chapter 2.

See PHŒNICIANS: ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY;

Also, JEWS: THE EARLY HEBREW HISTORY, and HAMITES.

CANAAN: End----------

CANADA. (NEW FRANCE.)

CANADA: Names.

"The year after the failure of Verrazano's last enterprise, 1525, Stefano Gomez sailed from Spain for Cuba and Florida; thence he steered northward in search of the long hoped-for passage to India, till he reached Cape Race, on the southeastern extremity of Newfoundland. The further details of his voyage remain unknown, but there is reason to suppose that he entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and traded upon its shores. An ancient Castilian tradition existed that the Spaniards visited these coasts before the French, and having perceived no appearance of mines or riches, they exclaimed frequently 'Aca nada' [signifying 'here is nothing']; the natives caught up the sound, and when other Europeans arrived, repeated it to them. The strangers concluded that these words were a designation, and from that time this magnificent country bore the name of Canada. ... Father Hennepin asserts that the Spaniards were the first discoverers of Canada, and that, finding nothing there to gratify their extensive desires for gold, they bestowed upon it the appellation of Capo di Nada, 'Cape Nothing,' whence by corruption its present name. ... La Potherie gives the same derivation. . . . This derivation would reconcile the different assertions of the early discoverers, some of whom give the name of Canada to the whole valley of the St. Lawrence; others, equally worthy of credit, confine it to a small district in the neighbourhood of Stadacona (now Quebec). ... Duponceau, in the Transactions of the [American] Philosophical Society, of Philadelphia, founds his conjecture of the Indian origin of the name of Canada upon the fact that, in the translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew into the Mohawk tongue, made by Brandt, the Indian chief, the word Canada is always used to signify a village. The mistake of the early discoverers, in taking the name of a part for that of the whole, is very pardonable in persons ignorant of the Indian language. ... The natural conclusion ... is, that the word Canada was a mere local appellation, without reference to the country; that each tribe had their own Canada, or collection of huts, which shifted its position according to their migrations."

_E. Warburton, The Conquest of Canada,