[3] The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts. Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.
[4] The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is, in Alaska and Arctic North America, Innuit, and in Labrador and Greenland, Karalit. Eskimo (in French, Esquimaux) is said to be a corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters of raw flesh".
[5] The wild currants so often mentioned by the early explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our kitchen gardens (Ribes nigrum). This, together with the red currant (Ribes rubrum), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens. The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the stories of these early explorers are Fragaria vesca and F. virginiana. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries (unless they are his groseilles vertes), but later travellers do. Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned by Champlain (bluëts or bluës) was Vaccinium canadense.
[6] Of the genera Juglans and Carya.
[7] The huge deer of the genus Alces. Elk is the old Scandinavian name. Moose, derived from the Kri language, is the Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer. Champlain calls the elk orignac, its name in Algonkin.