The trade in the St. Lawrence soon became valuable; and as the English had, by Raleigh's means, extended their fame on the continent of America, the French pushed their Canadian discoveries to the utmost available bounds.

Two remarkable circumstances have been recorded of this period, one the mention of the practice of smoking tobacco, as early as 1535, in the voyages of Cartier, who describes the modes in which the Canadian Indians used it, and the other the discovery of a profitable trade in ivory and oil from the walrus of the St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and Labrador. At Ramea, a small island off the coast of Newfoundland, fifteen thousand of these huge sea-horses were killed in one year by a small fishing vessel, the tusks fetching even a higher price than those of the elephant.

This denizen of the rocky isles and of the adjacent ocean has now entirely disappeared, having been literally exterminated both in Newfoundland and in the St. Lawrence.

The Marquis De la Roche, in 1593, was appointed Governor-General of Canada by Henry IV., and ordered to conquer and colonize, but he did very little towards either, and was succeeded by Monsieur Chauvin in 1600, who first visited Tadousac, at the mouth of the Great Saguenay,* which is still neglected, although opening into a magnificent country. In 1601 he proceeded as far as Trois Rivières, now a neat little town on the St. Lawrence, which I have

* The enterprising and intelligent merchant, William Price, Esq., of Quebec, has here large wood-cutting establishments.-EDITOR.

already noticed, and which promises hereafter to be of some importance.

In 1603 Pierre du Gast, one of the household of Henry IV., received the patent of Lieutenant-General of all territories in America lying between the fortieth and fiftieth degrees of north latitude; and Champlain, a name much better known, explored the Saguenay country in the same year.

Samuel

We have now arrived at an important era. Champlain de Brouage was sent out from France, in 1608, with powers to make, at all risks, a permanent colony in Canada; and such a task could not have been confided to better hands. He first carefully examined the coasts of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, as it was afterwards named, then the shores of the St. Lawrence, until he pitched upon the site of his settlement at Cape Diamond.

We shall quote the words of this illustrious navigator: "Trouvant un lieu le plus estroit de la rivière que les habitans du pays appellent Quebec, j'y bastir et edifier une habitation, et defricher des terres, et faire quelques jardinages."

Hence arose that city which is now one of the handsomest to look at from the water probably in the world, and which is also the principal fortress in all America.

Long and learned have been the disquisitions upon the origin of the words Quebec and Canada, and at last it has been strongly asserted that Quebec is derived from a place in Normandy, as the seal of the Earl of Suffolk, given in "Edmonstone's Heraldry," has that word upon it; and many places on the

coast of that part of France have the termination bec, beak, bill, or cape, as nez is nose, ness, or promontory. Suffolk was one of Henry the Fifth's great commanders, in his Gallic wars, and probably had a fief of that name conferred upon him.*

But however that may be, no such place of any note whatever now exists in France, and Champlain having declared that he named his settlement after an Indian village appears conclusive, although the termination of words in a harsh consonant, like c or k, is not very common in any Indian dialect; the Huron language has, however, many beginning with k, pronounced as in the Greek.

Canada, I think, is satisfactorily derived from a very universal Indian word, signifying a town, village, or collection of wigwams. Thus, Canadaigua, in the Genesee country, was formerly a large Indian settlement, and strangers coming so unexpectedly upon the red men, as the first adventurers did, would naturally have the large villages pointed out to them.

My own name, as given me at a council of the Mohawks, during the disturbances of 1837, is Anadaesc, "he who summons the town," and many other corroborative cases might be cited which have been ably handled by the late much lamented Andrew Stuart, Esq., of Quebec, in the "Transactions of the Natural History Society," in that city.

The Huron name of the promontory of Quebec is Tiant-ontarili, "the place of the narrowing, or the Bec was a common Norman terminal. Near Aylesbury, at Whitchurch in Buckinghamshire, may be seen the site of an immense castle built at the conquest by the Lord of Bolbec, a Norman follower of William.

straits," most applicable to the condition of the St. Lawrence just beyond Cape Diamond; and Stadaconi was the original designation of the confluence of the St. Charles with the St. Lawrence on the lower ground of Quebec. In the Micmac tongue, now confined to the Atlantic regions of the St. Lawrence, the word Quebec is said to signify the shutting in of the river, perfectly descriptive of the great harbour between Cape Diamond, Point Levi, and the Isle of Orleans. The Micmac language abounds in terminal consonants, as Paspèbiac, "the broken bar or beach;" Cascapediac, "the strong current;" Matapediac, "the volume of waters descending from a great marsh," &c. These are all places in the Gulf of Gaspé, or Bay of Chaleurs ; and Mr. Stuart says that the terminating syllable of Quebec is not at all at variance with the phonetic analogies of that language, whilst it is more than probable that this Atlantic tribe knew, or even occupied, the country near the southern coast of Quebec Basin.

Quebec was at first a colony of the Huguenots or Protestants; who were not, however, long allowed to remain in quiet possession either of their trade, or of their religion, for they fell under the ban of the tyrant Richelieu,—who, more king than his royal master, in 1627, instituted an association called, "The Company of the Hundred;" to which most extensive commercial powers were given, and whose patron was the Cardinal himself.

This scheme, planned like all those the powerful and sagacious mind of the French Wolsey instituted, was so constructed as to have raised Canada to sudden eminence; but the English monarch, Charles I.,

foreseeing the danger to which the colonies of England would thereby be exposed, afterwards commenced that series of American warfare against France which was to be consummated by his more remote successor George III.

David Kertk, a Dutch adventurer, accordingly received a sort of roving commission to annoy, spoil and conquer the French transatlantic plantations. Kertk having been engaged against Canada since 1628, and, in 1629, Champlain, who commanded at Quebec, was forced, from the want of resources, to capitulate to him and his brother Louis; who both gave such favourable terms to the French settlers, that they generally chose to remain in the country as subjects of the British crown.*

From want of an accurate knowledge of the great importance to England of the conquest of all the North American settlements, Charles, by the treaty of St. Germain, in 1632, restored Acadia, Cape Breton, and Canada to Louis XIII.t

Hence arose the bitter animosities which existed, for a hundred and thirty years afterwards, between the British colonists of North America, and the settlers in the French domain. Hence arose the immense empire which France founded, from the Gulf of St.

* A curious description of the taking of Quebec by Kertk, or as he is usually called Kirk, is given by Father Hennepin in a work, now rather scarce, published in 1699, and dedicated to William III., in which is a view of that city when it surrendered on the 20th of July, 1629.

↑ Though this is denied by the representatives of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, who had obtained a grant of the ancient L'Acadie.-EDITOR.