the provinces which {7} are watered by the
St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, extending from the Gulf to the head
of Lake Superior, and finding their northern limits in the waters of
Hudson's Bay. The name of Canada appears to be also a memorial of the
Indian nations that once occupied the region between the Ottawa and
Saguenay rivers. This name, meaning a large village or town in one of
the dialects of the Huron-Iroquois tongue, was applied, in the first
half of the sixteenth century, to a district in the neighbourhood of
the Indian town of Stadacona, which stood on the site of the present
city of Quebec. In the days of French occupation the name was more
generally used than New France, and sometimes extended to the country
now comprised in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, or, in other
words, to the whole region from the Gulf to the head of Lake Superior.
Finally, it was adopted as the most appropriate designation for the new
Dominion that made a step toward national life in 1867.

The most important feature of this historic country is the remarkable
natural highway which has given form and life to the growing nation by
its side--a river famous in the history of exploration and war--a river
which has never-failing reservoirs in those great lakes which occupy a
basin larger than Great Britain--a river noted for its long stretch of
navigable waters, its many rapids, and its unequalled Falls of Niagara,
around all of which man's enterprise and skill have constructed a
system of canals to give the west a continuous navigation from Lake
Superior to the ocean for over two thousand miles. {8} The Laurentian
Hills--"the nucleus of the North American continent"--reach from
inhospitable, rock-bound Labrador to the north of the St. Lawrence,
extend up the Ottawa valley, and pass eventually to the northwest of
Lakes Huron and Superior, as far as the "Divide" between the St.
Lawrence valley and Hudson's Bay, but display their boldest forms on
the north shore of the river below Quebec, where the names of Capes
Eternity and Trinity have been so aptly given to those noble precipices
which tower above the gloomy waters of the Saguenay, and have a history
which "dates back to the very dawn of geographical time, and is of hoar
antiquity in comparison with that of such youthful ranges as the Andes
and the Alps." [3]

From Gaspe, the southeastern promontory at the entrance of the Gulf,
the younger rocks of the Appalachian range, c