[Footnote 70: Father Hennepin asserts that the Spaniards were the first discoverers of Canada, and that, finding nothing there to gratify their extensive desires for gold, they bestowed upon it the appellation of El Capo di Nada, "Cape Nothing," whence, by corruption, its present name.--_Nouvelle Description d'un tres grand pays situe dans l'Amerique entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer Glaciale, depuis l'an_ 1667 _jusqu' en_ 1670. _Par le Pere Louis Hennepin, Missionaire Recollet a Utrecht_, 1697. La Potherie gives the same derivation. _Histoire de l'Amerique Septentrionale par M. de Bacqueville de la Potherie, a Paris_, 1722. The opinion expressed in a note of Charlevoix (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vol. i., p. 13), is that deserving most credit. "D'autres derivent ce nom du mot Iroquois 'Kannata,' qui se prononce Cannada, et signifie un amas de cabanes." This derivation would reconcile the different assertions of the early discoverers, some of whom give the name of Canada to the whole valley of the St. Lawrence; others, equally worthy of credit, confine it to a small district in the neighborhood of Stadacona (now Quebec). _Seconda Relatione di Jacques Cartier_, in Ramusio, tom. iii., p. 442, 447. "Questo popolo (di Hochelaga) non partendo mai del lore paese, ne essendo vagabondi, come quelli di Canada e di Saguenay benche dette di Canada sieno lor suggetti con otte o nove altri villaggi posti sopra detto fiume." Father du Creux, who arrived in Canada about the year 1625, in his "Historia Canadensis," gives the name of Canada to the whole valley of the St. Lawrence, confessing, however, his ignorance of the etymology: "Porro de Etymologia vocis Canada nihil satis certe potui comperire; priscam quidem esse, constat ex eo, quod illam ante annos prope sexaginta passim usurpari audiebam puer."