statues of Queen Victoria, as well as of Sir John Macdonald, Alexander Mackenzie, Sir George Cartier and other Canadian political leaders. On the eastern side of the canal is Major's Hill Park, maintained by the government. Below Sandy Hill, on the banks of the Rideau, lies Strathcona Park, an admirable piece of landscape gardening constructed out of what was once an unsightly swamp. Crossing the bridges above the Rideau Falls, and passing the heavily wooded grounds of Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor-general, we come to Rockliffe Park, beyond which lies the government rifle ranges. Rockliffe Park is the easternmost point of an ambitious scheme of landscape gardening planned by the Improvement Commission. From here a driveway extends to Rideau Hall; thence it crosses the Rideau river to a noble thoroughfare cut through the heart of Lower Town, and known as King Edward Avenue. Crossing the canal by the Laurier bridge, the driveway turns south and follows the west bank of the canal for 4 m. to the Central Experimental Farm, an extensive tract of land upon which experiments in model farming are carried out by government specialists, for the benefit of Canadian farmers. From the Experimental Farm the driveway will be carried around the western side of the city to the banks of the Ottawa, connecting by light bridges with a group of islands above the Chaudière Falls which are to be converted into a park reserve.
Ottawa is governed by a mayor, elected by the city at large; a board of control consisting of four members, similarly elected and a board of 16 aldermen, 2 elected by each of the 8 wards. The city returns 2 members to the Dominion House of Commons and two to the provincial legislature.
The population, of which one-third is French-speaking, the remainder English (with the exception of a small German element), has increased rapidly since the incorporation of the city in 1854. It was 59,928 in 1901; 67,572 in 1906; and in 1907, including the suburbs and the neighbouring town of Hull, over 100,000.
The earliest description of the site of Ottawa is that of Samuel de Champlain, in his Voyages. In June 1613, on his way up the river, he came to a tributary on the south side, “at the mouth of which is a marvellous fall. For it descends a height of twenty or twenty-five fathoms with such impetuosity that it makes an arch nearly four hundred paces broad. The savages take pleasure in passing under it, not wetting themselves, except from the spray that is thrown off.” This was the Rideau Falls, but a good deal of allowance must be made for exaggeration in Champlain's account. Continuing up the river, “we passed,” he says, “a fall, a league from there, which is half a league broad and has a descent of six or seven fathoms. There are many little islands. The water falls in one place with such force upon a rock that it has hollowed out in course of time a large and deep basin, in which the water has a circular motion and forms large eddies in the middle, so that the savages call it Asticou, which signifies boiler. This cataract produces such a noise in this basin that it is heard for more than two leagues.” The present name, Chaudière, is the French equivalent of the old Indian name. For two hundred years and more after Champlain's first visit the Chaudière portage was the main thoroughfare from Montreal to the great western fur country; but it was not until 1800 that any permanent settlement was made in the vicinity. In that year Philemon Wright, of Woburn, Massachusetts, built a home for himself at the foot of the portage, on the Quebec side of the river, where the city of Hull now stands; but for some time the precipitous cliffs on the south side seem to have discouraged settlement there. Finally about 1820 one Nicholas Sparks moved over the river and cleared a farm in what is now the heart of Ottawa. Seven years later Colonel John By, R.E., was sent out to build a canal from a point below the Chaudière Falls to Kingston on Lake Ontario. The canal, completed at a cost of $2,500,000, has never been of any great commercial importance; it has never been called upon to fulfil its primary object, as a military work to enable gun-boats and military supplies to reach the lakes from Montreal without being exposed to attack along the St Lawrence frontier. The building of the canal created a fair-sized settlement at its Ottawa end, which came to be known as Bytown. As the lumber trade developed Bytown rapidly increased in wealth and importance. In 1854 it was incorporated as a city, the name being changed to Ottawa; and four years later Queen Victoria selected Ottawa as the capital of Canada. Ottawa was admirably situated for a capital from a political and military point of view; but there is reason to believe that the deciding factor was the pressure exerted by the four other rival claimants, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto and Kingston, any three of which would have fiercely resented the selection of the fourth. The first session of parliament in the new capital was opened in 1865.
Bibliography.—J. D. Edgar, Canada and its Capital (Toronto, 1898); A. S. Bradley, Canada in the Twentieth Century (London, 1903), pp. 130–140; F. Gertrude Kenny, “Some account of Bytown,” Transactions, vol. i., Women's Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa; Mrs H. J. Friel, “The Rideau Canal and the Founder of Bytown,” ibid.; M. Jamieson, “A glimpse of our city fifty years ago,” ibid.; J. M. Oxley, “The Capital of Canada,” New England Magazine, N.S., 22, 315–323; Godfrey T. Vigne, Six Months in America (London, 1832), pp. 191–198; Andrew Wilson, History of Old Bytown (Ottawa, 1876); Chas. Pope, Incidents connected with Ottawa (Ottawa, 1868); Wm. P. Lett, Recollections of Bytown (Ottawa, 1874); Wm. S. Hunter, Ottawa Scenery (Ottawa, 1855); Joseph Tassé, Vallée de l'Outaouais (Montreal, 1873). (L. J. B.)
OTTAWA, a city and the county-seat of La Salle county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Illinois river, at the mouth of the Fox, about 84 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1900) 10,588, of whom 1804 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 9535. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways, by interurban electric railways, and by the Illinois & Michigan Canal. There is a monument at Ottawa to the 1400 soldiers from La Salle county who died in the Civil War, and among the public buildings are the County Court House, the Court House for the second district of the Illinois Appellate Court, and Reddick's Library, founded by William Reddick. Ottawa is the seat of the Pleasant View Luther College (co-educational), founded in 1896 by the Norwegian Lutherans of Northern Illinois. There is a medicinal spring, the water of which is called “Sanicula” water. The water supply of the city is derived from eight deep wells. There are about 150 privately owned artesian wells. In the vicinity are large deposits of coal, of glass-sand, and of clay suitable for brick and tile. The city's manufactures include glass, brick, tile, carriages and wagons, agricultural implements, pianos and organs and cigars. The value of the factory products increased from $1,737,884 in 1900 to $2,078,139 in 1905, or 19.6%.
The mouth of the Fox was early visited by French explorers, and Father Hennepin is said to have discovered here in 1680 the first deposit of coal found in America. On Starved Rock, a bold hillock about 125 ft. high, on the southern bank of the Illinois, about midway between Ottawa and La Salle, the French explorer La Salle, assisted by his lieutenant Henri de Tonty and a few Canadian voyageurs and Illinois Indians, established (in December 1682) Fort St Louis, about which he gathered nearly 20,000 Indians, who were seeking protection from the Iroquois. The plateau-like summit, which originally could be reached only from the south by a steep and narrow path, was rendered almost impregnable to Indian attack by a sheer cliff on the river side of the hill, a deep ravine along its eastern base and steep declivities on the other sides. On the summit La Salle built store-houses and log huts, which he surrounded by entrenchments and a log palisade. The post was used by fur traders as late as 1718. The hill has borne its present name since about 1770, when it became the last refuge of a small band of Illinois flying before a large force of Pottawattomies, who believed that an Illinois had assassinated Pontiac, in whose conspiracy the Pottawattomies had taken part. Unable to dislodge the Illinois, the Pottawattomies cut off their escape and let them die of starvation. Ottawa was laid out in 1830, incorporated as a village in 1838 and chartered as a city in 1853. On the 21st of August 1858 the first of the series of political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, in their contest for the United States senatorship, was held at
