TRADITIONS OF FRENCH DISCOVERY. -- NORMANS, BRETONS, BASQUES
-- LEGENDS AND SUPERSTITIONS. -- VERRAZZANO. -- JACQUES CAR-
TIER. -- QUEBEC. -- HOCHELAGA. -- WINTER MISERIES. -- ROBER-
VAL. -- THE ISLES OF DEMONS. -- THE COLONISTS OF CAP ROUGE.

WHEN America was first made known to Eu-
rope, the part assumed by France on the borders
of that new world was peculiar, and is little recog-
nized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land,
burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and
avarice, and while England, with soberer steps
and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of
discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France
that those barbarous shores first learned to serve
the ends of peaceful commercial industry.

A French writer, however, advances a more am-
bitious claim. In the year 1488, four years before
the first voyage of Columbus, America, he main-
tains, was found by Frenchmen. Cousin, a navi-
gator of Dieppe, being at sea off the African coast,
was forced westward, it is said, by winds and cur-
rents to within sight of an unknown shore, where

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