To the savage Indians the mighty vessels of France were marvels from another world, and the river was soon swarming with their birch-bark canoes. The story of the two braves who had been carried away to France filled them with grave wonder, and the glittering costumes of Cartier and his officers seemed like the garments of gods. The great chief, Donnacona, waiving regal conventions, clambered upon the deck of the _Hermine_, where Cartier regaled him with cakes and wine, and with a few beads purchased the amity of his naked followers. Then Cartier set out in a small boat to explore the river. Above the Island of Bacchus he found himself in a beautiful harbour, on the farther side of which the great river of Canada boomed through a narrow gorge. On the left of the basin the broader channel of the river passed out between the Isle of Bacchus and a range of wooded heights; while on his right, a tower of rock rose majestically from the foam-flecked water. Among the oak and walnut trees that crowned the summit of this natural battlement clustered the bark cabins of Stadaconé, whence, as wide as eye could range, the Lord of Canada held his savage sway. [Footnote 2: Now the Island of Orleans.] This Algonquin eyrie seemed only accessible by a long detour through the upland, in which the rocky heights gradually descended to the little river of St. Croix. Thither Cartier and his companions made their way, and then, for the first time, white men gazed upon the green landscape spread beneath that high promontory. On the north and east the blue rim of the world's oldest mountains, then as now, seemed to shut off a mysterious barren land; on the south and west the eye met a fairer prospect, for beyond a sea of verdure the sun's rays glistened upon the distant hills of unknown, unnamed Vermont. Between these half-points of the compass the broad St. Lawrence rolled outward to the sea, and the discovering eye followed its bending course beyond the Isle of Bacchus and past the beetling shoulder of Cap Tourmente. In the summer of 1535 Cartier stood entranced on this magnificent precipice; and to-day the visitor to Quebec gazes from the King's Bastion upon the same panorama, hardly altered by the flight of nearly four centuries.