga, where his fearless yet kindly bearing 
and his marvellous equipment won him the unbounded admiration of 
the Indians, who, like all virile people, thought highly of a leader that 
looked fit for either peace or war. What a sight it was; that handful 
of hardy pioneers among those thousands of savages, who sang and 
danced round enormous bonfires, in token of welcome, all night long, 
close beside the two little open boats which were the only link of con- 
nection with civilization in all that illimitable wild! When Cartier 
landed, the inhabitants brought their sick and maimed for him to 
touch, “as if,” he says, “they thought that God had sent me to cure 
them.” True to his principles and faith, he opened his Testament at 
the Gospel of St. John and read aloud to the awestruck multitude: 
In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Ver- 
bum. Then he climbed the Mont Réal, which has ever since borne the 
regal name he gave it, when, first of all the white men, he gazed from 
its summit, on a still October afternoon, at that wide magnificence of 
mountain and plain, brightened by the long sheen of the River, and all 
aglow with the crimson forest, as if the sunset lived the whole autumnal 
day in the glory of the maple leaves. 
X. Turn where we may to Jacques Cartier’s log-book, we are 
sure to find his unfailing touch of human interest. But there’s an 
equally interesting touch whenever he refers to our other fellow-beings; 
and I cannot leave him without a word about what he saw of them. 
When he first came up he found the River swarming with animal 
life. The walrus was common all over the northern part of the Gulf. 
Whales of the largest kind were plentiful, and the smallest, the Little 
White Whale, known as the White Porpoise, made inland runs as crowded 
as those the salmon used to make in the early days of British Columbia. 
Seals innumerable flocked together along the shores. And fish—well, 
the waters were far more alive with them then than they are in the 
choicest spots during the best seasons now. Cartier’s keen eye noted 
all this, as well as many birds, which he described with such discrimin- 
ating touches that they can be easily identified to-day. The apponatz 
is the unfortunate Great Auk, big as a Michaelmas goose, black and 
white in plumage, with a crow-like beak, and unable to fly. The 
godez were the guillemots, still locally called “guds.” The richars are 
