steel ships of to-day. We can imagine how forbidding it
must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the
decks of their small storm-tossed caravels. Heavy gales
from the west came roaring through the strait. Great
quantities of floating ice ground to and fro under the
wind and current. So stormy was the outlook that for the
time being the passage seemed impossible. But Cartier
was not to be baulked in his design. He cast anchor at
the eastern mouth of the strait, in what is now the little
harbour of Kirpon (Carpunt), and there day after day,
stormbound by the inclement weather, he waited until June
9. Then at last he was able to depart, hoping, as he
wrote, 'with the help of God to sail farther.'

Having passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, Cartier
crossed over to the northern coast. Two days of prosperous
sailing with fair winds carried him far along the shore
to a distance of more than a hundred miles west of the
entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle. Whether he actually
touched on his way at the island now known as Belle Isle
is a matter of doubt. He passed an island which he named
St Catherine, and which he warned all mariners to avoid
because of dangerous shoals that lay about it. We find
his track again with certainty when he reaches the shelter
of the Port of Castles. The name was given to the anchorage
by reason of the striking cliffs of basaltic rock, which
here give to the shore something of the appearance of a
fortress. The place still bears the name of Castle Bay.

Sailing on to the west, Cartier noted the glittering