The Legend of Saguenay (Royaume du Saguenay) is a legend about the existence of a fabulously rich country called the Kingdom of Saguenay (Saguenay), the search for which haunted the French explorers of Canada during the period of great geographical discoveries. There are several versions of the origin and interpretation of the legends about Saguenay.
According to one of them, the legend was the legend of the Algonquin Indian tribe, who believed that north of the St. Lawrence River - in the area of 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 Donnacon chief, captured by the French and taken to France in the 1530s, also told the king about this mythical kingdom.
French and French Canadian explorers searched in vain for it, just as the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors spent decades in search of the fabulous Eldorado, according to legend, located in the Orinoco basin (Venezuela).
It is possible that Saguenay was only a French version of El Dorado, and the Indians took advantage of the greed of the discoverers in order to drive them away to the more severe northern regions, where many died from hunger and scurvy.
But the idea of such a country was not entirely unfounded: so, indeed, although the northern coast (region of Cote-Nord) in Quebec has an extremely harsh climate, in the area of Lake Saint-Jean, from where the Saguenay River flows, it is softer and more favorable for human economy, thanks to which the region was settled by the French Canadians only at the end of the 19th century and is now part of the province of Quebec (Canada).