swarm
from the long houses. Children come running with mats for seats.
Bedridden, blind, maimed are carried on litters, if only they may touch
the garments of these wonderful beings. One old chief with skin like
crinkled leather and body gnarled with woes of a hundred years throws his
most precious possession, a headdress, at Cartier's feet.

Poor Cartier is perplexed. He can but read aloud from the Gospel of St.
John and pray Christ heal these supplicants. Then he showers presents on
the Indians, gleeful as children--knives and hatchets and beads and tin
mirrors and little images and a crucifix, which he teaches them to kiss.
Again the silver trumpet peals through the aisled woods. Again the
swords clank, and the adventurers take their way up the mountain--a Mont
Royal, says Cartier.

The mountain is higher than the one at Quebec. Vaster the view--vaster
the purple mountains, the painted forests, the valleys bounded by a sky
line that recedes before the explorer as the rainbow runs from the grasp
of a child. This is not Cathay; it is a New France. Before going back
to Quebec the adventurers follow a trail up the St. Lawrence far enough
to see that Lachine Rapids bar progress by boat; far enough, too, to see
that the Gaspe Indians had spoken truth when they told of another grand
river--the Ottawa--coming in from the north.

By the 11th of October Cartier is at Quebec. His men have built a
palisaded fort on the banks of the St. Charles. The boats are beached.
Indians scatter to their far hunting grounds. Winter sets in. Canadian
cold is new to these Frenchmen. They huddle indoors instead of keeping
vigorous with exercise. Ice hangs from the dismantled masts. Drifts
heap almost to top of palisades. Fear of the future falls on the crew.
Will they ever see France again? Then scurvy breaks out. The fort is
prostrate. Cartier is afraid to ask aid of the wandering Indians lest
they learn his weakness. To keep up show of strength he has his men fire
off muskets, batter the fort walls, march and drill and {18} tramp and
stamp, though twenty-five lie dead and only four are able to keep on
their feet. The corpses are hidden in snowdrifts or crammed through ice
holes in the river with shot weighted to their feet.

In desperation Cartier calls on all the saints in the Christian calendar.
He erects a huge crucifix and orders all, well and ill, out in
procession. Weak and hopeless, they move across the snows