LOST ARTS OF PRIMITIVE RACES. 161 



from great lakes or seas of fresh water so vast that 

 they knew little of their farther shores. That the 

 river which we now call the Ottawa, from the name of 

 an Algonquin tribe inhabiting its banks, ran from a 

 western land which they called Saguenay, a name 

 now applied to a river far to the east of Quebec, from 

 a geographical confusion arising from the fact that 

 the Saguenay river was one of the outlets in ancient 

 times of the more western land of that name. It 

 was from this western land that their copper imple- 

 ments came, and this not by the St. Lawrence route, 

 but by that northern line of communication from 

 Georgian Bay to the Ottawa, which the modern 

 Canadian Government has, so far unsuccessfully, been 

 endeavouring to open out, and which enabled the old 

 Hochelagans to trade with Lake Superior through the 

 domains of friendly tribes. Further, they knew that 

 to the south were countries where the people were 

 clad in woven fabics, where delicious fruits and spices, 

 unknown to Canada, were produced, and where 

 there was no frost or snow, even in winter. These 

 countries could be reached by the Richelieu river, 

 or from the great western lakes; but unfortunately 

 there lay between, tribes of people fierce and warlike, 

 who in recent times had cut off all communication 

 between the nations of the St. Lawrence and the 

 sunny lands of the south. Still it was from these 

 southern lands that their ancestors, in older and 

 happier times, had procured the seeds of the maize, 

 beans, pumpkins, and tobacco, which they still culti- 



M 



