IMPERFECT COLONIZATION 23 



teaching map-makers for the first time that Newfoundland 

 and Labrador were separate ^ — skirted the west coast of 

 Newfoundland from Point Rich to Cape St. George, and dis- 

 covered the Magdalen Islands, which were teeming with wal- 

 ruses, Prince Edward Island, Bay Chaleurs, and Anticosti. On 

 a second voyage Cartier entered the Gulf by Belle Isle Strait 

 {1535), ^^d ^eft it by Cabot Strait and St. Pierre Island — a 

 route hitherto unknown to geographers, and found, or thought 

 that he found, a route to Tartary, by the Saguenay, and the 

 usual gold and rubies on these outskirts of Tartary. Cartier's 

 ( 1 540-1) and Roberval's (1542-3) colony or winter party of 

 two hundred persons, * as well men as women,' ^ at or near 

 Quebec, followed and failed. Cape Bonavista was Cartier's 

 take-off, and St. John's Haven, Newfoundland, was Cartier's 

 and Roberval's trysting-place, so that Newfoundland, which 

 Englishmen regarded as inseparable from Labrador on 

 its north, was regarded by Frenchmen as inseparable from 

 Canada on its west. To the Englishmen, as to the Icelanders 

 of old, Newfoundland was part of the Atlantic seaboard ; to 

 Frenchmen it was part of the Gulf, and the river of 

 St. Lawrence. French ideas were incompatible with English 

 ideas about Newfoundland. Nor was this the only danger 

 to English interests in Newfoundland. The French an- 

 nounced their intention to act upon their ideas. When 

 Roberval was in St. John's, he saw seventeen fishing-ships, 

 and decided disputes between French and Portuguese fisher- 

 men, and judges are often the preface to kings. Moreover, 

 Roberval's commission specified 'Canada, Hochelaga, and 

 other surrounding places' as his sphere of action,^ Charlevoix 

 adding that ' Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baccalaos ' were 

 mentioned by name ; * and a proviso in his commission, that 



1 But see Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. viii, p. 188. 



2 Ibid., vol. viii, p. 283. 



^ 'Et aultres lieulx circonstacens.' Canada: Collection de Mann- 

 scrits, ed. by J. Blanchet, Quebec, 1883, vol. i, p. 30. 



* Charlevoix, History of New France, translated and edited by 

 J. G. Shea, New York, vol. i, p. 242. 



