REMARKS ON THE ST. MARTIN, ISLE JESUS, METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER Rain fell on 16 days amounting to 6. 212 inches; it was raining 61 hours 58 minutes, and was accompanied by thunder on two days. The most prevalent wind was the W by S. The least prevalent wind E. The most windy day the 23rd; mean miles per hour 16.81. Least windy day the 8th; mean miles per hour 0.00. The Aurora Borealis visible on 2 nights. The electrical state of the Atmosphere has indicated moderate intensity. Ozone was in moderate quantity. REMARKS ON THE ST. MARTIN, ISLE JESUS, METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER Rain fell on 11 days, amounting to 5.755 inches; it was raining 29 hours and 57 minutes and was accompaned by thunder on 7 days. Most prevalent wind, S. W. Least prevalent wind, E. Least windy day, the 5th day; mean miles per hour, 0.06. Aurora Borealis visible on 1 night. The electrical state of the atmosphere has indicated constant and high tension. Ozone was in small quantity. 1856. ABSTRACT OF METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER, KINGSTON, CANADA WEST, 1856. Latitude, 44 deg. 13.30 min. North, Longitude, 76 deg. 30. min. West. Height above Sea 280 Feet. Barometer at 32° Thermom. Thermom. Tension of Humidity. Clouds. 9 A. M. 3 P. M. 9 A.M. 3 P.M. Max. Min. 9 A.M. 3 P.M.9 A.M.3 P.M. 9 A.M.3 P.M. 9 A.M. Direction of Pressure 3 P.M. 9 A.M.3 P.M. Rain in inches. Snow in inches. 18.4 20.0 September. 29.674 29.588 58.8 64.6 67.7 29.748 29.724 12.9 Prevailing winds S. W. in summer, N.W. and N.E, in winter. Thunder and lightning on twelve days. University of Queen's College, Kingston, 10th August, 1857. 12 lbs. per square foot. REMARKS. 17.0 Bay frozen over on 4th January. 2.5 18.0 Ice in Bay broken up Steamer St. Lawrence Steamer Kingston left Total rain in inches THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. NEW SERIES. No. XII.-NOVEMBER, 1857. ON THE EARLY DISCOVERIES OF THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA. BY JOHN LANGTON, M. A., VICE CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. Read before the Canadian Institute, February 14th, 1857. I do not design in the present paper to enter into any detail respecting the whole of the discoveries of the French in North America, but in presenting to the Institute a collection of tracings from old French maps, more peculiarly relating to Western Canada, I propose to offer some remarks in illustration of them. A very exaggerated impression has gone abroad as to the extent and accuracy of the knowledge possessed by the French of the country which they occupied, and I have more than once seen it asserted in the public prints, that they knew more of the interior than we do even now, excepting in those parts which have been actually surveyed and laid out for settlement. It is not always easy to trace the origin of such popularly received opinions, which are repeated till they become accepted, without inquiry, as acknowledged facts; but, in the present instance, the impression seems to have arisen from a series of maps, possessed by the Library of Parliament, which have been copied from those which are preserved in the various archives in France. To speak of these maps, however, as surveys, as I have heard them described, is to do them by no means justice. They make no pretensions to any such accuracy. The great majority of them, except some plans of towns and particular localities in Lower Canada, are rough delineations of the country, either from the personal observation of the explorers, VOL. II.-B* or from the description of others, giving the estimated distances and directions of rivers, lakes, and portages, which the travellers followed, with here and there an observation for latitude, which, when they are given, I have often found to be a degree or more in error. Still, most of them are interesting, as amongst the earliest records of our country, and there is no doubt that, in some sections of the Province particularly, some of them do give details, which appear no where in our published maps, and are not to be found in the records of the Crown Lands Office. This arises in a great measure from that tendency to centralization, which has always characterized the French nation. If any trader or missionary had penetrated into an unknown region, a description of it was sure, sooner or later, to find its way to the Intendant, and by him was transmitted to the Government at home; whilst with us, if an individual hunter or lumberer has obtained a detailed knowledge of a particular locality, he does not feel in any way bound to report it to Mr. Cauchon, and he would still less think of transmitting it to Downing-street. I have seen private charts in considerable detail, of the country between the Ottawa and Lake Huron, where our published maps present nothing but a blank; and I myself, nearly twenty years ago, made a map, from my own knowledge and the descriptions of hunters and others, of several chains of lakes, forming the head waters of the River Trent, which are still only partially laid down with any correctness, partly by Mr. Murray, of the Geological Survey, and partly from some exploratory lines run last year by order of the Crown Lands Department. All such rough plans have the same distinguishing feature, that the distances are very much exaggerated, especially the portages; for, when you have a heavy pack or a canoe on your shoulders, a mile assumes very formidable proportions. The same thing is observable in these French maps. The latest discovery generally is unnaturally enlarged, and though the easy observation for latitude keeps the distances from north to south within reasonable bounds, those from east to west, where there is no such check, attain very exaggerated proportions. But it is not for the geographical information to be obtained from them, so much as for their historical interest, that I propose introducing these maps to the Institute. It must, however, be confessed that there is a great drawback to their value in this point of view, in the fact that some of them bear no date, nor is there any record accompanying them of the source from which they were obtained; but many of them possess internal evidence of their origin, and of the period to which they relate; and I have selected for copying, those which are of the most general interest, especially for us Upper Canadians, which I will illustrate by a short sketch of the progress of French discoveries on this continent. Although Jacques Cartier entered the St. Lawrence in the first half of the sixteenth century, it was not till the beginning of the seventeenth that any sustained effort was made towards a permanent occupation of the country. A few trading visits were made from time to time; but at the period of Champlain's first voyage, in 1603, it is doubtful whether there was any establishment even at Tadousac, where parties regularly wintered, and certainly there was nothing beyond. He proceeded up the river as far as the Sault St. Louis, now the La Chine Rapids, and having crossed the portage to obtain a view of the country beyond, he returned to France, and devoted the following years to exploring the Atlantic coast of Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Gaspé. It was not till the year 1608 that he returned to the St. Lawrence, and built the first house at Quebec. Champlain at once entered into friendly relations with the Indians inhabiting the northern shore of the St. Lawrence. The Montagnets, from Quebec downwards, and higher up the Algoumequins, as he designates them, who were afterwards called Algonquins, together with allied tribes of various names, from the Ottawa country, appear all to have belonged to the great Chippewa family, which still extends over nearly a quarter of the continent. He also fell in with parties of the Ochateguins, or Hurons, as they are subsequently called, their own name for themselves being Yendats, or Wyandots, according to the English pronunciation. It was this tribe apparently that Cartier had found in occupation of the island of Montreal, but their settlements were now exclusively on the great lake which the French called by their name, and they only came down to the St. Lawrence for the purposes of trade. They belonged to the same race as the Iroquois, though at that time at deadly enmity with them. With the Iroquois themselves, called by the English the Five Nations, who occupied the south bank of Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence, no cordiality, ever existed, to the end of the French rule in Canada. The very next spring after his arrival, with two or three companions, Champlain joined the Algonquins and Hurons in an expedition against the Iroquois, and having proceeded up the river Richelieu to the lake which still bears his name, he defeated them near where Ticonderoga now stands. During these earlier years Champlain himself seems generally to have returned to France for the winter, but some of his party remained behind at Quebec, or at another station on the island of St. Croix, and one of them accompanied a party of Algonquins to the upper Ottawa, in exchange for an Indian, whom Champlain took with |