In 1533 Jacques Cartier obtained from Philippe de Chabot, Admiral of France, authority to arm ships "to voyage, discover and conquer in New France, as well as to find, by the North-west, the passage to Cathay." On his first voyage he touched Newfoundland, but the advanced season obliged him to return to France. King Francis I thereupon ordered him, as a "royal pilot", to arm three vessels for a second voyage. On the 19th of May, 1535, the flotilla set out from St. Malo. It was composed of two ships, the _Grande-Hermine_ of 120 tons and the _Petit-Hermine_ of 80 tons, and a galley, the _Hémerillon_, of 40 tons. These are the ones shown on the stamp. The ships were built with the high bows and sterns of those days, and were armed with "falconets" (small cannon) along the sides and "culverins" (long cannon) in a battery on the bridge. The galley was long and narrow, low in the water, and was propelled both by sails and oars; it was armed with two small cannon forward and a dozen large arquebuses. The complement of the three ships comprised in all--officers, gentlemen, volunteers, chaplains, sailors, workmen, servants--a hundred and ten men. On the 14th September, Cartier arrived at an Indian village, Stadaconé, called also by the natives Canada (or _the town_), the residence of the chief Donnacona. This village was built on the bay which the river St. Charles forms where it flows into the St. Lawrence, against the steep flank of a mountain, on the spot where now is built the south-eastern section of Quebec. The 20-cent stamp represents this arrival of Cartier at Stadaconé, the future Quebec. Samuel de Champlain, whose effigy figures on the 1 cent stamp beside that of Cartier, was sent by Henri IV in 1603 to found a settlement in Canada. On his first voyage he sailed up the St. Lawrence river and established friendly relations with the native chiefs. On the second expedition, in 1608, he disembarked on the 3d July at the foot of the promontory of Stadaconé, accompanied by only thirty men. His first care was to find a favorable place to built a "habitation" with a view to wintering there. "I could find nothing more convenient or better situated, said he, than the point of Québecq, so called by the savages, which was filled with walnut trees." It was on the same spot where, seventy-three years before, Cartier had constructed a fort of tree trunks.