Estevao Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
islands, especially on Funk Island.
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