408 CANADA IN THE BODLEIAN. 



ses. On a medal of Louis XIV. and elsewhere, the city of Quebec is 

 " Kebeca.") 



The most recent reappearance of " Canada" as a Latin word, is on 

 the massive and beautiful medal by Wyon, struck to perpetuate the 

 memory of the confederation of the British North American Provinces. 

 Canada Instaurata is thereon to be read — Canada re-founded, 

 Canada restored to more than its pristine significance, to more than 

 its original comprehensiveness. The Dominion of Canada, according 

 to the intention of the statesmen of the mother country, is to extend 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The name had never before such a 

 wide application as this. " New France," the old synonym for Canada, 

 was understood by French statesmen of the reigns of Louis XIV. and 

 Louis XV., to cover a very large area. But the geographers of those 

 days had not yet the data for mapping out the continent with any 

 minuteness much to the west and north of the head waters of the St. 

 Lawrence. New France was accordingly, in their conceptions, bounded 

 in those directions probably by the limits of the basin of that river. 

 The name " Canada" has thus been destined to a wider and wider 

 significance, in successive years. As a territorial appellation, it was at 

 the outset, as we all know, a mistake on the part of the first voyagers 

 up the St. Lawrence. The natives, coming out to the ships from 

 different points along the river, would point to their wigwams on the 

 shore, articulating the Word " Kanata." The new comers, under the 

 influence of the old-world notion that every region must of necessity 

 have a distinct appellation, imagined that they heard in tbe frequently 

 repeated vocable, the name of the country into the heart of which thry 

 were penetrating. It was a mistake ; for we do not find that the 

 aborigines, either here or any where else, were in the habit of forming 

 local generalizations. They designated particular spots from some 

 striking physical feature, or from some occurrence happening there. 

 For areas they had, in their primitive condition, no name, in the ICuro- 

 pean sense. Among the French, nevertheless, Canada became, in the 

 manner just described, established as a regular territorial designation. 

 The name attached itself also to the great river which had been their 

 highway into the interior of the country. The Gulf had been named 

 after St. Lawrence by Jacques Cartier, because he entered it on St. 

 Lawrence's day; but the river itself was known by the supposed desig- 

 nation of a portion of the country through which it flowed. In the 

 rude map accompanying my copy of the Periegesis of Dionysius, and 



