After four hundred years of maritime progress, the passage of the narrow strait that separates Newfoundland from Labrador remains still rough and dangerous, even for the great steel ships of to-day.

We can imagine how forbidding it must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the decks of their small storm-tossed caravels.

Heavy gales from the west came roaring through the strait.

Great quantities of floating ice ground to and fro under the wind and current.

So stormy was the outlook that for the time being the passage seemed impossible.