The Legend of Sagenaia

The legend of the Saguenay ( French Royaume du Saguenay ) - the legend of the existence of a fabulously rich country called the Kingdom of Saguenay (Sagney), the search of which haunted the French explorers of Canada ( Jacques Cartier and others) during the period of great geographical discoveries. There are several versions of the origin and interpretation of the traditions of the Saguenay. According to one of them, the legend was a tradition of the Algonquin Indian tribe, who believed that north of the St. Lawrence River - in the modern district of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean ( Quebec ), there is a fabulous kingdom of fair-haired people who own warehouses of gold , silver and fur . The leader of Donnacon , captured by the French and taken to France in the 1530s, also told the king about this mythical kingdom. French and Franco-Canadian researchers searched in vain for it, as decades ago the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors spent searching for the fabulous Eldorado , which, according to legend, was located in the Orinoco basin ( Venezuela ). It is possible that Saguenay was only the French version of Eldorado, and the Indians used the greed of the discoverers to drive them into the more severe northern regions, where many died of starvation and scurvy. But the idea of ​​such a country was not completely groundless: indeed, although the northern coast ( Cote Nor region ) in Quebec has an extremely harsh climate, in the vicinity of Lake Saint-Jean , from where the Saguenay River flows, it is softer and more favorable for human economy, due to which ^{[ clarify ] the} region was settled by the French Canadians only at the end of the 19th century and is currently part of the province of Quebec ( Canada ).