The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-09 00:00:00

turesque incidents related by the hand of DANIEL
DEFOE as having befallen ROBINSON CRUSOE in the
island of Juan Fernandez. But, happily for the
settlers in Canada, there is not much fear before
them of their finding themselves ever doomed by
circumstances to a life of prolonged solitude—even
when they have penetrated far west into the back-
woods bordering upon those great inland seas
dividing Canada from the Federal States, the giant
forests skirting those mighty lakes of the new
world that may not be inaptly spoken of as the
American Mediterraneans. Even there, in those
almost untrodden wildernesses, retirement from the
haunts of man is in fact becoming more and more
impracticable. And now that that stupendous and
intolerable territorial monopoly known as
the Hudson's Bay Company has found a
portion at last of its authority wrested
from it by the daring policy of a great administra-
tor of the Colonial Empire of Great Britain, now
that British Columbia is expanding its energies
eastwards from the shores of the Pacific, as the
Canadian provinces havelong been expanding their
energies westwards from the shores of the Atlantic
—we may leave calmly and confidently to the force
of circumstances and the Course of Time the
subjugation of the sylvan wilds of the innermost
depths of our North American possessions. With
the Canadian provinces upon one side, and with
British Columbia upon the other—it becomes
merely a question of time when the heart of our
hitherto impenetrable, or at any rate, of our
heretofore unpenetrated, dominions in the new
world shall have been swept over by the bene-
ficent influences of modern civilisation. The axe
of the backwoodsman has long been ringing fur-
ther and further inland, wielded in the grasp of
that, for the most part, unconscious " pioneer"
of Civilisation. Preceded years ago by the crack
of the fur-trapper's rifle, the clang of the set-
tler's hatchet is being everywhere steadily and
surely followed up by the clatter of the railway
cars that are year by year being borne further
and further into the recesses of that vast North
American continent. It is purely and wholely,
we repeat, a question of time, and no more than
a question of time. The age will come when the
advanced guard of Canadian and of Columbian
enterprise will meet, " must" per necessitate meet,
in the centre of the American continent—and the
work will then have been accomplished. And,
meanwhile, during the process of its accomplish-
ment, the opportunities afforded to the youth of
the old mother country may be referred to with-
out even the appearance of hyperbole, as almost
beyond the reach of calculation, as certainly be-
yond the reach of any very accurate calculation.
Some of them we have here deliberately pointed
at. Meaning, at those very reasonable conditions
upon which any actual settler in Canada may, if
he lists so to do, obtain a free grant of one hun-
dred acres to begin with. Against none of these
conditions can even a moment's objection be raised
as against anything exorbitant, or otherwise, in fact,
than most rational and most judicious. Look at the
first condition for instance, viz., that the settler be
aged at least eighteen !—without doubt an almost
superfluous proviso : for who would ever dream
of an actual settler being under eighteen—who
would ever dream of such a thing, at any rate
out of the pages, let us say, of the Swiss Family
ROBINSON, or of those marvellous records of Boy
Adventurers that Captain MAYNE REID loves to
tell of ! and that boy readers love so dearly to hear
him relate ! Condition 2—That he (the settler)
shall, within a month's time from the date of
the award of 100 acres, take possession of them.
A. condition based upon the principle, of course,
that "if 'twere done, then 'twere well 'twere
done quickly." Condition three can hardly be
looked upon as one requiring too much at the
hands of the emigrant —to wit, that in Four
Years, twelve at least out of the 100 acres of
land freely granted to him shall have been brought
by him under cultivation. The fourth and last of
these very moderate conditions binding down the
settler to secure in the most effectual manner his
own comfort, by requiring him, that is, to con-
struct for himself a local habitation of convenient
dimensions, and to inhabit it ! " That he build
a log house" (says the condition) " twenty feet
by eighteen, and reside on the lot until the fore-
going conditions shall have been fulfilled." Who
shall say that, with Free Grants of 100 acres of
land thus readily procurable in Canada by the
youth of England, that the world, the British
Empire, has not room and verge enough for all ?