IMPORTANCE OF CENTRAL BRITISH AMERICA. 413 
prior to the Conquest. Such as Dauphin Lake, Dauphin Mountains ; 
Fort Bourbon, on the Saskatchewan, near the west end of Cedar Lake. 
The most remote of the French settlements on the Saskatchewan 
appears to have been, “at Nipawee, in lat. 53} long. 103.’’* 
When we consider these great enterprises in connection with the 
population of Canada at the time, we cannot fail to be astonished at 
the energy of the French colonists, and the desire they exhibited to 
extend their empire even to the frozen North, and to secure the over- 
land’ trade with Hudson’s Bay and the far unknown west—even to 
‘« South Seas.” 
During the period when they were undertaken, the population of 
Canada from 1666 to 1738+ was as follow :— 
3418—total population. 
1666 lq pep 
1344——men bearing arms. 
4312—total population. 
1667 bs ; 
1566—men capable of bearing arms. 
1668 { 5870—total population. 
e 2000—men capable of bearing arms. 
1679 vesesecereaeees 9400—total population. 
{ 7,100—French inhabitants, men, women, 
1685 and children. 
3000—men capable of bearing arms. 
45,000--population: the year M. de la 
1738 | Verandeéire was sent overland to 
discover the Pacific Ocean. 
At the period of which we write Upper Canada and a large por- 
tion of Lower Canada was a wilderness, and yet the French sought 
to extend their territorial jurisdiction to the shores of Hudson’s Bay ; 
and some years later, had visions of grasping the Indian and China 
trade from the shores of the Pacific, which they hoped to reach over- 
land from Canada. 
At the present time Canada numbers some 2,700,000 souls, and 
we have the official statement from the highest authority, that the 
-*The name “ Nipawee” is perhaps the same as Nepowewin or “The Standing Place,” 
the present name of the mission opposite Fort 41a Corne. Before the conquest the French had 
settlements at Dauphin Lake, the Pasquia (near Carrot river or Root river) and at Nipawi 
“Where they had agricultural instruments and wheel carriages, marks of both being found 
about the settlements.”—Wackenzie’s Voyuges. 
¢ Paris Documents. 
