Whence comes the name of Quebec? "Quel bec! Quel bec!"--(What a beak!)--shouted Jacques Cartier's astonished sailors, when, sailing up the St. Lawrence, they first beheld the startling promontory of Cape Diamond, thrust in towering majesty almost across the river. Thus, says one tradition, by a natural elision, was named Quebec, when the Europeans first saw the rock in 1535. Another derivation comes from Candebec on the Seine, which it much resembles. The Indian word "Kebic," meaning "the fearful rocky cliff," may have been its origin. The Indian village of Stadacona was here when Cartier found it, a cluster of wigwams fringing the shore in front of the bold cliff, its people bearing allegiance to the Montaignais chief, Donnacona. Here the ancient chronicle records that Cartier saw a "mighty promontory, rugged and bare, thrust its scarped front into the raging current," and he planted the cross and lilies of France and took possession for his king. Returning to Europe, he took back as prisoners the chief, Donnacona, and several of his warriors, their arrival making a great sensation. They were fêted and prayed for, and becoming converted, were baptised with pomp in the presence of a vast assemblage in the magnificent Cathedral of Rouen. But the round of pleasure and feasting, with the excess of excitement, overcame these children of the forest, and they all died within a year. Colonization on the St. Lawrence, after Cartier's voyages, languished for seventy years, various ill-starred expeditions failing, and it was not until 1608 that the city of Quebec was really founded by Samuel de Champlain, who was sent out by a company of associated noblemen of France to establish a fur trade with the Indians and open a new field for the Church, the Roman Catholic religion being then in the full tide of enthusiasm which in the seventeenth century made what was known as the "counter reformation." Champlain built a fort and established the province of New France, but his colony was of slow growth. There subsequently came out the military and commercial adventurers and religious enthusiasts, who were the first settlers of the new empire. The Recollet Fathers came in 1615, and the Jesuit missionary priests in 1625 and subsequently. The famous Canadian bishop, Laval de Montmorency, Father Hennepin, and the Sieur de la Salle, all came out in the same ship at a later period. Thus was founded the great French Catholic power in North America.