350 Canada. 
million acres in all, represents, outside of British 
Columbia, the true forest region of Canada, and at the 
same time the center of Canadian civilization. 
Although the Cabot brothers discovered Cape Breton 
and Labrador in 1497 and 1500, the first settlement of 
Canadian territory was not made until 1541 by French 
colonists, after the first Captain-General of Canada, 
Jaques Cartier, the discoverer and explorer of the St. 
Lawrence (in 1534), had taken possession of the country 
for Francis I; but not much progress was made until 
Champlain’s arrival in the first years of the next 
century. Quebec was founded as early as 1608, and 
Montreal in 1611, but Ottawa dates its first beginnings 
not farther back than 1800. 
The northern country around Hudson’s Bay was, 
under the name of Rupert’s Land (after Prince Rupert, 
the head of the enterprise), undefined in limits, granted 
by Charles II, in 1670, to the Hudson’s Bay Company, 
a powerful fur-trading corporation which had not only 
a commercial monopoly but, except for occasional 
interference by the French, held absolute govern- 
mental sway over the country through 200 years, 
their jurisdiction at one time extending to the Pacific 
Coast. 
Friction and warfare with the English resulted in 
the latter acquiring by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, 
Newfoundland and settling their rights on Hudson’s 
Bay. The final conquest of ‘New France’’ by the 
English ended French rule in 1763, but the French 
colonists remained peacefully, and their descendants 
form to-day, at least in Quebec, the predominating 
