The first voyage made by the French for the purpose of discovery in our
northern waters of which we have any authentic record was by Jacques
Cartier in 1534, and another was made for the same purpose by this
distinguished navigator in 1535. In the former, he coasted along the shores
of Newfoundland, entered and gave its present name to the Bay of Chaleur,
and at Gaspe took formal possession of the country in the name of the king.
In the second, he ascended the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, then an
Indian village known by the aborigines as Hochelaga, situated on an island
at the base of an eminence which they named _Mont-Royal_, from which the
present commercial metropolis of the Dominion derives its name. After a
winter of great suffering, which they passed on the St. Charles, near
Quebec, and the death of many of his company, Cartier returned to France
early in the summer of 1536. In 1541, he made a third voyage, under the
patronage of Francois de la Roque, Lord de Roberval, a nobleman of Picardy.
He sailed up the St. Lawrence, anchoring probably at the mouth of the river
Cap Rouge, about four leagues above Quebec, where he built a fort which he
named _Charlesbourg-Royal_. Here he passed another dreary and disheartening
winter, and returned to France in the spring of 1542. His patron, De
Roberval, who had failed to fulfil his intention to accompany him the
preceding year, met him at St. John, Newfoundland. In vain Roberval urged
and commanded him to retrace his course; but the resolute old navigator had
too recent an experience and saw too clearly the inevitable obstacles to
success in their undertaking to be diverted from his purpose. Roberval
proceeded up the Saint Lawrence, apparently to the fort just abandoned by
Cartier, which he repaired and occupied the next winter, naming it
_Roy-Francois_; [30] but the disasters which followed, the sickness and
death of many of his company, soon forced him, likewise, to abandon the
enterprise and return to France.

Of these voyages, Cartier, or rather his pilot-general, has left full and