The Dawn of Canadian History : A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
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Titel: The Dawn of Canadian History : A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
von Augustus J. Thebaud, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, Joseph Butler, John D. Barry, William Allan Neilson, Henry Rider Haggard, Rudolf Erich Raspe, Paul Heyse, Carl Russell Fish, Tom Taylor, Margaret Pedler, Homer, John Kendrick Bangs, John Burroughs, Juanita Helm Floyd, Maurice Liber, Anthony Trollope, William Morris, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, Thomas Hobbes, Winfried Honig, Albrecht Dürer, Militia of Mercy . Gift Book Committee, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Andrew Lang, Katharine Pyle, Sir Samuel White Baker, Frederic William Moorman, the Younger Pliny, Samuel Butler, William Dean Howells, Harold MacGrath, Joseph Crosby Lincoln, Ralph Connor, Various, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Abraham Lincoln, John Galsworthy, Ian Maclaren, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Sir Owen Morgan Edwards, Robert J. C. Stead, Harold Bell Wright, Eleanor H. Porter, Richard Le Gallienne, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Mark Rutherford, John Bunyan, Artemus Ward, John Hanning Speke, James Fenimore Cooper, Edmund Burke, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis Bacon, Gisela Engel, Edward Samuel Corwin, Washington Irving, Rafael Sabatini, Emma Lazarus, Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine, Christian Friedrich Hebbel, Adam Smith, Upton Sinclair, Michael Earls, John Hargrave, Charles Hose, William McDougall, Albert Ernest Jenks, marquis de Jean-François-Albert du Pouget Nadaillac, Robert Sewell, 16th cent. Fernão Nunes, 16th cent. Domingos Paes, Inez Haynes Gillmore, Charles Warren Stoddard, Will Irwin, Vivia Hemphill, J. Hampton Moore, Philip Gibbs, Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, L. Mühlbach, Leroy Scott, Mrs. Henry Wood, Ottilie A. Liljencrantz, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Bulfinch, Bernard Shaw, Confucius, Samuel Pepys, Luís Vaz de Camões, Walter Bigges, Theodore Roosevelt, Émile Gaboriau, fl. 1580. Edward Hayes, Eugène Sue, Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Robert Smythe Hichens, Bliss Perry, Isabella L. Bird, Stewart Edward White, Roald Amundsen, Viscount James Bryce Bryce, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Annie Hamilton Donnell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean-Henri Fabre, Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke, Marietta Holley, W. E. Gladstone, Ellis Parker Butler, Booth Tarkington, G. A. Henty, E. L. Voynich, Anonymous, Francis Leggett, Charles Alfred Tyrrell, Josef Cohen, Jules Verne, Zane Grey, Mary Baker Eddy, Albert Bigelow Paine, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Ouida, Joseph Furphy, Harry Leon Wilson, Sir Hugh Walpole, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fay Inchfawn, E. Pauline Johnson, Abraham Merritt, James Sheridan Knowles, Herbert George Jenkins, Richard Hakluyt, Georges Victor Legros, J. M. Barrie, Dana Gatlin, Padraic Colum, Lucy Fitch Perkins, Heinrich Heine, Louisa May Alcott, John Ceiriog Hughes, Henry Van Dyke, Laurence Housman, Ludwig van Beethoven, Stephen Leacock, Watkin Tench, E. Nesbit, Edward William Bok, graf Leo Tolstoy, Giacomo Casanova, Oliver Goldsmith, Raffaello Carboni, Orville O. Hiestand, Abraham Cowley, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Louis Constant Wairy, Michel de Montaigne, Edward Salisbury Field, Guy de Maupassant, Doris Stevens, Hamilton Brock Fuller, Anna Chapin Ray, Wilkie Collins, Robert Tressell, Victoria Cross, William Guthrie, Alexandre Dumas père, Mary Jane Holmes, Charles Darwin, J. Hartley Manners, Sir James George Frazer, Sir Adolphus William Ward, James Hamilton, Theodore Dreiser, Kathleen Thompson Norris, William Henry Knight, Arnold Bennett, Cosmo Hamilton, Voltaire, Molière, Winston Churchill, Alexander Mackenzie, Joseph A. Altsheler, Maria Edgeworth, Florence L. Barclay, Mary E. Bamford, Frank Harris, Harold Bindloss, Alfred Henry Lewis, Charles Reade, United States. Central Intelligence Agency, Charles Ives, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Marion Polk Angellotti, Steele Rudd, Louis Stone, J. C. F. Johnson, Pierre Loti, Henry Martyn Cist, Howard Pyle, Saki, Franz Liszt, H. G. Wells, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ben Jonson, William Cowper, Lord Dufferin, Dion Boucicault, Ethel C. Pedley, Robert Alexander Wason, Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, O. Henry, Rufus Phillips Williams, Friedrich Heinrich Karl Freiherr de La Motte-Fouqué, Ambrose Bierce, Francis Parkman, Gene Stratton-Porter, Addison B. Poland, John H. Haaren, Giovanni Boccaccio, Henry Handel Richardson, Oliver T. Osborne, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Thomas Paine, Maria Thompson Daviess, Gilbert Parker, Lodovico Ariosto, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ethel Dench Puffer Howes, Walter De la Mare, P. G. Wodehouse, Van Tassel Sutphen, Esaias Tegnér, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli, H. E. Marshall, Edna St. Vincent Millay, James Smith, Horace Smith, Henry Edward Krehbiel, Sir Charles Lyell, John S. C. Abbott, Georgina Pell Curtis, Logan Marshall, G. P. R. James, Bram Stoker, John Buchan, Maksim Gorky, Mabel Thorne, Paul Thorne, Henry Kingsley, Mrs. Inchbald, J. Cuthbert Hadden, James Lane Allen, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, L. M. Montgomery, R. H. Gronow, of Youghal the younger Joseph Fisher, Benedictus de Spinoza, Henry Seton Merriman, J. H. Patterson, Clinton W. Gilbert, Evelyn Blantyre Simpson, F. Marion Crawford, Louis Becke, K. Langloh Parker, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Frederick Lawton, Marie Corelli, Frederick Jackson Turner, Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton, William John Locke, James Elroy Flecker, Richard Wagner, Johann David Wyss, King of France consort of Henry IV Queen Marguerite, Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz, marquise de Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart Montespan, duchesse d' Charlotte-Elisabeth Orleans, duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon, princesse de Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan Lamballe, Mme. Du Hausset, Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan, Lewis Goldsmith, Georges Ohnet, Anatole France, Gustave Droz, Jules Claretie, marquis de Philippe Massa, André Theuriet, Alfred de Musset, Octave Feuillet, Alfred de Vigny, Ludovic Halévy, François Coppée, Paul Bourget, Th. Bentzon, René Bazin, Alphonse Daudet, Charles de Bernard, Hector Malot, Émile Souvestre, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Walter Savage Landor, Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore, Sir Walter Scott, Maurice Leblanc, Eugene O'Neill, Yei Theodora Ozaki, Dillon Wallace, Eliza Lee Cabot Follen, Benvenuto Cellini, Unknown, Ignatius Donnelly, George Moore, Walter Pater, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Herman Melville, Algernon Blackwood, Anna Katharine Green, Mary Grant Bruce, Mrs. Campbell Praed, Richard Johnson, Ellen Clacy, William Aikman, Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, Sydney Smith, Simon Newcomb, Henry David Thoreau, J. J. Thomas
ISBN 978-3-7429-3927-2
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Part I
The First European Visitors
THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY
A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
By
STEPHEN LEACOCK
TORONTO, 1915
CONTENTS
I BEFORE THE DAWN II MAN IN AMERICA III THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA IV THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN V THE BRISTOL VOYAGES VI FORERUNNERS OF JACQUES CARTIER BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER I
BEFORE THE DAWN
We always speak of Canada as a new country. In one sense, of course, this is true. The settlement of Europeans on Canadian soil dates back only three hundred years. Civilization in Canada is but a thing of yesterday, and its written history, when placed beside the long millenniums of the recorded annals of European and Eastern peoples, seems but a little span.
But there is another sense in which the Dominion of Canada, or at least part of it, is perhaps the oldest country in the world. According to the Nebular Theory the whole of our planet was once a fiery molten mass gradually cooling and hardening itself into the globe we know. On its surface moved and swayed a liquid sea glowing with such a terrific heat that we can form no real idea of its intensity. As the mass cooled, vast layers of vapour, great beds of cloud, miles and miles in thickness, were formed and hung over the face of the globe, obscuring from its darkened surface the piercing beams of the sun. Slowly the earth cooled, until great masses of solid matter, rock as we call it, still penetrated with intense heat, rose to the surface of the boiling sea. Forces of inconceivable magnitude moved through the mass. The outer surface of the globe as it cooled ripped and shrivelled like a withering orange. Great ridges, the mountain chains of to-day, were furrowed on its skin. Here in the darkness of the prehistoric night there arose as the oldest part of the surface of the earth the great rock bed that lies in a huge crescent round the shores of Hudson Bay, from Labrador to the unknown wilderness of the barren lands of the Coppermine basin touching the Arctic sea. The wanderer who stands to-day in the desolate country of James Bay or Ungava is among the oldest monuments of the world. The rugged rock which here and there breaks through the thin soil of the infertile north has lain on the spot from the very dawn of time. Millions of years have probably elapsed since the cooling of the outer crust of the globe produced the solid basis of our continents.
The ancient formation which thus marks the beginnings of the solid surface of the globe is commonly called by geologists the Archaean rock, and the myriads of uncounted years during which it slowly took shape are called the Archaean age. But the word 'Archaean' itself tells us nothing, being merely a Greek term meaning 'very old.' This Archaean or original rock must necessarily have extended all over the surface of our sphere as it cooled from its molten form and contracted into the earth on which we live. But in most places this rock lies deep under the waters of the oceans, or buried below the heaped up strata of the formations which the hand of time piled thickly upon it. Only here and there can it still be seen as surface rock or as rock that lies but a little distance below the soil. In Canada, more than anywhere else in the world, is this Archaean formation seen. On a geological map it is marked as extending all round the basin of Hudson Bay, from Labrador to the shores of the Arctic. It covers the whole of the country which we call New Ontario, and also the upper part of the province of Quebec. Outside of this territory there was at the dawn of time no other 'land' where North America now is, except a long island of rock that marks the backbone of what are now the Selkirk Mountains and a long ridge that is now the mountain chain of the Alleghanies beside the Atlantic slope.
Books on geology trace out for us the long successive periods during which the earth's surface was formed. Even in the Archaean age something in the form of life may have appeared. Perhaps vast masses of dank seaweed germinated as the earliest of plants in the steaming oceans. The water warred against the land, tearing and breaking at its rock formation and distributing it in new strata, each buried beneath the next and holding fast within it the fossilized remains that form the record of its history. Huge fern plants spread their giant fronds in the dank sunless atmospheres, to be buried later in vast beds of decaying vegetation that form the coal-fields of to-day.