The next year his son, Sebastian, who had accompanied his father on the former voyage, sailed from Bristol, with two ships, in the month of May, and touched the coast of Labrador, far away in the north. Finding it excessively cold, even in July, he directed his course south, and cruised along, keeping the coast constantly in sight, until, passing Nova Scotia, he entered the broad gulf of Maine. He continued his voyage, it is supposed, until, rounding the long curvature of Cape Cod, he found an open sea extending far to the west. He passed on until he reached the latitude of Cape Hatteras, when, finding his provisions failing him, he returned home. It was this voyage upon which England founded her claim to the whole of that portion of the continent whose coast had been thus explored. The breadth of the continent was entirely unknown.[9] Upon this claim the grants to the Virginia, as also to the Connecticut colony, were across the whole breadth of the continent. King Charles I., in the fifth year of his reign, in the year 1630, granted to one of his favorites, Sir Robert Heath, all that part of America which lies between thirty-one and thirty-six degrees of north latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This truly imperial gift included nearly the whole sea-coast of North and South Carolina, extending from sea to sea.[10] The Spanish adventurer, De Soto, whose wonderful exploits are recorded in one of the volumes of this series, discovered the Mississippi, near its mouth, in the year 1541. Some years before this, in 1508, a French exploring expedition entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and framed a map of its shores. In 1525, France took formal possession of the country. Ten years after, in 1535, M. Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence, which he so named, as he entered the river on that saint’s day. This wonderful stream, whose bed expands into a series of the most majestic lakes on this globe, presents a continuous water-course of over two thousand miles, and is supposed to contain more than one-half of all the fresh water on this planet.[11] Several trading expeditions visited the region. In 1608 the city of Quebec was founded. French voyagers, in the birch canoe, extensively explored rivers and lakes, for the purchase of furs. They established a mission on the banks of Lake Huron, in the year 1641, and pushing their explorations to Lake Superior, established one there in 1660. Another mission was founded in 1671, at the Falls of St. Mary, which acquired much renown. In that same year France took formal possession of the vast regions of the north-west.