d the end of June, they made a land-fall on the
north-eastern coast of North America. 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 livi