because on the July day he entered it he found this country "hotter than Spain," though "the most beautiful it is possible to see." Cartier landed near the site of Douglastown, Gaspé Peninsula, and planted a cross and a lily shield.
During the second of his three voyages, in 1535, he continued up the great river which he hoped was to lead him to the Orient, and came to two Indian villages which occupied the future sites of Quebec and Montreal. The natives of Stadaconé (Quebec) first taught white men, in the persons of Cartier and his companions, the word kannatha, "a settlement," of which "Canada" is supposedly the corruption. According to a recent historian,[1] the name was first applied officially in 1540, when Francis I commissioned Roberval "Vice-roy and Lieutenant-General in Canada"—a domain then thought to be part of Asia.
Following the northern voyages of Cartier, of Roberval, Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert came the expedition captained by Pierre du Gua, Lord de Monts, a gentleman of Saintonge, who with an illustrious crew left Havre de Grace, March 7, 1604, in the Acadie.[2] Champlain was
- ↑ See The Tercentenary History of Canada, by F. B. Tracy.
- ↑ Gastaldi, an Italian map-maker of the 16th century, designated the territory of the Maritime Provinces as Larcadia, others called it Lacadia or L'Acadie. The root of the name is not French, but Micmac, Akade signifying, according to different authorities, "a place where," or "a place of abundance."
