were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a
rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and
these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
beads.]

From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.

Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
first time the smoking of tobacco,[8] and collected information about
the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
lowlands of the eastern United States.