CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Part I
The First European Visitors

THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY
A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

By STEPHEN LEACOCK
TORONTO, 1915



CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE DAWN

We always speak of Canada as a new country. In one sense,
of course, this is true. The settlement of Europeans on
Canadian soil dates back only three hundred years.
Civilization in Canada is but a thing of yesterday, and
its written history, when placed beside the long millenniums
of the recorded annals of European and Eastern peoples,
seems but a little span.

But there is another sense in which the Dominion of
Canada, or at least part of it, is perhaps the oldest
country in the world. According to the Nebular Theory