Landing on October 2nd he found the well-built town of Hochelaga, and was welcomed by the inhabitants, the first white man they had ever seen. The reception must have been impressive to both parties, and was made still more so by the Indians taking Cartier up on the great hill to which he gave the name of Mount Royal, and from which he looked over fields of maize and beans and peas and wild fruits, with the silver river winding its way among the beautiful foliage of the autumn, and away in the distance the faint outline of what now are known as the Adirondacks of New York State and the Green Mountains of Vermont. His men were full of wonder and it is interesting to read that what attracted them most was “a great pile of rats, which live in the water and are as large as rabbits and are wonderfully good to eat.”[3] He returned to Quebec, where he built huts in which to spend the winter. Unaccustomed to so severe a climate and not well provisioned, disease broke out and so many of his men died that when spring came and he set sail for France he had to abandon one of his vessels, “La Petite Hermine.” Cartier had a story worth telling. Whereas Columbus had touched the New World and Cabot had sailed along its shores, Cartier had penetrated a thousand miles into the continent—“Up the greatest river without comparison that is known to have ever been seen,” as Cartier told the King, and when he stood on Mount Royal on that October day he was the only white man in all that country now known as Canada and the United States of America. It makes one think of another great adventurer who, at almost the same time, upon the same continent, is depicted as standing “silent upon a peak in Darien.”[4] This was Cortez of Spain and so we have the French and the Spanish in the North American continent. To confirm his story and to illustrate the transfer of the land to France, Cartier took back with him Donnaconna and two other chiefs who were presented to the King. They really were kidnapped, and sad to tell they did not live to return to their own land.