The French were not far behind the Spanish in their attempts to colonize North America. In 1524 John Verrazano, a Florentine in the employ of Francis I., while seeking the supposed water passage through America to China, explored the coast from about Wilmington, N. C., to Newfoundland. Ten years later (1534) Jacques Cartier, a St. Malo seaman, sailed up the north shore of the estuary of the St. Lawrence "until land could be seen on either side." The next year he was back again, and ascended to the first rapids at La Chine, naming the island mountain there, Mont-Réal. Having spent the winter in this inhospitable region, his reports were such as to discourage for a time further attempts at colonization in America by the French, who were just now engaged at home in serious difficulties with Spain. A truce being at last declared between France and Spain, Cartier was made captain-general and chief pilot of an American colonizing expedition which Francis allowed the lord of Roberval to undertake. But this conflict of authority was distasteful to both Cartier and Roberval, and the former started off before his chief in May, 1541. He built a fort near Quebec, but a year later returned to France, just before Roberval arrived with reinforcements for the colony. The latter remained for a year in America before returning home, and it is thought that he visited Massachusetts Bay in his voyages alongshore. France was now ablaze with civil war, and the Huguenots, with their independent notions, were engaging all the resources of the royal power, so that further American discoveries were for the time postponed. The Newfoundland industry, however, grew apace, for the Church prescribed a fish diet on certain days and at certain seasons, and the consumption of salted fish in Europe had grown to be enormous. Breton vessels were from the first prominent in the traffic. 12. French Attempts to colonize Florida (1562-1568). Sidenote: Coligny's colony at Port Royal. Admiral Coligny, the great Huguenot leader, was ambitious to establish a colony of French Protestants in America which should be a refuge for his persecuted countrymen whenever it became desirable for them to seek new seats. Jean Ribaut went out under his auspices in 1562, discovered St. John's River in Florida, went up Broad River, named the country Carolina, after the boy-king, Charles IX., and left twenty-six colonists at Port Royal, on Lemon Island. But the settlers soon tired of their enterprise, and the following year set out for home. An English cruiser captured the party on the high sea when it was reduced to the last extremity for want of food. The more exhausted of the company were landed in France; the rest were taken to England. Sidenote: Laudonnière in Florida.