Old Broad Street.
A few years ago there lived in New Ross, in the county of Wexford, two old men. The one, a slater named Furlong, a person of very intemperate habits, died an inmate of the poorhouse in his 101st year: he was able to take long walks up to a very short period before his death; and I have heard that he, his son, and grandson, have been all together on a roof slating at the same time. The other man was a nurseryman named Hayden, who died in his 108th year: his memory was very good as to events that happened in his youth, and his limbs, though shrunk up considerably, served him well. He was also in the frequent habit of taking long walks not long before his death.
J. W. D.
DERIVATION OF CANADA.
(Vol. vii., p. 380.)
The derivation given in the "cutting from an old newspaper," contributed by Mr. Breen, seems little better than that of Dr. Douglas, who derives the name from a M. Cane, to whom he attributes the honour of being the discoverer of the St. Lawrence.
In the first place, the "cutting" is not correct, in so far as Gaspar Cortereal never ascended the river, having merely entered the gulf, to which the name of St. Lawrence was afterwards given by Jacques Carter. Neither was the main object of the expedition the discovery of a passage into the Indian Sea, but the discovery of gold; and it was the disappointment of the adventurers in not finding the precious metal which is supposed to have caused them to exclaim "Aca nada!" (Nothing here).
The author of the Conquest of Canada, in the first chapter of that valuable work, says that "an ancient Castilian tradition existed, that the Spaniards visited these coasts before the French,"—to which tradition probably this supposititious derivation owes its origin.
Hennepin, who likewise assigns to the Spaniards priority of discovery, asserts that they called the land El Capo di Nada (Cape Nothing) for the same reason.