Canada | Page 7

become free commonwealths with great possibilities of
development before them. Yet, while England lost so much in America
by the War of Independence, there still remained to her a vast northern
territory, stretching far to the east and west from Quebec, and
containing all the rudiments of national life--
"The raw materials of a State, Its muscle and its mind."
A century later than that Treaty of Paris which was signed in the palace
of Versailles, and ceded Canada finally to England, the statesmen of the
provinces of this northern territory, which was still a British
possession,--statesmen of French as well as English Canada--assembled
in an old building of this same city, so rich in memories of old France,
{4} and took the first steps towards the establishment of that Dominion,
which, since then, has reached the Pacific shores.
It is the story of this Canadian Dominion, of its founders, explorers,
missionaries, soldiers, and statesmen, that I shall attempt to relate
briefly in the following pages, from the day the Breton sailor ascended
the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga until the formation of the confederation,
which united the people of two distinct nationalities and extends over
so wide a region--so far beyond the Acadia and Canada which France
once called her own. But that the story may be more intelligible from
the beginning, it is necessary to give a bird's-eye view of the country,
whose history is contemporaneous with that of the United States, and
whose territorial area from Cape Breton to Vancouver--the sentinel
islands of the Atlantic and Pacific approaches--is hardly inferior to that
of the federal republic.
Although the population of Canada at present does not exceed nine
millions of souls, the country has, within a few years, made great
strides in the path of national development, and fairly takes a place of

considerable importance among those nations whose stories have been
already told; whose history goes back to centuries when the Laurentian
Hills, those rocks of primeval times, looked down on an unbroken
wilderness of forest and stretches of silent river. If we treat the subject
from a strictly historical point of view, the confederation of provinces
and territories comprised within the Dominion may be most
conveniently grouped into {5} several distinct divisions. Geographers
divide the whole country lying between the two oceans into three
well-defined regions: 1. The Eastern, extending from the Atlantic to the
head of Lake Superior. 2. The Central, stretching across the prairies and
plains to the base of the Rocky Mountains. 3. The Western, comprising
that sea of mountains which at last unites with the waters of the Pacific.
For the purposes of this narrative, however, the Eastern and largest
division--also the oldest historically--must be separated into two
distinct divisions, known as Acadia and Canada in the early annals of
America.
The first division of the Eastern region now comprises the provinces of
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, which,
formerly, with a large portion of the State of Maine, were best known
as Acadie,[2] a memorial of the Indian occupation before the French
régime. These provinces are indented by noble harbours and bays, and
many deep rivers connect the sea-board with the interior. They form the
western and southern boundaries of that great gulf or eastern portal of
Canada, which maritime adventurers explored from the earliest period
of which we have any record. Ridges of the Appalachian range stretch
from New England to {6} the east of these Acadian provinces, giving
picturesque features to a generally undulating surface, and find their
boldest expression in the northern region of the island of Cape Breton.
The peninsula of Nova Scotia is connected with the neighbouring
province of New Brunswick by a narrow isthmus, on one side of which
the great tides of the Bay of Fundy tumultuously beat, and is separated
by a very romantic strait from the island of Cape Breton. Both this
isthmus and island, we shall see in the course of this narrative, played
important parts in the struggle between France and England for
dominion in America. This Acadian division possesses large tracts of
fertile lands, and valuable mines of coal and other minerals. In the

richest district of the peninsula of Nova Scotia were the thatch-roofed
villages of those Acadian farmers whose sad story has been told in
matchless verse by a New England poet, and whose language can still
be heard throughout the land they loved, and to which some of them
returned after years of exile. The inexhaustible fisheries of the Gulf,
whose waters wash their shores, centuries ago attracted fleets of
adventurous sailors from the Atlantic coast of Europe, and led to the
discovery of Canada and the St. Lawrence. It was with the view of
protecting these fisheries, and guarding the great entrance to New
France,