off from shore in canoes, bringing fish and food, and
accepting, with every sign of friendship, the little
presents which Cartier distributed among them. At one
place an Indian chief--'one of the chief lords of the
country,' says Cartier--brought two of his children as
a gift to the miraculous strangers. One of the children,
a little girl of eight, was kept upon the ship and went
on with Cartier to Hochelaga and back to Stadacona, where
her parents came to see her later on. The other child
Cartier refused to keep because 'it was too young, for
it was but two or three years old.'

At the head of Lake St Peter, Cartier, ignorant of the
channels, found his progress in the pinnace barred by
the sand bars and shallows among the group of islands
which here break the flow of the great river. The Indians
whom he met told him by signs that Hochelaga lay still
farther up-stream, at a distance of three days' journey.
Cartier decided to leave the Emerillon and to continue
on his way in the two boats which he had brought with
him. Claude de Pont Briand and some of the gentlemen,
together with twenty mariners, accompanied the leader,
while the others remained in charge of the pinnace.

Three days of easy and prosperous navigation was sufficient
for the journey, and on October 2, Cartier's boats, having
rowed along the shores of Montreal island, landed in full
sight of Mount Royal, at some point about three or four
miles from the heart of the present city. The precise
location of the landing has been lost to history. It has