destroyed. 'It was considered meritorious,' says a
historian of the island, 'to shoot a Red Indian. To "go
to look for Indians" came to be as much a phrase as to
"look for partridges." They were harassed from post to
post, from island to island: their hunting and fishing
stations were unscrupulously seized by the invading
English. They were shot down without the least provocation,
or captured to be exposed as curiosities to the rabble
at fairs in the western towns of Christian England at
twopence apiece.' So much for the ill-fated savages among
whom Cartier planted his first cross.

On June 15, Cartier, disappointed, as we have seen, with
the rugged country that he found on the northern shore,
turned south again to pick up the mainland, as he called
it, of Newfoundland. Sailing south from Brest to a distance
of about sixty miles, he found himself on the same day
off Point Rich on the west coast of Newfoundland, to
which, from its appearance, he gave the name of the Double
Cape. For three days the course lay to the south-west
along the shore. The panorama that was unfolded to the
eye of the explorer was cheerless. The wind blew cold
and hard from the north-east. The weather was dark and
gloomy, while through the rifts of the mist and fog that
lay heavy on the face of the waters there appeared only
a forbidding and scarcely habitable coast. Low lands with
islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains,
hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting
prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther
south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro,