In 1541 Cartier led his third, and probably his last, expedition to the St. Lawrence. A new headquarters was established at Cap-Rouge, a few miles upstream from Stadacona. This time Cartier was to be followed by Jean Francois de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval, with a party of colonists. After a wait which lasted through the following winter, Cartier set sail for home, only to meet Roberval's party "in three tall ships" in the harbor of what is now St. John's, Newf.

Disregarding the orders of Roberval, who was his senior officer, to accompany the colonizing party back to Quebec, Cartier sailed for France under cover of darkness. The Roberval expedition proceeded upstream, and a tragically unsuccessful effort was made to found a permanent colony on the site where Cartier had wintered the previous season. By the following year some 60 of the colonists had died. Roberval decided to abandon the whole colonizing project, and France itself turned its back on the Canadian experiment for almost 60 years.

Native Peoples Issues