The Bas-Saint-Laurent (Lower Saint-Lawrence), is an administrative region of Quebec located along the south shore of the lower Saint Lawrence River in Quebec. The river widens at this place, later becoming a bay that discharges into the Atlantic Ocean and is often nicknamed "Bas-du-Fleuve" (Lower-River). The region is formed by eight regional county municipalities and 114 municipalities. In the south, it borders Maine of the United States, and the Canadian New Brunswick and the regions of Chaudière-Appalaches and Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine. It had a population of 197,385 and a land area of as of the 2016 Census. The territory has evidence of human occupation since the Pleistocene by successive indigenous peoples. The historic First Nations occupied it all until European colonisation started in the late 17th century; France made land concessions to settlers under the Seigneurial system of New France to encourage colonization. However, development of this region was slow until it started to exploit its mixed forests. Settlement gradually developed further inland, on the littoral, and since the late 20th century a leisure and recreation industry has developed. Its geography is marked by the Saint Lawrence River to the northwest, the Notre Dame Mountains section of the Appalachians, as well as the Matapédia and Témiscouata valleys, which forms the natural communication corridors with the Gaspé Peninsula, the state of Maine in the United States, and the Maritimes. Etymology and toponymy The region takes its name from the Saint Lawrence River, a waterway that has a central role in the history of Quebec and forms the northern border of the region. The name of the river, and by extension the region, has a hagiotoponymic origin originating from the baye sainct Laurens named by Jacques Cartier, originating from the date of discovery being 10 August 1535, day of the festival of Saint Lawrence in the Christian martyrology. The name of the bay was used again to describe the river when the Narration, his report of his expedition, was translated to Spanish and Italian, and definitively fixed by its use in the world map of cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, according to historian Marcel Trudel. The name "Bas-Saint-Laurent", however, only appeared much later. In their Histoire du Bas-Saint-Laurent, the historians Fortin and Lechasseur assert that the relation with the Saint Lawrence grew with the population of the region in the 19th century. The first mention of the name is attributed to a report from