ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 551 



seen, but instead, an after-growth of scrubby spruces and the summer 

 villas of some professional men of Quebec. 



2. To the south of Lorette, and overlooked by it, there stretches a belt 

 of land eight miles wide ; a low plain through which the river St. 

 Charles slowly winds its way to its estuary ; a valley scooped out between 

 the sandy terrace just described and a narrow ridge which forms the 

 north bank of the St. Lawrence. The soil of that second zone is generally 

 deep, fertile, and particularly well adapted for agricultural pursuits. As 

 evidence of that, fine expanses of cultivated fields interspersed with 

 comfortable farmhouses, cosy villages, and glittering church steeples 

 are to be seen along the lower course of the St. Charles, over its rich bottom 

 lands or loamy hillsides. 



3. Towards the north the sandy terrace of Lorette merges into a vast 

 mountainous tract which extends to Hudson Bay and the Atlantic 

 Ocean, interrupted only by the valley of Saguenay and Lake St. John. 

 These North Laurentian highlands present a succession of rocky, rounded 

 summits cut by narrow valleys, with sparse, limited areas of shallow soil. 

 A land well adapted for the production of timber, especially for the 

 growth of the Coniferpe, and originally a tract abounding in fur- 

 bearing animals, but over the greater part of its extent offering little 

 inducement to agricultural settlers, who of late years only have taken a 

 foothold within its borders. 



In other words, Lorette lies at the meeting point of two great regions 

 widely different in their productions and capabilities : the Champaign 

 region bordering on the St. Lawrence, and the North Laurentian high- 

 lands ; the former restricted and narrowing, the latter, on the contrary, 

 expanding at this point of the valley. Lorette is still within the Champaign 

 region, not, however, on its inner fertile zone, but on its outer sandy 

 zone ; and adjoining it, or in close proximity to it, there are, on the one 

 hand, a fine agricultural country, on the other a rugged wilderness.^ 



The geographical position of the Hurons of Lorette is very similar to 

 that which was occupied by their ancestors, in the vicinity of Lake 

 Simcoe, during the first half of the seventeenth century. Though some 

 400 miles to the west of Lorette, and 150 miles nearer to the equator, 

 the old Huron country was situated alike on the border of that 

 great Laurentian formation, betwixt mountain and plain, with to one 

 side a vast natural hunting ground, and to the other deep soils invit- 

 ing tillage. 



However, as regards soil and climate, the habitat of the ancient 

 Hurons was more favoured than the sandy terrace of Lorette. Cham- 

 plain and the early explorers who ascended the river Ottawa and its 

 tributary, the Mattawa, and by way of lake Nipissing, French River and 

 the shores of Georgian Bay, reached the Wyandot settlements adjoining 

 Lake Simcoe, were much impressed by the pleasantness and fertility of 

 that country compared with the rocky solitude they had just traversed. 

 They write in glowing terms of Huronia, its extensive clearings, its fields 

 of maize, sunflowers, and pumpkins, its fruit trees, in the midst of gentle 

 hills and verdant plains watered by many a stream. The soil, though 



' In the mapping of the natural zones surrounding Lorette the publications of 

 the Geological Survey of Canada have been very helpful. The map showing the 

 superficial deposits between Lake Superior and Gaspe (Atlas, 1863) and the map of 

 geological formations in the province of Quebec attached to Dr. Ella's report for 

 1887, are here specially referred to. 



