The two Indians taken from Gaspé now began to recognize the headlands of their native country, telling Cartier the first kingdom along the Great River was Saguenay, the second Canada, the third Hochelaga. Near Mingan, Cartier anchored to claim the land for France; and he named the great waters St. Lawrence because it was on that saint's day he had gone ashore. The north side of Anticosti was passed, and the first of September saw the three little ships drawn up within the shadow of that somber gorge cut through sheer rock where the Saguenay rolls sullenly out to the St. Lawrence. The mountains presented naked rock wall. Beyond, rolling back… rolling back to an impenetrable wilderness… were the primeval forests. Through the canyon flowed the river, dark and ominous and hushed. The men rowed out in small boats to fish but were afraid to land.
As the ships advanced up the St. Lawrence the seamen could scarcely believe they were on a river. The current rolled seaward in a silver flood. In canoes paddling shyly out from the north shore Cartier's two Indians suddenly recognized old friends, and whoops of delight set the echoes ringing.
Keeping close to the north coast, russet in the September sun, Cartier slipped up that long reach of shallows abreast a low-shored wooded island so laden with grapevines he called it Isle Bacchus. It was the Island of Orleans.
Then the ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of Montmorency leaping from precipice to river bed with roar of thunder.
Cartier had anchored near the west end of Orleans Island when there came paddling out with twelve canoes, Donnacona, great chief of Stadacona, whose friendship was won on the instant by the tales Cartier's Indians told of France and all the marvels of the white man's world.
Cartier embarked with several young officers to go back with the chief; and the three vessels were cautiously piloted up little St. Charles River, which joins the St. Lawrence below the modern city of Quebec. Women dashed to their knees in water to welcome ashore these gayly dressed newcomers with the gold-braided coats and clanking swords. Crossing the low swamp, now Lower Town, Quebec, the adventurers followed a path through the forest up a steep declivity of sliding stones to the clear high table-land above, and on up the rolling slopes to the airy heights of Cape Diamond overlooking the St. Lawrence like the turret of some castle above the sea. Did a French soldier, removing his helmet to wipe away the sweat of his arduous climb, cry out "Que bec" (What a peak!) as he viewed the magnificent panorama of river and valley and mountain rolling from his feet; or did their Indian guide point to the water of the river narrowing like a strait below the peak, and mutter in native tongue, "Quebec" (The strait)? Legend gives both explanations of the name. To the east Cartier could see far down the silver flood of the St. Lawrence halfway to Saguenay; to the south, far as the dim mountains of modern New Hampshire. What would the King of France have thought if he could have realized that his adventurers had found a province three times the size of England, one third larger than France, one third larger than Germany? And they had as yet reached only one small edge of Canada, namely Quebec.
Heat haze of Indian summer trembled over the purple hills. Below, the river quivered like quicksilver. In the air was the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water; and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of dreams of earth's high heroes are empires made.
But the Indians had told of that other kingdom, Hochelaga. Hither Cartier had determined to go, when three Indians dressed as devils—faces black as coals, heads in masks, brows adorned with elk horns—came gyrating and howling out of the woods on the mountain side, making wild signals to the white men encamped on the St. Charles. Cartier's interpreters told him this was warning from the Indian god not to ascend the river. The god said Hochelaga was a realm of snow, where all white men would perish. It was a trick to keep the white men's trade for themselves.
Cartier laughed.
"Tell them their god is an old fool," he said. "Christ is to be our guide."