Who were the people found by Cartier in 1535, seemingly long-settled and prosperous, occupying the fortified towns of Stadaconé and Hochelaga, and lower points on the St. Lawrence? The question is not without a special interest to Canadians. According to the native Wyandot historian, they were Wyandots or Hurons, and Senecas. That they were Huron-Iroquois, at any rate, and not Algonkins, is readily determined. We owe to Cartier two brief vocabularies of their language, which, though obscured probably in their original transcription, and corrupted by false transliterations in their transference to the press, leave no doubt that the people spoke a Huron-Iroquois dialect. To which of the divisions it belonged is not so obvious. The languages, in the various dialects, differ only slightly in most of the words which Cartier gives. Sometimes they agree with Huron, and sometimes with Iroquois equivalents. The name of Hochelaga, “at the beaver-dam,” is Huron, and the agreement as a whole preponderates in favour of a Huron rather than an Iroquois dialect. But there was probably less difference between the two then, than at the more recent dates of their comparison. In dealing with this important branch of philological evidence, I have been indebted to the kindness of my friend, Mr. Horatio Hale, for a comparative analysis of the vocabulary supplied by Cartier, embodying the results of long and careful study. He has familiarised himself with the Huron language by personal intercourse with members of a little band of civilised Wyandots, settled on their reserve at Anderdon, in Western Ontario. The language thus preserved by them, after long separation from other members of the widely scattered race, probably presents the nearest approximation to the original forms of the native tongue, as spoken on the Island of Montreal and the lower St. Lawrence. In comparing them allowance has to be made for varieties of dialect among the old occupants of the lower valley of the St. Lawrence, and also for the changes wrought on the Huron language in the lapse of three and a half centuries, not simply by time, but also as the result of intercourse and intermixture with other peoples. The habit of recruiting their numbers by the adoption of prisoners and broken tribes could not fail to exercise some influence on the common tongue. The _k_ or hard _g_ of Cartier is, in the Wyandot, frequently softened to a _y_; and on the other hand, the _n_ is strengthened by a _d_ sound, as in Cartier’s pregnant term _Canada_, the old Hochelaga word for a town, which has become in the Wyandot _Yandata_; and so in other instances.