Canada | Page 8

that the French raised on the southeastern shores of Cape
Breton the fortress of Louisbourg, the ruins of which now alone remain
to tell of their ambition and enterprise.
Leaving Acadia, we come to the provinces which {7} are watered by
the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, extending from the Gulf to the
head of Lake Superior, and finding their northern limits in the waters of
Hudson's Bay. The name of Canada appears to be also a memorial of
the Indian nations that once occupied the region between the Ottawa
and Saguenay rivers. This name, meaning a large village or town in one
of the dialects of the Huron-Iroquois tongue, was applied, in the first
half of the sixteenth century, to a district in the neighbourhood of the
Indian town of Stadacona, which stood on the site of the present city of
Quebec. In the days of French occupation the name was more generally
used than New France, and sometimes extended to the country now
comprised in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, or, in other words,
to the whole region from the Gulf to the head of Lake Superior. Finally,
it was adopted as the most appropriate designation for the new
Dominion that made a step toward national life in 1867.
The most important feature of this historic country is the remarkable
natural highway which has given form and life to the growing nation by
its side--a river famous in the history of exploration and war--a river
which has never-failing reservoirs in those great lakes which occupy a
basin larger than Great Britain--a river noted for its long stretch of
navigable waters, its many rapids, and its unequalled Falls of Niagara,
around all of which man's enterprise and skill have constructed a
system of canals to give the west a continuous navigation from Lake

Superior to the ocean for over two thousand miles. {8} The Laurentian
Hills--"the nucleus of the North American continent"--reach from
inhospitable, rock-bound Labrador to the north of the St. Lawrence,
extend up the Ottawa valley, and pass eventually to the northwest of
Lakes Huron and Superior, as far as the "Divide" between the St.
Lawrence valley and Hudson's Bay, but display their boldest forms on
the north shore of the river below Quebec, where the names of Capes
Eternity and Trinity have been so aptly given to those noble precipices
which tower above the gloomy waters of the Saguenay, and have a
history which "dates back to the very dawn of geographical time, and is
of hoar antiquity in comparison with that of such youthful ranges as the
Andes and the Alps." [3]
From Gaspe, the southeastern promontory at the entrance of the Gulf,
the younger rocks of the Appalachian range, constituting the
breast-bone of the continent, and culminating at the north in the White
Mountains, describe a great curve southwesterly to the valley of the
Hudson; and it is between the ridge-like elevations of this range and the
older Laurentian Hills that we find the valley of the St. Lawrence, in
which lie the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
[Illustration: View of Cape Trinity on the Laurentian Range.]
The province of Quebec is famous in the song and story of Canada;
indeed, for a hundred and fifty years, it was Canada itself. More than a
million and a quarter of people, speaking the language and {10}
professing the religion of their forefathers, continue to occupy the
country which extends from the Gulf to the Ottawa, and have made
themselves a power in the intellectual and political life of Canada.
Everywhere do we meet names that recall the ancient régime--French
kings and princes, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, explorers, and
adventurers, compete in the national nomenclature with priests and
saints. This country possesses large tracts of arable land, especially in
the country stretching from the St. Lawrence to Lake Champlain, and
watered by the Richelieu, that noted highway in Canadian history. Even
yet, at the head-waters of its many rivers, it has abundance of timber to
attract the lumberman.

The province of Ontario was formerly known as Upper or Western
Canada, but at the time of the union it received its present name
because it largely lies by the side of the lake which the Hurons and
more famous Iroquois called "great." It extends from the river of the
Ottawas--the first route of the French adventurers to the western lakes
as far as the northwesterly limit of Lake Superior, and is the most
populous and prosperous province of the Dominion on account of its
wealth of agricultural land, and the energy of its population. Its history
is chiefly interesting for the illustrations it affords of Englishmen's
successful enterprise in a new country. The origin of the province must
be sought in the history of those "United Empire Loyalists,"