Cartier was one of these hardy sailors. His fathers before him had
been mariners, and he had himself learned the way of the great waters
while yet a mere youth. Before his expedition of 1534 Jacques Cartier
had probably made a voyage to Brazil and had in all probability more
than once visited the Newfoundland fishing-banks. Although, when
he sailed from St. Malo to become the pathfinder of a new Bourbon
imperialism, he was forty-three years of age and in the prime of his
days, we know very little of his youth and early manhood. It is enough
that he had attained the rank of a master-pilot and that, from his
skill in seamanship, he was considered the most dependable man in
all the kingdom to serve his august sovereign in this important
enterprise.
Cartier shipped his crew at St. Malo, and on the 20th of April, 1534,
headed his two small ships across the great Atlantic. His company
numbered only threescore souls in all. Favored by steady winds his
vessels made good progress, and within three weeks he sighted the
shores of Newfoundland where he put into one of the many small harbors
to rest and refit his ships. Then, turning northward, the expedition
passed through the straits of Belle Isle and into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. Coasting along the northern shore of the Gulf for a short
distance, Cartier headed his ships due southward, keeping close to the
western shore of the great island almost its whole length; he then
struck across the lower Gulf and, moving northward once more, reached
the Baie des Chaleurs on the 6th July.
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