New France was a vast territory colonized by France in North America from 1534 to 1763. It initially embraced the shores of the St. Lawrence River, Newfoundland, and Acadia (Nova Scotia) but gradually expanded to include much of the Great Lakes region, parts of the trans-Appalachian West, and Louisiana. At its peak, New France consisted of five colonies: Canada (around the St. Lawrence River valley and Great Lakes), Acadia (present-day Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia), Hudson Bay region, the island of Newfoundland (Terre-Neuve), and Louisiana (the drainage basin of the Mississippi River) extending from the Gulf of Mexico up through parts of the interior of North America. The territory stretched from the Atlantic coast in the northeast to the Gulf of Mexico in the south and westward into the interior regions across what is now parts of Canada and the United States.