Canada | Page 9

who left
the old colonies during and after the War of Independence and founded
new homes by the St. Lawrence and great lakes, as well as in Nova
Scotia {11} and New Brunswick, where, as in the West, their
descendants have had much influence in moulding institutions and
developing enterprise.
In the days when Ontario and Quebec were a wilderness, except on the
borders of the St. Lawrence from Montreal to the Quebec district, the
fur-trade of the forests that stretched away beyond the Laurentides, was
not only a source of gain to the trading companies and merchants of
Acadia and Canada, but was the sole occupation of many adventurers
whose lives were full of elements which assume a picturesque aspect at
this distance of time. It was the fur-trade that mainly led to the
discovery of the great West and to the opening up of the Mississippi
valley. But always by the side of the fur-trader and explorer we see the
Recollet or Jesuit missionary pressing forward with the cross in his
hands and offering his life that the savage might learn the lessons of his
Faith.
As soon as the Mississippi was discovered, and found navigable to the
Gulf of Mexico, French Canadian statesmen recognised the
vantage-ground that the command of the St. Lawrence valley gave
them in their dreams of conquest. Controlling the Richelieu, Lake
Champlain, and the approaches to the Hudson River, as well as the
western lakes and rivers which gave easy access to the Mississippi,
France planned her bold scheme of confining the old English colonies

between the Appalachian range of mountains and the Atlantic Ocean,
and finally dominating the whole continent.
So far we have been passing through a country {12} where the lakes
and rivers of a great natural basin or valley carry their tribute of waters
to the Eastern Atlantic; but now, when we leave Lake Superior and the
country known as Old Canada, we find ourselves on the northwestern
height of land and overlooking another region whose great
rivers--notably the Saskatchewan, Nelson, Mackenzie, Peace,
Athabasca, and Yukon--drain immense areas and find their way after
many circuitous wanderings to Arctic seas.
The Central region of Canada, long known as Rupert's Land and the
Northwestern Territory, gradually ascends from the Winnipeg system
of lakes, lying to the northwest of Lake Superior, as far as the foothills
of the Rocky Mountains, and comprises those plains and prairies which
have been opened up to civilisation within two decades of years, and
offer large possibilities of power and wealth in the future development
of the New Dominion. It is a region remarkable for its long rivers, in
places shallow and rapid, and extremely erratic in their courses through
the plains.
[Illustration: Rocky Mountains at Donald, B.C.]
Geologists tell us that at some remote period these great central plains,
now so rich in alluvial deposits, composed the bed of a sea which
extended from the Arctic region and the ancient Laurentian belt as far
as the Gulf of Mexico and made, in reality, of the continent, an
Atlantis--that mysterious island of the Greeks. The history of the
northwest is the history of Indians hunting the buffalo and fur-bearing
animals in a country for many years under the control of companies
holding royal charters of exclusive {14} trade and jealously guarding
their game preserves from the encroachments of settlement and
attendant civilisation. French Canadians were the first to travel over the
wide expanse of plain and reach the foothills of the Rockies a century
and a half ago, and we can still see in this country the Métis or
half-breed descendants of the French Canadian hunters and trappers
who went there in the days when trading companies were supreme, and

married Indian women. A cordon of villages, towns, and farms now
stretches from the city of Winnipeg, built on the site of the old
headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, as far as the Rocky
Mountains. Fields of golden grain brighten the prairies, where the
tracks of herds of buffalo, once so numerous but now extinct, still
deeply indent the surface of the rich soil, and lead to some creek or
stream, on whose banks grows the aspen or willow or poplar of a
relatively treeless land, until we reach the more picturesque and
well-wooded and undulating country through which the North
Saskatchewan flows. As we travel over the wide expanse of plain, only
bounded by the deep blue of the distant horizon, we become almost
bewildered by the beauty and variety of the flora, which flourish on the
rich soil; crocuses, roses, bluebells, convolvuli, anemones, asters,
sunflowers, and other flowers too numerous to mention, follow each
other in rapid succession from May till September, and mingle with
"The billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine."