'
Four more days Cartier lingered in the bay. Again he sent
boats from the ships in the hope of finding the westward
passage, but to his great disappointment and grief the
search was fruitless. The waters were evidently landlocked,
and there was here, as he sadly chronicled, no thoroughfare
to the westward sea. He met natives in large numbers.
Hundreds of them--men, women, and children--came in their
canoes to see the French explorers. They brought cooked
meat, laid it on little pieces of wood, and, retreating
a short distance, invited the French to eat. Their manner
was as of those offering food to the gods who have
descended from above. The women among them, coming
fearlessly up to the explorers, stroked them with their
hands, and then lifted these hands clasped to the sky,
with every sign of joy and exultation. The Indians, as
Cartier saw them, seemed to have no settled home, but to
wander to and fro in their canoes, taking fish and game
as they went. Their land appeared to him the fairest that
could be seen, level as a pond; in every opening of the
forest he saw wild grains and berries, roses and fragrant
herbs. It was, indeed, a land of promise that lay basking
in the sunshine of a Canadian summer. The warmth led
Cartier to give to the bay the name it still bears--Chaleur.
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