La Potherie corroborates this statement, with this difference, that he attributes the Spaniards' idea of the nothingness of the country to its being covered with snow. He says also that the Indians, on the arrival of Jacques Cartier, frequently pronounced these words: Aca nada (nothing here), which is a very plausible derivation. The words were taught them probably by the Spaniards, who had visited the Baie des Chaleurs, and pronounced them because they found no gold or silver mines. Our own opinion, however, is, that the word Canada is derived from the word Kanata, which, in Iroquois, signifies a collection of huts. By so unpromising an appellation, is known a province containing upwards of 350,000 square miles, which offer to the agriculturist almost measureless fields of pasture and tillage to the manufacturer, an incalculable extension of the home market for the disposal of his wares to the merchant and mariner, vast marts for profitable traffic in every product with which nature has bounteously enriched the earth-to the capitalist, an almost interminable extent for the profitable investment of funds and to the industrious, skilful, and intelligent emigrant, a field where every species of mental ingenuity and manual labour may be developed and brought into action with advantage to the whole family of man.
