If it does not show us Cartier as he was,--and we have no absolute proof in the one or the other direction,--at least it shows us Cartier as he might well have been, with precisely the face and bearing which the hero-worshipper would read into the character of such a discoverer.
The port of St Malo, the birthplace and the home of Cartier, is situated in the old province of Brittany, in the present department of Ille-et-Vilaine.

It is thus near the lower end of the English Channel.
To the north, about forty miles away, lies Jersey, the nearest of the Channel Islands, while on the west surges the restless tide of the broad Atlantic.

The situation of the port has made it a nursery of hardy seamen.

The town stands upon a little promontory that juts out as a peninsula into the ocean.

The tide pours in and out of the harbour thus formed, and rises within the harbour to a height of thirty or forty feet.