A comparison of selected French-Canadian, Australian and English-Canadian novels : 1769-1908

Abstract

When Jacques Cartier made landfall at Gaspe in 1534,the world which was known to Europeans was still a very small place. To Cartier and his men it must have seemed unimaginably vast, having sailed for three weeks across the Northern Ocean, and what maps of the world he might have seen would have confirmed this impression. The rudimentary outline of the eastern coast of North America soon faded off to the west into 'Terra Incognita', The Southern hemisphere of Cartier's map would have been dominated by the huge expanse of 'el mar Pacifico' as Magellan had recently named it. Along the Southern edge a vague line marked the undiscovered continent of 'Terra Australis Incognita'.