HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
THE reader will have a better understanding of the manner in which the territory, herein treated of, was discovered and subsequently occupied, if reference is made, in the outset, to some of its more important topographical features.
Indeed, it would be an unsatisfactory task to try to follow the routes of early travel, or to undertake to pursue the devious wanderings of the aboriginal tribes, or trace the advance of civilized society into a country, without some preliminary knowledge of its topography.
Looking upon a map of North America, it is observed that westward of the Alleghany Mountains the waters are divided into two great masses; the one, composed of waters flowing into the great northern lakes, is, by the river St. Lawrence, carried into the Atlantic Ocean; the other, collected by a multitude of streams spread out like a vast net over the surface of more than twenty states and several territories, is gathered at last into the Mississippi River, and thence discharged into the Gulf of Mexico.
As it was by the St. Lawrence River, and the great lakes connected with it, that the Northwest Territory was discovered, and for many years its trade mainly carried on, a more minute notice of this remarkable water communication will not be out of place. Jacques Cartier, a French navigator, having sailed from St. Malo, entered, on the 10th of August, 1535, the Gulf, which he had explored the year before, and named it the St. Lawrence, in memory of the holy martyr whose feast is celebrated on that day. This name was subsequently extended to the river. Previous to this it was called the River of Canada, the name given by the Indians to the whole country. The drainage of the St. Lawrence and the lakes extends through 14 degrees of longitude, and covers a distance of over two thousand miles. Ascending
*Father Charlevoix' History and General Description of New France;" Dr. John G. Shea's translation; vol. 1, pp. 37, 115.