, 1885-05-09
rHe poNINIon OF CANADA.
Her War asI ENTHUSIASTICALLY Of Her
soil ircAifh OF Her Forests

soI- rcAifh OF Her Forests
Oath" ia Boston GiobaI
Considering her situation and scat
tered populace, Canada has been in
more danger during the past 100 years
than the nited states, and has had
more real wars. During her CO.
lonial period Montreal was taken
two or three times and many
of the people burnt at the stake.
Huge ornaments for those days were
launched upon Lewisburg and Quebec
time ana time again. The isolated posts
OF France in our western regions were
assaulted and the people insulted.
To- isiana had her revolutions before
the American occupation. When the
Americans revolted they kept Canada in
constant alarm. The people in distant
British Columbia have been repeatedly
threatened with invasion from the
American side. Fenian attempts have
been made on Canada, and in her little
civil wars of almost fifty years ago her
authorities hanged more men for the
crime of treason and rebellion than the
lnited States hanged in a colossal war
fare.
The Canadian Dominion will never
have any other quantity than length;
II VIII It liuUOcnADlG " mttkt Ill tluDl-O
out OF a mere fringe. Last summer |
went to ottawa and was struck with the
almost awful .seantness of the land
through which the costly Canadian IA
chic railroad had been run. Soon after
leaving Montreal the ground becomes
rocky and with that cold greenness in
dicative of terrible winters. The sta
tons on the road are generally of the
scrimpiest sort, and the towns, cluster
ing about some old French Catholic
church with its tin roof, remind one Of
tho pictures of Siberia or the Russian
plains. The Ottawa river, Il of the
largest streams on our continent, roll.
through this cold country, showing a
Loaf 81 some kind hardly more than
once in the whole journey to Ottawa.
At Ottawa nature seems to terminate;
on that rocky plateau, with Alterations
Of mountains in the distance, one stands
beside the really beautiful public build
ings and wonders to himself if the true
populaoe Of such a country is not the
lumber and the saw-mills instead of hui
man souls lie sees plenty of lumber,
perhaps hundreds Of acres of it, but it
is PROBABLY destined to build h%abitations
for the enormously growing country to
the south. Ottawa itself reminded me
of some of the little towns perched
around the queens residences, as at
Windsor or at Cowes. The most vigor-
GUS town in the Dominion, Montreal
probably excepted, is Toronto. went
to that place a few years ago, and was
on the whole disappointed with it; the
appearance of the people in the streets
was common, and they all seemed to
wear the dirty, unchanged woolens one
finds in Scotland, where they stand out
in the rain without an umbrella all day
long. men and women, and not know
the difference between a shower and the
sunshine.
it is just POS years since one of the
French promoters, Duluth, settled on
the north shore of Lake Superior. That
was in 1850, or about the time Phila-
delphia WIS planted by Penn. So the
Canadian shore of Lake Superior has
been as many years in progress, so to
speak, as the shores of the Delaware.
What is the result. The population of
Pennsylvania is probably three-quarters
as great as that of all Canada, and con
sidering the nature of the population is
equal TO two or three such nations as
the Canadians. After n leaves
Lake Superior, which is now frozen
up, and cannot be used for British
troops to attack Riel, he has to go 430
miles by train TO Winnipeg, or some
thing like the distance from Boston to
Buffalo. Mr.. SANFORD Fleming, whose
book was published last summer in Mon
treal, and who had every reason to ex-
plot the country, said: Nothing is to
be seen but rock and forest in their
most rugged form. The surface is a
succession of rocky lodges, with tortuous
streams and deep muskegs intervening.
No great area Of land is to be seen
suitable for farming. The only source
OF wealth is in the forests