THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. XII.— NOVEMBER, 1857 



ON THE EARLY DISCOVERIES OF THE FRENCH IN 

 NORTH AMERICA. 



BY JOHN LANGTON, M. A., 



VICE CHANCELLOR 05 THE TTNIVEESITT OF TOEONTO. 



Read before the Canadian Institute, February \Ath, 1857. 



I do not design in the present paper to enter into any detail respect- 

 ing the whole of the discoveries of the French in North America, but 

 in presenting to the Institute a collection of tracings from old French 

 maps, more peculiarly relating to "Western Canada, I propose to offer 

 some remarks in illustration of them. 



A very exaggerated impression has gone abroad as to the extent and 

 accuracy of the knowledge possessed by the French of the country 

 which they occupied, and I have more than once seen it asserted in the 

 public prints, that they knew more of the interior than we do even 

 now, excepting in those parts which have been actually surveyed and 

 laid out for settlement. It is not always easy to trace the origin of 

 such popularly received opinions, which are repeated till they become 

 accepted, without inquiry, as acknowledged facts ; but, in the present 

 instance, the impression seems to have arisen from a series of maps, 

 possessed by the Library of Parliament, which have been copied from 

 those which are preserved in the various archives in France. To speak 

 of these maps, however, as surveys, as I have heard them described, is 

 to do them by no means justice. They make no pretensions to any 

 such accuracy. The great majority of them, except some plans of 

 towns and particular localities in Lower Canada, are rough delineations 

 of the country, either from the personal observation of the explorers, 



TOL. II — B* 



