touched meadows to where the Lachine Rapids mocked with unceasing laughter
those who dreamed of an easy way to China. There, entertained at the
Indian capital, he was led to the top of a hill, such as Montmartre, from
whose height he saw his Cathay fade into a stretch of leafy desert bounded
only by the horizon and threaded by two narrow but hopeful ribbons of
water. There, hundreds of miles from the sea, he stood, probably the only
European, save for his companions, inside the continent, between Mexico
and the Pole; for De Soto had not yet started for his burial in the
Mississippi; the fathers of the Pilgrim Fathers were still in their
cradles; Narvaez's men had come a little way in shore and vanished; Cabeca
de Vaca was making his almost incredible journey from the Texas coast to
the Pacific; Captain John Smith was not yet born; and Henry Hudson's name
was to remain obscure for three quarters of a century. Francis I had
sneeringly inquired of Charles V if he and the King of Portugal had
parcelled out the world between them, and asked to see the last will and
testament of the patriarch Adam. If King Francis had been permitted to see
it, he would have found a codicil for France written that day against the
bull of Pope Alexander VI and against the hazy English claim of the
Cabots. For the river, "the greatest without comparison," as Cartier
reported later to his king, "that is known to have ever been seen,"
carried drainage title to a realm larger many times than all the lands of
the Seine and the Rhone and the Loire, and richer many times than the land
of spices to which the falls of Lachine, "the greatest and swiftest fall
of water that any where hath beene scene," seemed now to guard the way.

"Hochelaga" the Indians called their city--the capital of the river into
which the sea had narrowed, a thousand miles inland from the coasts of
Labrador which but a few years before were the dim verge of the world and
were believed even then to be infested with griffins and fiends--a city
which vanished within the next three quarters of a century. For when