The bear was 'as great as any cow
and as white as a swan.' The sailors lowered boats in
pursuit, and captured 'by main force' the bear, which
supplied a noble supper for the captors. 'Its flesh,'
wrote Cartier, 'was as good to eat as any heifer of two
years.'
The explorers sailed on westward, changing their course
gradually to the north to follow the broad curve of the
Atlantic coast of Newfoundland. Jutting headlands and
outlying capes must have alternately appeared and
disappeared on the western horizon. May 24, found the
navigators off the entrance of Belle Isle. After four
hundred years of maritime progress, the passage of the
narrow strait that separates Newfoundland from Labrador
remains still rough and dangerous, even for the great
steel ships of to-day. We can imagine how forbidding it
must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the
decks of their small storm-tossed caravels. Heavy gales
from the west came roaring through the strait. Great
quantities of floating ice ground to and fro under the
wind and current. So stormy was the outlook that for the
time being the passage seemed impossible. But Cartier
was not to be baulked in his design. He cast anchor at
the eastern mouth of the strait, in what is now the little
harbour of Kirpon (Carpunt), and there day after day,
stormbound by the inclement weather, he waited until June
9.
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