Realistic French merchants, like Jean Ango, were more interested in the furs that had been finding their way back across the sea. However colonization was an end they sought, too, if it provided a base for their traders. It was a long way, across a dangerous ocean, to New France. With the support of both the king and the merchants, therefore, Jacques Cartier went back to New France in 1541. The Sieur de Roberval followed him in 1542. In their well-supplied fleets they transported several hundred colonists, including many farmers, also soldiers, miners and traders. Roberval’s expedition included some women. They planted near Quebec, building forts there; both tried desperately to reach mythical Saguenay. Each remained through only one Canadian winter among the now hostile Indians. Both leaders were more interested in finding quick treasure than in any such prosaic business as fur trading. Cartier took back fool’s gold and false diamonds found on the river’s bank near the forts. Rescue ships had to be sent over from France with enough supplies to evacuate the scurvy-ridden remnant of Roberval’s contingent. It would be another sixty years before a permanent colony was planted in these parts. But New France was held, nevertheless, for France. And, curiously enough, by the very fur trade that had been so much ignored. * * * * * The fishing barques from St. Malo, from Dieppe, Rouen, La Rochelle and Havre, kept coming to America’s northern coasts every summer, hundreds of them. They fished for cod on the banks, hunted walrus in the great gulf, and caught whales in the lower parts of the St. Lawrence River. Always, wherever they were, the mariners drove an ever increasing trade with the Indians for valuable pelts. Over the sides of their ships and on shore they bartered for marten, otter, fox and beaver. Commerce flourished to such an extent through this individual enterprise that ships’ captains frequently found it profitable to turn all hands to bartering for pelts. It was a French vessel in 1569 at Cape Breton whose master drove a “trade with the people of divers sortes of fine furs” that picked up the Englishmen, David Ingram and his two companions, Richard Browne and Richard Twide. Along with a large number of others these three had been abandoned ashore following the defeat of their famous leader, John Hawkins, the slaver, in a piratical engagement in the Caribbean with the Spaniards. Ingram and his two friends, however, struck out into the Florida wilderness, “crossed the River May,” and for twelve months beat their hazardous way northward through lands never before trod by white men, until they reached Cape Breton. They reported seeing “plentie of fine furres” along the way.