ten years after Verrazano’s voyage, and reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.  As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky islands, especially on Funk Island.[1] These birds were guillemots, puffins, great auks,[2] gannets (called by Cartier margaulx), and probably gulls and eider duck.  To his sailors—­always hungry and partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years ago—­this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great enjoyment.  They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were splendidly fat.  Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears “as large as cows and as white as swans”.  The bears would swim off from the shore to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which they compared in excellence and taste to veal.

[Footnote 1:  Funk Island—­called by Cartier “the Island of Birds”—­is only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level.  It is 3 miles distant from the coast.]

[Footnote 2:  The Great Auk (Alca impennis), extinct since about 1844 in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, N.E.  England, and Denmark.  Perhaps nowhere was it found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on Funk Island hard by.  The Great Auk was in such numbers on the north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame.  The French seamen called it pingouin ("penguin”) from its fatness, and this name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.]

Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier’s ships entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  They had previously visited the adjoining coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first “natives”, members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their birch-bark canoes).  After examining the west coast of Newfoundland, Cartier’s ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with grass).[3] He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description.  The pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green.  In the natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye.  The forest abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.