It must be conceded that the religious policy played a great part, as the commissions granted to Cartier, Champlain, and others, as well as the report of these and the relations of their discoveries, amply testify. Lescarbot, no good Catholic, acknowledges that: "Our kings in enterprising these movements for discovery, have had another end than that of our neighbours (the English and the Dutch). For I see by their commissions that these smack only of the advancement of the Christian religion without any present profit."
It is this lofty missionary spirit that we must read into the adventurous motives of the first discoverers and founders of Canada--La Nouvelle France--of Quebec and Montreal in particular, else nothing but a sordid desire for trade, mixed perhaps with adventure, is to be the story of the origin of our great country. Unless the religious character and close touch with the supernatural, possessed by the first inhabitants are appreciated, the romance of the accounts of the early historians will have no attraction for our readers nor will the key to the understanding of the history of Canada till the occupation by the British in 1760 be supplied.
We must look upon Jacques Cartier, when as the bearer of a Royal Commission, he left St. Malo, on April 20, 1534, to conquer new lands for Christianity, as dignified by this side of his duty--to promote the glory of God and that of France. Consequently his progress up the River St. Lawrence to Hochelaga is marked by such incidents as the distribution of rosaries and pious objects, emblems of the faith he believed in, and the planting at Gaspé of a cross thirty feet high, in the middle of which was a shield with three _fleurs de lis_, with the inscription, cut into the wood, "Vive Le Roi de France." His course and that of Champlain, up the St. Lawrence is strewn with a number of places named after the festivals of the church, all dignifying an otherwise prosaic catalogue of discoveries. The cross and the crown of France may therefore be considered the emblems of the French occupation.
It is not the purpose of this book to detail Cartier's voyages, three of which we have recounted by himself, those of 1534, 1535-36, and 1540. We have, however, chosen several extracts from the second voyage, as these relate especially to Montreal. We wish to gather the results of his work. He left no permanent settlement and established no trading posts but he claimed the land for France and his accounts to the king and the ministers and his published voyages of the country of Canada, Hochelaga and Saguenay, kept before his countrymen the existence of a great land in the West worth the colonizing.