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The other portion was sent to the museum at St. Malo, where it now remains. Donnacona, whom Cartier kidnapped. A cross was left standing on the shores of the St. Lawrence with the fleur-de-lis planted near it.
The voyage passed without incident. The ships were some time in descending the St Lawrence. At Isle-aux-Coudres they waited for the swollen tide of the river to abate. The Indians still flocked about them in canoes, talking with Donnacona and his men, but powerless to effect a rescue of the chief.
On he sailed, with his two dusky captives for pilots, seeing with regret the banks of the river gradually draw together and hearing unwelcome word of the freshening of its waters on past the "gorge of the gloomy Saguenay with its towering cliffs and sullen depths, depths which no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck"; on past frowning promontory and wild vineyards, to the foot of the scarped cliff of Quebec, now "rich with heroic memories, then but the site of a nameless barbarism"; thence, after parley with the Indian chief Donnacona and his people, on through walls of autumn foliage and frost- touched meadows to where the Lachine Rapids mocked with unceasing laughter those who dreamed of an easy way to China.
Meanwhile the cold lessened; the ice about the ships relaxed its hold, and by the middle of April they once more floated free. But a new anxiety had been added. About the time when the fortunes of Cartier's company were at their lowest, Donnacona had left his camp with certain of his followers, ostensibly to spend a fortnight in hunting deer in the forest. For two months he did not return.
As yet, all was a nameless barbarism, and a cluster of wigwams held the site of the rock-built city of Quebec. Its name was Stadacone, and it owned the sway of the royal Donnacona. Cartier set out to visit this greasy potentate; ascended the river St. Charles, by him called the St.
Then did Donnacona with all his people pursue them, and lay hold on the boat and Diuels, who so soone as the men were come to them, fell prostrate in the boate, euen as if they had beene dead: then were they taken vp and carried into the wood, being but a stones cast off, then euery one withdrew himselfe into the wood, not one staying behind with vs, where being, they began to make a long discourse, so loud that we might heare them in our ships, which lasted aboue halfe an houre, and being ended we began to espie Taignoagny and Domagaia comming towards vs, holding their hands vpward ioyned together, carying their hats vnder their vpper garment, shewing a great admiration, and Taignoagny looking vp to heauen, cryed three times Iesus, Iesus, Iesus, and Domagaia doing as his fellow had done before, cryed, Iesus Maria, Iames Cartier.
About five hundred of them, so Cartier tells us, gathered about the ships. Donnacona, with 'ten or twelve of the chiefest men of the country, came on board the ships, where Cartier held a great feast for them and gave them presents in accordance with their rank. Taignoagny explained to Cartier that Donnacona was grieved that he was going up to Hochelaga.
Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement, and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of the two interpreters who had already been to France.
Donnacona, in true Indian fashion, improved the occasion with a long harangue, which Taignoagny interpreted to mean that the little girl was the niece of the chief and one of the boys the brother of the interpreter himself, and that the explorer might keep all these children as a gift if he would promise not to go to Hochelaga.
They finally reached the harbour of the Holy Cross at Stadacona on August 23. The savages flocked to meet the ships with a great display of joy, looking eagerly for the return of their vanished Donnacona. Their new chief, Agouhanna, with six canoes filled with men, women, and children, put off from the shore. The moment was a difficult one.
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