Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
to recognize the scenery.[4] They now explained to Cartier that he had
entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
"Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
(some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.

[Footnote 4: Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.]

At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
settlers.