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 a common
Spanish word, _Canada_, signifying a space or opening between mountains
or high banks--a district in Mexico of similar physical features,
bearing the same name.

"That there were Spanish pilots or navigators among the first
discoverers of the St. Lawrence may be readily supposed, and what more
natural than that those who first visited the gulf should call the
interior of the country _El Canada_ from the typographical appearance of
the opening to it, the custom of illiterate navigators naming places
from events and natural appearances being well established."

Hennepin, an etymol