CHAPTER II. 



AN OLD STORY OF THE NEW WORLD. 



NOTHING can be more interesting than the narratives 

 which remain to us of the first contact of Europeans 

 with the Indian tribes of the West ; and perhaps no 

 such narrative is more touching than the unvarnished 

 yet circumstantial story of the old Breton navigator of 

 St. Malo, who first entered the St. Lawrence and held 

 intercourse with the tribes of Canada. 



In the spring and summer of 1 534, Jacques Cartier, 

 following on the track of Cabot and of the Breton and 

 Basque fishermen, who even at this early date visited 

 the coast and banks of Newfoundland, the " Island 

 of Baccalaos," had entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 by the Strait of Belleisle ; and in search of a way to 

 the Indies, coasted along the south side of Labrador, 

 and visited the Magdalen Islands, and the coast of 

 New Brunswick. He then passed up the deep Baie 

 des Chaleurs, so named by him because of the hot 

 summer sun which beat fiercely on its forest- clad 

 shores, and finally took refuge from the fogs and 

 storms of autumn in the lovely Bay of Gaspe. 



On the coast of Labrador, which, he quaintly says, 

 from its barren and forbidding aspect, must have been 

 the land that God gave to Cain, he found a tribe of 



