……

On August 1, 1295, Amerigo led a fleet of ships with several Native American guides and continued southwest at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. The target of their trip was the Indian village of Standakona, at the end of the estuary. This place has been marked by Ferdinand with a name that will become even more famous in later generations - Quebec!

Quebec – Québec – The name derives from the Algonquian word "kébec", meaning where the river narrows, at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers. The river has shrunk to less than 1,000 meters here, and the situation is dangerous. Historically, it has the reputation of Gibraltar in North America as the key to opening the interior of Canada.

The fleet sailed here, it was already freshwater waters, Amerigo stopped on the bank of the river, and the Spaniards on the fleet set foot on the land of what would become Lower Quebec, where there was the Indian village called Standa Kona, and on the cliff face, on the steep plateau along the St. Lawrence River, was the later Uptown - Cape Diamond. It is a good place to build a fortress, such as the star-shaped bastion that is emerging in Sardinia.

However, these 300 Spaniards alone are obviously not suitable for such a grand project as the construction of the Diamond Corner Basil. And in five years, there will simply be no European country that will have the opportunity to set foot in this zone. Therefore, they had ample time to build a truly solid fortification, and the purpose of this expedition was limited to establishing a temporarily strong and reliable estuary stronghold in the lowlands of the Lower City.

In the summer of 1495, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, the temperate broad-leaved forest dominated by maple trees was a beautiful and vibrant landscape.

Several Indians acted as guides to lead the Spaniards to the village of Standakona, where the Indians were friendly and helpful to the Spaniards as they were in other areas. Summer produce is also abundant, with fish and lobster filling the appetite of visitors.

A few days later, Amerigo began to deploy the formal establishment of a fortress. In fact, Quebec is the end of this exploration of the St. Lawrence Bay, and it is not intended to be further inland along the St. Lawrence River. Quebec is located at the innermost point of the St. Lawrence Bay, the contraction of the St. Lawrence River, and ending at it is a successful end to the exploration of the St. Lawrence Bay.

The reason why no further exploration was carried out was mainly due to Ferdinand's strategic thinking on North America - effective control and a firm foothold.

Due to the superior geographical location, strong navy, and the delimitation of the Papal Meridian, the entire territory of Latin America from the Florida Peninsula to the south can be basically controlled by Spain, and only Spain can control it, but in North America, it will face the threat of Britain and France. In particular, eastern Canada was a place where British and French forces repeatedly touched and contested in the early days.

Ferdinand, who was familiar with the history of North American exploration, was keenly aware of the fact that in the 40 years from 1495 to 1535, although Britain and France sent fleets to the coast of North America many times, they all came with the ambition of reaching the East, and when they saw the ordinary and barren and cold coastal landscape in front of them, they gave up further exploration, and did not even make a cross to declare sovereignty, let alone establish a settlement!

This shows that for a long time Britain and France did not seriously want to open up the Canadian region at all, they came purely for the wealth and opportunity of the East, and with the mentality of competing with Spain, and once they found that it was not as good as they wanted, they went back. They had no intention of further managing the indigenous wastelands.

On the Spanish side, on the other hand, Columbus established settlements on his first voyage, even if he did not find what he was looking for. Later, even if it proved that it was not the East, Spain continued to colonize the Americas, establishing settlements in Central and South America, colonizing and immigration, and in the past 40 years, Spain destroyed the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire one after another, and expanded its possessions in Latin America.

As a result, in the past 40 years, the Spanish colonies in the south have expanded dramatically, and most of the Spanish colonies have been framed in the future, while Britain and France are still expeditions coming and going in North America, but they have not left or taken away a trace of clouds, and the Canadian region has never really been "discovered". Not an inch of land has ever been controlled by the Europeans.

Ferdinand, on the other hand, believed that such an expedition, one that did not aim at establishing and expanding effective control, was of limited significance. Ferdinand had previously traveled to the Americas, and although he had made thousands of miles of voyages, he had established a stronghold and exercised effective control on each occasion.

If you want to take North America, you must take control of it as soon as possible! With Britain and France unable to exercise effective control for 40 years, while Spain already had effective control over New York and Newfoundland, this goal was easy to achieve.

Due to the climate and geography of Canada, the only way to gain a foothold in the early 16th century was to explore the Bay of St. Lawrence, and other regions, such as Hudson Bay, were bitterly cold. Even in St. Lawrence Bay, the natural conditions were more severe for 16th-century agrarian societies, and only the St. Lawrence River estuary and the Nova Scotia Peninsula could be explored.

And in fact, Canada's real wealth lies in the interior, in the St. Lawrence River Valley and the Great Lakes Basin! This area is so vast that it is not easy to control, but at the beginning of the 16th century the European direction could only be accessed by the St. Lawrence River! And the mouth of the St. Lawrence River is firmly sealed by Quebec!

Therefore, Quebec is worthy of the name of Gibraltar in North America - only the Gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada is more suitable for exploration and settlement, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence is only the mouth of the St. Lawrence River is more friendly, and the real important areas of Canada are in the St. Lawrence River basin and the Great Lakes, but these are blocked by Quebec and cannot be entered without Quebec......

Therefore, as long as Quebec is firmly controlled and established at the mouth of the river, Britain and France are cut off from North America, and the vast inland American wilderness, with only one candidate from Spain to open up, is equivalent to Spanish land, and the question is only when and in what order to actually control it.

Amerigo did not explore the Montreal area further, and if he went any further, it would not be easy to control the situation, and the winter in Canada was cold and severe, and the French in Quebec were found to have died of illness in the winter after going deep inland.

300 Spaniards contacted a group of indigenous Indians to help them move wood and stone in the small Champlain area of the lower town of Quebec City, and build a wood and stone fortification, which was also a settlement and an important shipping and trade hub connecting the St. Lawrence River basin and the Atlantic Ocean in the future, this fortress and the surrounding land were officially named "Quebec", once it was built, it also symbolized the establishment of Spanish sovereignty over the northern part of the North American continent.

……