Political Development. 411 



Although the Cabot brothers discovered Cape 

 Breton and Labrador in 1497 and 1500, the first 

 settlement of Canadian territory was not made until 

 1541 by French colonists, after the first Captain- 

 General of Canada, Jacques Cartier, the discoverer 

 and explorer of the St. Lawrence (in 1534), had taken 

 possession of the country for Francis I ; but not much 

 progress in colonizing was made until Champlain's 

 arrival in the first years of the next century. Quebec 

 was founded as early as 1608, and Montreal in 1G11, 

 but Ottawa dates its first beginnings not farther back 

 than 1800. 



The northern country around Hudson's Bay was, 

 under the name of Rupert's Land (after Prince Rupert, 

 the head of the enterprise), undefined in limits, 

 granted by Charles II, in 1670, to the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, a powerful fur- trading corporation which had 

 not only a commercial monopoly but, except for occa- 

 sional interference by the French, held absolute govern- 

 mental sway over the country through 200 years, its 

 jurisdiction at one time extending to the Pacific Coast. 



Friction and warfare with the English resulted in 

 the latter acquiring by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, 

 Newfoundland, and settling their rights on Hudson's 

 Bay. The final conquest of "New France" by the 

 English ended French rule in 1763, but the French 

 colonists remained peacefully, and their descendants 

 form to-day, at least in Quebec, the predominating 

 influence. Indeed, in 1774, by the so-called Quebec 

 Act, the first permanent system of self government was 

 established much on the lines of the French feudal 

 system, and the French civil law was retained. 



