The Philadelphia _Courier_, of July, 1836, gives the following not improbable etymology of the name of the province:--Canada is compounded of two aboriginal words, _Can_, which signifies the mouth, and _Ada_ the country, meaning the mouth of the country. A writer of the same period, when there seems to have been considerable discussion on the subject, says:--The word is undoubtedly of Spanish origin, coming from a common Spanish word, _Canada_, signifying a space or opening between mountains or high banks--a district in Mexico of similar physical features, bearing the same name. "That there were Spanish pilots or navigators among the first discoverers of the St. Lawrence may be readily supposed, and what more natural than that those who first visited the gulf should call the interior of the country _El Canada_ from the typographical appearance of the opening to it, the custom of illiterate navigators naming places from events and natural appearances being well established." Hennepin, an etymological _savant_, declares that the name arose from the Spaniards, who were the first discoverers of Canada, exclaiming, on their failure to find the precious metals, "_El Capa da nada_," or Cape Nothing. There seems to be some support of this alleged presence of the Spanish among the early navigators of the St. Lawrence, by the finding in the river, near Three Rivers, in the year 1835, an ancient cannon of peculiar make, which was supposed to be of Spanish construction. The origins of the names of Montreal and Quebec are equally open to discussion. Many stoutly assert that Montreal is the French for Mount Royal, or Royal Mount; others, that by the introduction of one letter, the name is legitimately Spanish--_Monte-real_. _Monte_, designating any wooded elevation, and that _real_ is the only word in that language for royal. The word Quebec is attributed to Indian and French sources. It is said that it is an Algonquin word, meaning a strait, the river at this point being not more than a mile wide; but although Champlain coincided in this view, its root has never been discovered in any Indian tongue. Its abrupt enunciation has not to the ear the sound of an Indian word, and it could scarcely have come from the Algonquin language, which is singularly soft and sweet, and may be considered the Italian of North American dialects. Those who claim for it a French origin, say that the Normans, rowing up the river with Cartier at his first discovery, as they rounded the wooded shores of the Isle of Orleans, and came in sight of the bare rock rising three hundred feet from its base, exclaimed "_Quel bec!_" or, What a promontory! The word bears intrinsically strong evidence of Norman origin. Cape Diamond received its name from the fact that in the "dark colored slate of which it is composed are found perfectly limpid quartz crystals in veins, along with crystallized carbonate of lime, which, sparkling like diamonds among the crags, suggested the appellation."