the present time the remaining native population is estimated at about 125,000, being about one-fortieth of the entire population, and is distributed as follows: Newfoundland, none, or but a few Indian immigrants from Nova Scotia; Acadian provinces, 4000; St. Lawrence provinces (Ontario and Quebec), 30,000; Manitoba, NorthWest Territory and North-East Territory, 48,000; British Columbia, 38,000; Eskimo, along the Arctic coast, 4000.

h. Discovery and Settlement. While the history of Canada requires separate treatment, it is useful, in order to understand the existing distribution of its population, to note some events in the progress of discovery and exploration, which depend directly on geographical features, and lead up to the stage of development and expansion now attained.

At a very early date the Norse Vikings had established colonies in Greenland, and it appears to be certain that more than one voyage was made by them, early in the eleventh century, to and along the American coast, including parts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. They were enabled to reach Canada at that time in their primitive vessels by making use of Iceland and Greenland as stepping-stones across the narrowest part of the Atlantic, but they formed no permanent settlements. In 1497, five years after the discovery of America by Columbus (and again crossing the narrow northern part of the ocean), Cabot, sailing from Bristol, coasted along part of Labrador and Newfoundland; but the exploration of Canada can scarcely be said to have begun before Jacques Cartier, from St. Malo in France, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1535, thirty-eight years later. In the year following, having heard of the existence of the great river named by him the St. Lawrence, he undertook a new voyage, and entering the wide estuary ascended to the places where the cities of Quebec and Montreal now stand, both at that time the sites of Indian villages. Thus it was that Eastern Canada became the object of enterprise from France, and long remained a French colony, while the attention of the English was chiefly directed to the more southern parts of the east coast of the continent.

In the St. Lawrence the French found an artery leading to the interior of the continent, but for many years the importance of this discovery was not realised, and the progress of exploration was slow. This was in part owing to the pressure of contemporary events in Europe, in part to the circumstance that the first comers became absorbed in the lucrative fur trade and rich fisheries of the newfound coast, and largely to the fact that the particular districts which first became known were unfavourable to colonisation. At a later date French settlements were formed along the St. Lawrence, which grew and prospered, and to the growth of these colonies, established before the cession of Canada to Great Britain, is due the preponderance of the French language to-day in the province of Quebec.

By the St. Lawrence valley the northern flank of the Appalachians was easily turned, and it continued for a long time to be the chief highway by which, during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, French explorers overran a great area of the interior, westward to the Rocky Mountains, northward to the sources of the Mackenzie, and southward along the Mississippi valley. At the same time as these advances of the French by the St. Lawrence route, Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and other English navigators began that search for a North-West Passage, which was destined to continue for many years, and which resulted eventually in the complete exploration of the northern coast of the continent.

In 1670 Prince Rupert obtained from Charles II. a charter upon which the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company were based. This included a vast and scarcely-defined region of the centre of the continent, which became known as "Rupert's Land"; and, in pursuance of their fur-trading. interests, the Company established their chief depôts at the mouths of the Churchill and Nelson rivers on Hudson Bay, and gradually pushed their explorations by means of the great connected system of waterways far into the interior.

At a somewhat later period, but scarcely before the

closing years of the eighteenth century, Spanish and English sailors successively reached the coast of that part of Canada now forming the Province of British Columbia, and thus established a fourth centre of exploration and trade with the natives. Here, however, because of the unfavourable character of the rivers and their relatively short courses, the progress of inland exploration was slow and restricted, and that part of the Cordilleran region removed from the actual coast became tributary to traders from the east, who followed the navigable rivers of the longer slope of the continent to their sources.

Returning to the St. Lawrence valley, which remained the principal means of access to the interior of the continent, it is instructive to note how closely the march of discovery depended upon it. In 1603 Champlain, who came to Canada from France in the interest of trade and colonisation, infused new vigour into projects of exploration. In 1609 he ascended a tributary stream from the south, the Richelieu, and reached the lake now known by his name, thus making known the remarkable valley which runs south by the Hudson to the Atlantic at New York. This valley, constituting the main gateway of Eastern Canada to the south, was subsequently to become the route of armed parties during the long-continued hostilities between the French colonists and those of New England; next, an important line of water-communication between the St. Lawrence and Hudson; and eventually the principal railway route from north to south.

The occupation by the hostile Iroquois of the country, along that part of the St. Lawrence near the Great Lakes, constituting a bar to direct westward advance of the French, Champlain in 1615 ascended the Ottawa for some distance, and leaving it, made his way to the west by rivers and lakes, with short intervening portages, to Lake Huron. His route by the Nipissing valley had long been employed by the Algonkin Indians, who, like Champlain, were unable to run the gauntlet of the Iroquois to the south. Their intimate acquaintance with the country had led them to utilise the wide depression which here runs between the Ottawa and Lake Huron, and

Champlain's journey under their guidance first made known to the French this covered way, which was afterwards used by them for many years, and which still later proved to be the most favourable line for the construction of this part of the Canadian trans-continental railway. The character of this depression is in fact such that it may probably before many years be made the route of a canal connecting Lake Huron with the Ottawa, by which the distance from the Great Lakes to Montreal, at the head of ocean navigation, would be much shortened.

Zeal for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic religion, and the spread of missions among them, were with the French important motives of exploration at this early period. Following Champlain's footsteps, in 1665 the Jesuit Father Allouez advanced discovery to the westward on the Great Lakes, and was the first to bring back a report of the vast prairie country beyond them. A few years later, Marquette, from Lake Michigan, reached the Mississippi; and he again was followed by La Salle, who in 1682 descended the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Another intrepid explorer, Verendrye, again taking a line of water-communication known to the Indians, made his way from Lake Superior through the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg and the Red River Country, traversed parts of the Saskatchewan and Upper Missouri valleys, and was, it is believed, the first to see the Rocky Mountains in 1743.

Not long after the date of Verendrye's explorations in the far west, Canada (meaning at that time the St. Lawrence valley and its dependencies) was finally ceded by France to Great Britain in 1763. Quebec had been founded in 1608, Montreal in 1640, Frontenac (now Kingston) in 1673; and before the cession, French settlements along the St. Lawrence valley had assumed considerable proportions, the number of inhabitants being estimated at 65,000. Small French and English settlements had likewise been formed in Newfoundland, the first organised attempt at colonisation being that of Lord Baltimore in 1624. In Nova Scotia, known as part of Acadia till 1621, an important French settlement at Port Royal (now Annapolis),

was established as early as 1604, and Acadia remained a battle-ground between the French and English till the date of its final cession to the latter power in 1713. The island of Cape Breton was, however, retained by France; and Louisburg, commanding the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was strongly fortified, but was eventually also taken by England in 1758. Thus with the complete surrender of Canada to Britain the conflict between the French and English settlements in America, which had scarcely been interrupted for 150 years, and into which the native peoples were also drawn, came to an end.

Twenty years later, in 1783, the independence of the United States was acknowledged by Great Britain, and a line was drawn between the new states and the British possessions to the north. At this time the greater part of the population of British America was still centred in the lower portion of the St. Lawrence valley, and consisted chiefly of the French colonists. Most of the original French settlers of Acadia had been deported in 1755, and the Acadian provinces were held chiefly by a small number of English-speaking people.

Important changes followed the establishment of the United States. It became impossible for those who had taken any important part against the insurrectionary movement to retain their old homes, and thus a wholesale emigration, including many of the prominent and most intelligent people, occurred to the remaining British provinces. It is estimated that within two years of the recognition of the United States 20,000 refugees, known as United Empire Loyalists," found new homes in Acadia, while about 10,000 emigrated to the southern peninsula of Ontario, then a forest wilderness. To these colonists is due the prosperity and rapid advancement of the provinces to which they came.

With the improved means of communication of later years, and the drawing together of distant parts of the world by the introduction of steamships and railways, the character and the nationalities of immigrants to British North America became more diverse, and has so continued to the present time, rendering it unnecessary to follow the