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Famous Firesides of French Canada. Mary Wilson Alloway
Читать онлайн.Название Famous Firesides of French Canada
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isbn 4064066222987
Автор произведения Mary Wilson Alloway
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
Mary Wilson Alloway
Famous Firesides of French Canada
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066222987
Table of Contents
French Canada
THE CONTINENTAL ARMY IN CANADA.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page.
Fireplace Frontispiece. Château Kitchen 24 Château de Ramezay 26 Montgomery Salon 28 Chapel of Notre Dame de la Victoire 52 Le Séminaire 56 Home of La Salle 84 St. Amable St. 98 Fort Chambly 146 Château Fortier 156 Franklin Vaults 170
PREFACE.
In offering this little volume to the kind consideration of Canadian and American readers, it is the earnest wish of the Author that it may commend itself to the interest of both, as the early histories of Canada and the United States are so closely connected that they may be considered identical.
We have tried to recall the days when, by these firesides, we re rocked the cradles of those who helped to make Canadian history, and to render more familiar the names and deeds of the great men, French, English and American, upon whose valour and wisdom such mighty issues depended.
The recital is, we trust, wholly impartial and without prejudice.
It is to be hoped that the union of sentiment which the close of this century sees between the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples may cast a veil of forgetfulness over the strife of the one preceding it; and be a herald of that reign of peace, when "nation shall no more rise against nation, and wars shall cease."
Montreal, May 24, 1899.
INTRODUCTION.
About twelve years after the first Spanish caravel had touched the shores of North America, we find the French putting forth efforts to share in some of the results of the discovery. In the year 1504 some Basque, Breton and Norman fisher-folk had already commenced fishing along the bleak shores of Newfoundland and the contiguous banks for the cod in which this region is still so prolific.
The Spanish claim to the discovery of America is disputed by several aspirants to that honour. Among these are the ancient mariners of Northern Europe, the Norsemen of the Scandinavian Peninsula. They assert that their Vikings touched American shores three centuries before Isabella of Castille drove the Moors from their palaces among the orange groves of Espana. Eric the Red, and other sea-kings, made voyages to Iceland and Greenland in the eleventh and following centuries; and it is highly probable that these Norsemen, with their hardihood and enterprise, touched on some part of the mainland. One Danish writer claims that this occurred as far back as the year 985, about eighty years after the death of the Danes' mortal enemy, the great Saxon King Alfred.
Even the Welsh, from the isolation of their mountain fastnesses, declare that a Cambrian expedition, in the year 1170, under Prince Modoc, landed in America. In proof of this, there is said to exist in Mexico a colony bearing indisputable traces of the tongue of these ancient Celts.
The term Canada first appears as the officially recognized name of the region in the instructions given by Francis I to its original colonists in the year 1538.
There are various theories as to the etymology of the word, its having by different authorities been attributed to Indian, French and Spanish origins.
In an old copy of a Montreal paper, bearing date of Dec. 24, 1834, it is asserted that Canada or Kannata is an Indian word, meaning a village, and was mistaken by the early visitors for the name of the whole country.
The Philadelphia Courier, of July, 1836, gives the following not improbable etymology of the name of the province:—Canada is compounded of two aboriginal words, Can, which signifies the mouth, and Ada the country, meaning the mouth of the country. A writer of the same period, when there seems to have been considerable discussion on the subject, says:—The word is undoubtedly of Spanish origin, coming from