“Hochelaga,” laughed Tom.
“Oh! Then that was the place where the bar you spoke of was, was it, Bob? Pardon me. Pray resume your fascinating disquisition, as improbable as it is flighty. You were about to describe your Carter when he and his followers stopped on the bar, a course of action of which I highly disapprove. That’s one thing I like about this river, it’s all wool and a yard wide. A safe place for children and no temptations to speak of—unless a canoe is one for Ben.”
“A yard wide?” interrupted Tom. “The St. Lawrence a yard wide! Why, it’s three-quarters of a mile wide up here at Cape Vincent, where it leaves the lake, and on the other side of Quebec it’s ten and twenty and even thirty miles wide, and at Cape Gaspé it’s all of a hundred miles wide.”
Again the boys broke into a hearty laugh, in which Tom was compelled to join, although he did not understand just what it was he was laughing at; but the good nature of them all was so apparent that he did not suspect that he was the cause of their enjoyment.
“Cartier stayed only three days at Montreal—” resumed Bob.
“Didn’t he like the Hochelaga?” interrupted the irrepressible Bert.
“Keep still, Bert,” pleaded Jock, laughingly. “I want to hear about this.”
“I would I were as this one is!” drawled Bert, pointing to Ben as he spoke, who was now soundly sleeping and apparently doing his utmost to emphasize the adverb as much as he did the verb.
“Cartier left after three days,” began Bob once more, “and went back to the mouth of the Sainte Croix, and there he passed the winter. And a terrible winter it was, too. The men weren’t used to such awful cold, and they suffered from the scurvy so much that when the spring came twenty-five of them were dead, and only a very few of the hundred and ten who were alive were free from disease. His men had been so reduced in numbers that Cartier decided to take only two of his vessels back to France with him and so left the Petite Hermione there.”