Voyage of Verazzani: Roque and De

Toward the end of June, De la Roque left Newfoundland for the St. Lawrence, passing through the straits of Belle Isle. He did not stop at Quebec, for he found the natives very hostile, as Cartier had told him they were. He went further up the river, probably to the place where the Pilot's vessels were anchored when he sent the two ships back to France the previous year. There De la Roque built a fort, but there is no record of what else he did in Canada, excepting that he and his companions suffered severely during the following winter, and early in June, 1543, made an exploring voyage to the Saguenay, where one of his vessels was lost. In the autumn of that year he returned to France. Finding his king again warring fiercely with his old enemy Charles, against whose empire he had hurled five different armies at as many points, the Viceroy abandoned all projects of foreign colonization and re-entered the military service in which he had often before distinguished himself. Six years later, when Francis was dead (having perished because of his personal excesses at the age of fifty-three years), and Henry the Second, who had married Catharine de Medici, was on the throne of France, the Lord of Robertval again sailed for the St. Lawrence, and was never heard of afterward.