THE FIRST WINTER IN CANADA. Cartier spent the severe winter which followed at the foot of the cliffs which mark the site of the modern city of Quebec. The expedition returned to France with the coming of spring. ATTEMPTS TO PLANT A COLONY AT QUEBEC. Several years later, in 1541, Cartier and others attempted to establish a permanent settlement on the St. Lawrence. As it was hard to get good colonists to settle in the cold climate so far north, the leaders were allowed to ransack the prisons for debtors and criminals to make up the necessary numbers. They selected the neighborhood of the cliffs where Cartier had wintered in 1535, where Quebec now stands, as the most suitable place for their colony. But the settlers were ill-fitted for the hardships of a new settlement in so cold and barren a country. Diseases and the hostility of the Indians completely discouraged them, and all gladly returned to France. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING JACQUES CARTIER's VOYAGES Thus: 1st Voyage---- 2d Voyage.... 3d Voyage--> -->] The zeal of the French for American discovery and settlement on the St. Lawrence ceased with Cartier. His hope that the St. Lawrence would prove the long-sought passage to China had to be given up, but the river which he had discovered and so thoroughly explored proved to be a great highway into the center of North America. COLIGNY'S PLAN FOR A HUGUENOT COLONY. Nearly thirty years later the French Protestant leader, Coligny, formed the plan of establishing a colony in America, which would be a refuge for the Huguenots if their enemies got the upper hand in France. An expedition left France in 1564, and selected a site for a settlement near the mouth of the St. Johns river in Florida. It seemed a good place. A fort, called Fort Caroline, was quickly built. But the first colonists were not well chosen. They were chiefly younger nobles, soldiers unused to labor, or discontented tradesmen and artisans. There were few farmers among them. THE MISDEEDS OF THE COLONISTS. They spent their time visiting distant Indian tribes in a vain search for gold and silver, or plundering Spanish villages and ships in the West Indies. No one thought of preparing the soil and planting seeds for a food supply. It seemed easier to rob neighbors. The provisions which they had brought with them gave out. Game and fish abounded in the woods and rivers about them, but they were without skill in hunting and fishing. Before the first year had passed the miserable inhabitants of Fort Caroline were reduced to digging roots in the forest for food. Starvation and the revenge of angry Indians confronted them.