The actual site of the land-fall will always be a matter of controversy unless some document is found among musty archives of Europe to solve the question to the satisfaction of the disputants, who wax hot over the claims of a point near Cape Chidley on the coast of Labrador, of Bonavista, on the east shore of Newfoundland, of Cape North, or some other point, on the island of Cape Breton.  Another expedition left Bristol in 1498, but while it is now generally believed that Cabot coasted the shores of North America from Labrador or Cape Breton as far as Cape Hatteras, we have no details of this famous voyage, and are even ignorant of the date when the fleet returned to England.

The Portuguese, Gaspar and Miguel Cortereal, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, were lost somewhere on the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland, but not before they gave to their country a claim to new lands.  The Basques and Bretons, always noted for their love of the sea, frequented the same prolific waters and some of the latter gave a name to the picturesque island of Cape Breton.  Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine by birth, who had for years led a roving life on the sea, sailed in 1524 along the coasts of Nova Scotia and the present United States and gave a shadowy claim of first discovery of a great region to France under whose authority he sailed.  Ten years later Jacques Cartier of St. Malo was authorised by Francis I to undertake a voyage to these new lands, but he did not venture beyond the Gulf of St. Lawrence, though he took possession of the picturesque Gaspe peninsula in the name of his royal master.  In 1535 he made a second voyage, whose results were most important for France and the world at large.  The great river of Canada was then discovered by the enterprising Breton, who established a post for some months at Stadacona, now Quebec, and also visited the Indian village of Hochelaga on the island of Montreal.  Here he gave the appropriate name of Mount Royal to the beautiful height which dominates the picturesque country where enterprise has, in the course of centuries, built a noble city.  Hochelaga was probably inhabited by Indians of the Huron-Iroquois family, who appear, from the best evidence before us, to have been dwelling at that time on the banks of the St. Lawrence, whilst the Algonquins, who took their place in later times, were living to the north of the river.

The name of Canada—­obviously the Huron-Iroquois word for Kannata, a town—­began to take a place on the maps soon after Cartier’s voyages.  It appears from his Bref Recit to have been applied at the time of his visit, to a kingdom, or district, extending from Ile-aux-Coudres, which he named on account of its hazel-nuts, on the lower St. Lawrence, to the Kingdom of Ochelay, west of Stadacona; east of Canada was Saguenay, and west of Ochelay was Hochelaga, to which the other communities were tributary.  After a winter of much misery Cartier left Stadacona