trodden but that of the Red Man; on its broad, deep river no boat had
ever bounded but his own light canoe; through its length and breadth no
Deity's name had resounded, save that of some senseless pagan idol. Truly
it was time, as Francis I. concluded, that the ray of faith and
civilization should beam on it at last.

In 1523, he sent out his first expedition, under the command of
Verrazani, a Florentine, who, sailing along the coast from 28 degrees to
50 degrees north latitude, formally took possession of the whole region
in the name of his royal patron, and called it "La Nouvelle France." But
while France was thus adding to her glory in the New World, her arms
received a severe check in the Old. When Verrazani returned in 1525, he
found the nation mourning the disastrous results of the battle of Pavia,
and too much absorbed by grave interests at home, to be disposed to
concern itself about lesser ones abroad. Deprived of the support of his
royal protector, then a prisoner at Madrid, he could neither utilize nor
follow up his first observations, and for ten years more we hear nothing
of Canada, except that mariners from France, and other European nations,
carried on a successful fishery on its coasts, where as many as fifty
ships from Europe might sometimes be seen together. The French called the
country the newly found lands, an appellation which survives in that of
the largest island. It is stated on the authority of certain old
chroniclers, that the islands off the mainland had been known more than a
century before the era of Columbus and Cabot to sailors from the Basque
Provinces, who named them "Bacallos," their term for cod-fish. The name
"Canada" seems to have been vaguely applied at this period sometimes to a
part, sometimes to the whole of the region watered by the St. Lawrence.
One derivation of it supposes the arrival of the French to have been
preceded by a visit from the Spaniards, who, searching for precious
metals, and finding none, expressed their disappointment by the frequent