Jacques Cartier

Jacques Cartier was a French sailor who had risen to the title of "master pilot," and in 1534 was the choice of King Francis I to lead an expedition building on the success of an earlier journey to North America by Giovanni da Verrazzano. The goal, as with so many other explorations, was to find new sources of riches and perhaps a northern sea route to Asia.

Cartier led two expeditions to the Newfoundland region and accompanied a third. The accounts of the three voyages, from which the following passages are taken, were published in the sixteenth century; it is not certain that Cartier himself wrote them but they were most likely based on logs he kept. As he learned, the St. Lawrence River was not the elusive and much sought after passage to Asia; nor could he find the wealthy...