131 



their common intercoui-re and difcourfes/ it feems a continuation of vocal 

 founds, very little broken by confonants, and is breathed with a melody 



and 



in reality, by juft meafurement, four hundred and fifty. No«' K-Jhelih, in the language 

 of. the Algonkins, the inhabitants when the Europeans firft invaded, fignifies the rocky 

 cape on tU river, a piflure in a word. How the learned miffionaries, who have been 

 put to fuch fhifts to explain the name of ^ebeci, overloolced this obvious origin, it is 

 d.fBcult to fay. When I mentioned this derivation, and the only objeftion to it, the 

 fuppreiCon of the firft fyllable, to my friend Pere Le Clere, he told me he thought 

 ^.ebeck had efcaped very well, for that in the neighbourhood of the lake of the two 

 mountains, there was a place called in Indian Kun^uni, or the fifliing place, which the 

 French had changed into ^ulnze-Chlens. Pere Charlevoix has expended much fruitlefs 

 patBs in inveftigat.ng the origin of the name Iroquois given to the five nations. If h<^ 

 had confidered that the French, who gave them that name, firft flopped at ^.ehect 

 and probably took the names and defcription of the Indians on the upper part of the 

 river, from the Algonkins they met with below, he would have found a natural folu- 

 tion of h.s doubts. Iroquoteji, he is an Iroquois ; Iroquootachim.n, he fpeaks Iroquois : 

 fuch were the anfwers of the Algonkin Indians, to the queftions put to them by the 

 French explorers, relative to their neighbours the five nations. Such is the language 

 of the Moutasnois Indians on the Sagueny river, below ^ueiecl; at this day. For 

 explaining the name of Monlrea/, recourfe muft be had to the Iroquois. Ononto in their 

 language /ignifies a mountain, the particle io beautiful being added, makes Onovthio the 

 beautiful mountain. But Ononthio figuratively ufed is alfo the name of a great ehief or ting. 

 The French tranftated the name, but adopted part of its original and part of its fi- 

 gurative fenfe in their tranflation, fo as to make it Mont-real, the Royal mountain. The 

 Oh,o takes Its rife in the Seneia, (an Iroquois) country, and bears an Iroquois name 

 Olno! IS an exclamation which Cgnifies Lo beautiful! We have preferved the original 

 name ; the French have tranflated it, for they call the river la belle riviere Th<t Iro- 

 quois language feems to give a rational origin to the name of Canada. ScanaJa fig. 

 nifies a lake or place covered ■with nvater. When we recolleft that this country furni/hes 

 a water communication with the fuperior lakes, by Niagara and lake Erie ; another by 

 lake Toronto ^.r^AMachidacl, and a third by the great .ta^a river,. and the lake of the 

 Nip,c,mm or watermen. When we obferve how the fpace between Ontario and the 

 .ta-wa river abounds with finall lakes: when we find to the north-eaft of the St. La'u,. 

 rence, lakes and rivers innumerable communicating with its waters by fliort portages • 

 when we furvey the lands on the fouth-weft of the St. Z„«„.„„, held by the 

 French as part of ancient Canada : where the Oneida, the Qnondago the Cayuga 

 and the Seneca lakes form a chain of -.vater communications, vhile lake Chan,p. 

 lam and its bays, and the Chaudiere, the Saguenay, and many other rivers and lakes, 

 open the country nearer the fea. It does not feem extraordinary that this An- 

 gular country, every where permeable by canoes, ftould be called the country of-u^aters. 



"■ ^ I prefer 



