[Illustration: NEW FRANCE, SHOWING NEWFOUNDLAND, LABRADOR, AND THE ST. LAWRENCE. From Jocomo di Gastaldi's Map, about 1550. The "Isola de Demoni" is Labrador, and "Terra Nuova" and the islands south of it make up Newfoundland. The snaky-like line represents a sandbank, which was then thought, and agreed, to be the limit of fishing. Montreal (Port Real) will be noticed on the coast.] May found them free once more and making for home with the great news that, though they had not found the way to Cathay, they had discovered and taken a great new country for France. A new map of the world in 1536 marks Canada and Labrador, and gives the river St. Lawrence just beyond Montreal. A map of 1550 goes further, and calls the sea that washes the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador the "Sea of France," while to the south it is avowedly the "Sea of Spain." [Illustration: THE "DAUPHIN" MAP OF THE WORLD. MADE BY PIERRE DESCELIERS, 1546, TO THE ORDER OF FRANCIS I., FOR THE DAUPHIN (HENRI II. OF FRANCE). This map gives a remarkably clear and interesting view of geographical knowledge in the first half of the sixteenth century. (It is to be noted that all objects on one side of the Equinoctial are reversed.)] CHAPTER XXXII SEARCH FOR A NORTH-EAST PASSAGE England was now awaking from her sleep--too late to possess the Spice Islands--too late for India and the Cape of Good Hope--too late, it would seem, for the New World. The Portuguese held the eastern route, the Spaniards the western route to the Spice Islands. But what if there were a northern route? All ways apparently led to Cathay. Why should England not find a way to that glorious land by taking a northern course? "If the seas toward the north be navigable we may go to these Spice Islands by a shorter way than Spain and Portugal," said Master Thorne of Bristol--a friend of the Cabots. "But the northern seas are blocked with ice and the northern lands are too cold for man to dwell in," objected some. "_There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea unnavigable_," was the heroic reply. "It was in this belief, and in this heroic temper, that England set herself to take possession of her heritage, the north. But it was not till the reign of Edward VI. that a Company of Merchant Adventurers was formed for the discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and places unknown," with old Sebastian Cabot as its first governor, and not till the year 1553 that three little ships under Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor were fitted out for a northern cruise. They carried letters of introduction from the boy-king of England to "all Kings, Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governors of the Earth in all places under the universal heaven," including those "inhabiting the north-east parts of the world toward the mighty Empire of Cathay."