A LABRADOR SPRING 
be the passage to Cataia.’”” Beyond Cartier’s 
farthest west lay China, and the rapids above 
Montreal bear the name La-Chine even to the 
present day. 
In an ancient ‘‘ Discourse of divers Voyages ”’ 
it is said that ‘‘ Many haue traualed to search 
the coast of the lande of Labrador, as well to 
thintente to knowe howe farre or whyther it 
reachethe, as also whether there bee any passage 
by sea throughe the same into the Sea of Sur 
and the Islandes of Maluca, which are under the 
Equinoctial line: thinkynge that the waye 
thyther shulde greatly bee shortened by this 
vyage.”’ Sebastian Cabot had in truth “a great 
flame of desyre’’ increased in his heart ‘to 
attempt some notable thynge ’’ when he heard 
that ‘‘ Don Christopher Colonus, Genuese, had 
discovered the coastes of India, whereof was 
great talke in all the courte of kynge Henry the 
Seunth, who then reigned: in so much that all 
men with great admiration affirmed it to bee 
a thynge more diuine then humane, to sayle 
by the Weste into the East where spices growe, 
by a way that was never knowne before.”’ 
Cartier said that the Indians described some 
marvellous fishes that lived in the Bay of Seven 
40 
