The Explorations of Jacques Cartier 1534 1542

However, by then the coast of Newfoundland had already been pretty well explored by French fishermen. Even so, Verrazzano had managed to explore a lot of uncharted North American coastline on his first voyage to the New World. And when he returned to France, his excellent maps proved to be extremely helpful to other explorers. One of the most important of the early French explorers was a man by the name of Jacques Cartier. Cartier was born here, in the fishing town of Saint Malo in France, right around the time Columbus was planning his first voyage across the Atlantic. It is believed that as a young man, Cartier had accompanied the fishing fleets that left France each summer for Newfoundland. The French king, Francis I, asked Cartier to look for gold and other precious metals in the New World, and also to keep searching for a northwest passage to Asia. And in April of the year 1534, Cartier's first expedition left the harbor of Saint Malo and sailed across the North Atlantic. In May, when Cartier reached the waters off of Newfoundland, they were still choked with ice. But after a while, the ice melted and he was able to sail along the coast of what is today Labrador on the mainland of Canada. Labrador was the place where 1,000 years ago, Viking settlers from treeless Greenland would sometimes come to get wood for their buildings. And by the time Cartier explored the rugged coast of Labrador, Portuguese fishermen had already established whaling stations there. From Labrador, Cartier sailed south, exploring a large body of water he named the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. And eventually, he landed in a forested area on the mainland of Canada, now called the Gaspé Peninsula. Here, Cartier met Native Americans and then claimed their land for France. When he returned to Europe that fall, he even brought two young Indian brothers back with him. Cartier made a second voyage across the North Atlantic the next year in 1535. It was on this expedition that he sailed up one of the largest and most important rivers in North America, the Saint Lawrence River. Cartier sailed far up this river until rocks and rapids prevented him from going any further. The rapids were not far from a hill he named Montréal, or Royal Mountain, where a large city of that name, Montreal, now stands. His expedition spent the winter at a place on the river the Native people called Quebec. Here, they suffered great hardships throughout the long months of snow and severe cold, and many men did not live to see France again in the spring. However, that winter, the explorers learned about a fabled place called Saguenay from the local Indians, where they were told jewels and precious metals could be found in great abundance. So when Cartier made his final journey to Canada in 1541, he eagerly, but unsuccessfully, searched for the riches of Saguenay. He also tried but failed to establish a permanent French colony in the Canadian wilderness. And so he returned to France the next year. And after his explorations were done, Jacques Cartier spent the rest of his life in comfort here at his manor house, not far from the sea.