History.—In 1534 Jacques Cartier landed on the Gaspé coast of Quebec, of which he took possession in the name of Francis I., king of France. Little was done by way of settlement till 1608, when Champlain founded Quebec. From this time till 1763 Canada, from Acadia (Nova Scotia) to Lake Superior and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, was held to be French territory.
The struggle between Great Britain and France for supremacy was long and bitter, but ended in 1763 with the treaty of Paris, by which all the French dominions in Canada were ceded to Britain, save the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, retained by France as fishing stations. Hudson Bay territory, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland had passed to England by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
Through the American War of Independence, what is now Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was lost in 1783 to the United States, no longer British colonies. Quebec was in 1791 divided into Lower and Upper Canada. A rebellion took place in 1837-1838, and the provinces were reunited in 1840. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick were separated from Nova Scotia in 1770 and 1784. British Columbia was made a crown colony in 1858, and Vancouver Island joined to it in 1866. The confederation of all the British North American provinces—except Newfoundland—took place in 1867-1871, and the prosperity of the Dominion was only temporarily disturbed by the Red River rebellion of 1869.
The fishery rights have repeatedly been a source of controversy between Canada and Great Britain on the one hand and the United States on the other, and the dispute about sealing in Behring Sea and off the Alaskan coasts was only settled by arbitration in 1893. The Alaska boundary dispute was settled in 1903.
A proposed reciprocity agreement with the United States in the year 1911 saw the decisive defeat at the polls of the Laurier policy and the Liberal party. In October Robert L. Borden took over the reins of government, as Premier, and Earl Grey was succeeded as Governor-General by the Duke of Connaught. In 1916 the Duke of Devonshire succeeded as Governor-General.
The great European war of 1914 and following brought Canada to the vigorous support of Great Britain and the Entente Allies, and has done much toward the political, military and economic solidarity of the Dominion.
MEXICO
MEXICO (or Méjico; Span. pron. Meh´hē-co, from a native word), a federal republic of North America, embraces twenty-seven states, a federal district, and four territories. It extends between the United States and Guatemala, with an extreme length of nearly two thousand miles; its breadth varies between one thousand and (in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec) one hundred and thirty miles. It has a coast-line of almost six thousand miles, but with scarcely a safe harbor beyond the noble haven of Acapulco. On the Atlantic side, with its sand banks and lagoons, there are only open roadsteads, or river-mouths generally closed to ocean vessels by bars and shallows; harbor works, however, have been constructed at Vera Cruz and Tampico.
From the southeast and northwest extremities of the republic there extend the peninsulas of Yucatan and Lower California, enclosing the Gulfs of Campeche and California, respectively. In area (751,300 square miles) Mexico almost equals Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany and Austria-Hungary together.
Surface.—For the most part Mexico consists of an immense tableland, which commences in the United States, and rises to over eight thousand one hundred feet at Marquez, seventy-six miles north by west of Mexico City; at El Paso, on the northern frontier, the elevation is only three thousand seven hundred and seventeen feet. The most important mountain range is the Sierra Madre (over ten thousand feet, and extending from Tehuantepec into the United States); parallel with this run the Sierras of the east coast and of Lower California.