CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY. 



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east by the River St. John, and from thence, by a line drawn from 

 the head of that river, through Lake St. John, to the south end of 

 Lake Nipissing ; from whence the line, crossing the River St. Law- 

 rence and Lake Champlain in the 45th parallel of North latitude, 

 passes along the high lands which divide the rivers that empty them- 

 selves into the River St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the 

 sea; and also along the north coast of the Baye de Chaleurs, and 

 the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosiers ; and from 

 thence, crossing the mouth of the River St. Lawrence, by the' west 

 end of the island of Anticosti, terminates at the River St. John. 



An Act of Parliament, passed in 1774, has removed the northern 

 and western limits of the province of Quebec, adding to its juris- 

 diction all the lands comprised between the northern bounds of New 

 York, the western line of Pennsylvania, the Ohio, the Mississippi, 

 and the southern boundaries of Hudson's Bay Company. [The name 

 Canada originated in a mistake of the first French navigators of the 

 St. Lawrence. The natives along the river, on visiting the newly- 

 arrived strangers, would point to their encampment or village on the 

 shore, using often the word Kanata, i.e. huts or village. The French, 

 with their European notions, took the word to be a terr'itoiial desig- 

 nation. Jacques Cai*tier imagined that the name was applied to the 

 district extending from the Isle des Coudres to a point some distance 

 above the site of Quebec; while he gathered, pi-obably in a like 

 fallacious raanner, that the country below was called by the natives 

 Saguenay ; and also that they called the country above, Hochelaga. 

 It is, however, certain that the early natives of the country were not 

 in the habit of thus generalizing geographically. The expressions 

 which they used to designate particular localities were for the most 

 part rough descriptions, simply for convenience of discrimination 

 and recollection in their hunting or warlike excursion-^. Like other 

 primitive peojile, they were accustomed to give collective names to 

 groups of men, but not to extensive areas. — The application of the 

 name Canada by degrees to wider and wider spaces, until now it 

 covers half the ISToi-th American Continent, is curious ; but it is 

 simply a repetition of what has happened in the case of the geogra- 

 phical terms Italy, Greece, Hellas, Africa and Asia, each of 

 which denoted, at the outset, a local region of narrow limits.] 



Canada, Upper, commences at a stone boundary on the north bank 

 of the Lake St. Francis, at the cove west of Pointe au Bodet, in the 



