THE FIRST WHITE MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 146, 22 June 1934, Page 14

THE FIRST WHITE MAN

Representatives of France and Britain have been invited to take part in Canada's great pageant this year to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the first white man's landing on her shores. The hero of this episode was Jacques Cartier, a French seaman who, in 1534, at the command of Francis I, left St. Malo with two 20-ton, ships to locate a North-West Passage,- then known as Cathay, or alternatively bring back a cargo of gold, a feat achieved by Columbus a; few decades earlier. The winds of fortune blew Cartier past Prince Edward Island and the Island of Anticosta, and finally brought him to anchor in the Bay of Gaspe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There he landed, planted a rough cross,'and claimed the whole country for France. Sent back again in the following year to substantiate his royal master's claims to the "New France," Cartier sailed 1000 miles up the St. Lawrence, landing first at Stadacoha, now Quebec City, and then at Hochelaga, the chief village of the Iroquois Indians, which he renamed Mount Koyal, the Montreal of today. Cartier's: first recorded glimpse of the new land fired the spirits of European pioneers. "The forests," he wrote, "were full of fur:bearing • animals, hares, martens, foxes,, beavers, otters, and the rivers were the plentifullest of fish any man ever.heard:of:"