SKETCHES OF UPPER CANADA. SKETCH I. HISTORY. Discovery of Canada-St. Lawrence-Quebec settled-Montreal-Iroquois - Fort FrontenacProgress of French Settlements-Conquest of Canada-Proclamation-Quebec Act-American Loyalists-Upper Canada settled-U. E. ListDivision of the Province-Lieutenant Governors, Simcoe, Hunter, and Gore. COLUMBUS having discovered the continent, afterwards named America, and taken possession of a large portion of it for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and Cabot having acquired for Henry VII. of England, a similar title to a considerable part of North America, Francis I. king of France, became desirous of participating in the acquisition of the new world. For that purpose he fitted out Verazani, who made two voyages of discovery, and attempted B third, but perished in the attempt without effecting the projected establishment of a colony. The project of colonization seems to have been thereupon abandoned by the court of France for some years. In 1534, however, Jacques Cartier sailed, under a royal commission, from St. Maloes to Newfoundland, entered the bay of Chaleurs, coasted a great part of the gulf, and took formal possession of the adjacent country in the name of his most Christian Majesty. On the report of Cartier's voyage, he was commissioned to establish a French colony in the country thus acquired. Accordingly, he sailed with three vessels, which, after suffering severely in a storm, entered the gulf on the 10th of August, 1535, being the fast day of St. Laurent. In compliment to the Saint of the day, Cartier named the bay in which they anchored, St. Lawrence, a name soon afterwards applied to the gulf, and thence extended to the great river, which, before, had no other appellation than the river of Canada. It was not at first uniformly stiled the St. Lawrence, higher up than the island of Montreal. Even so late as the treaty of peace, in 1783, in the description of the boundary line between the United States and Canada, from the 45th degree of latitude to the lake, it was described as the river Iroquois or Cataracqui; but it is now commonly known by the name of the St. Lawrence, through its whole extent, from the gulf up to the outlet of Ontario. Between that lake and Erie, thirty-three miles, it is |