On the twenty-third of May, 1541, the Breton captain again spread his
canvas for New France, and, passing in safety the tempestuous Atlantic,
the fog-banks of Newfoundland, the island rocks clouded with screaming
sea-fowl, and the forests breathing piny odors from the shore, cast
anchor again beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Canoes came out from shore
filled with feathered savages inquiring for their kidnapped chiefs.
"Donnacona," replied Cartier, "is dead;" but he added the politic
falsehood, that the others had married in France, and lived in state,
like great lords. The Indians pretended to be satisfied; but it was soon
apparent that they looked askance on the perfidious strangers.
Cartier pursued his course, sailed three leagues and a half up the St.
Lawrence, and anchored off the mouth of the River of Cap Rouge. It was
late in August, and the leafy landscape sweltered in the sun. The
Frenchmen landed, picked up quartz crystals on the shore and thought
them diamonds, climbed the steep promontory, drank at the spring near
the top, looked abroad on the wooded slopes beyond the little river,
waded through the tall grass of the meadow, found a quarry of slate, and
gathered scales of a yellow mineral which glistened like gold, then
returned to their boats, crossed to the south shore of the St.
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