34 'TRANSACl'IONS. 1 897-8. 



BRITISH COLUMBIA 

 FROM THE PLACE-NAME POINT OF VIEW. 



When Columbus set sail from a Spanish Port on the 3rd 

 August, 1492, with three vessels and one hundred and twenty 

 men he believed that he would sight land if he sailed long 

 enough ; and that the land would be the Indies. The Old 

 World path along which commerce plodded was that which 

 crossed the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and 

 thence by the Indian Ocean found its eldorado in the East. 

 Hence, Venice, as the western terminal and distributing point, 

 gained great wealth and aroused the jealousy of Spain and 

 other nations of Western Europe. These sought the Indies 

 by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus conceived 

 the idea that as the earth was spheroidal in form he could 

 abandon the shore-hugging way of the past and, boldly ven- 

 turing on the wide, unknown ocean, sail on in a westerly 

 course and reach the land of riches. When he found his way 

 barred by an immense continent, he, Americus Vespucci and 

 others sought along the coast for a passage that would take 

 them to the western shores of the Pacific Ocean, on the east 

 coast of which were the wealth and commodities of the Indies 

 and Cathay, the gold and diamonds and precious stones that 

 had given a magnificent sparkle to all the legends told to the 

 wondering sons and daughters of Western Europe. 



After them came other navigators who sought to pierce 

 the continent, and in the hope of so doing ranged as Arctic 

 explorers from the Straits of Belle Isle northward to Green- 

 land, sometimes pushing the prows of their vessels into Hamil- 

 ton Inlet and Ungava Bay ; at others forcing their way into 

 Hudson's Great Bay and all along through the ice-girt islands 

 that now compose the Island Province of the Dominion, the 

 new-born District of Franklin ; or passing into the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, pushed up the river, past Montreal, past Machine, 

 past Lakes Ontario, Huron, Superior, and on, still on, seeking 

 the water courses that would carry their ships out into the 

 Pacific and on their way to China and India ; or poking their 

 vessels' noses into every stream and river and gulf from the 

 Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Patagonia, thinking that in each 



