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_Derivation of "Canada."_--I send you a cutting from an old newspaper,
on the derivation of this word:
"The name of Canada, according to Sir John Barrow, originated in
the following circumstances. When the Portuguese, under Gasper
Cortcreal, in the year 1500, first ascended the great river St.
Lawrence, they believed it was the strait of which they were in
search, and through which a passage might be discovered into the
Indian Sea. But on arriving at the point whence they could
clearly ascertain it was not a strait but a river, they, with
all the emphasis of disappointed hopes, exclaimed repeatedly
'Canada!'--Here nothing; words which were remembered and
repeated by the natives on seeing Europeans arrive in 1534, who
naturally conjectured that the word they heard employed so often
must denote the name of the country."