, the
other rivers being the St. John, the Miramichi, and the Restigouche in
New Brunswick. Eastern Canada is practically the Canadian part of the
St. Lawrence valley, (330,000 square miles), and the great physical
feature is the system of lakes with an area of 90,000 square miles. In
addition to the tributaries of the St. Lawrence already mentioned, the
Dominion boasts the Fraser, the Thompson, and the greater part of the
Columbia River in British Columbia; the Athabasca and Peace Rivers,
which flow into Lake Athabasca, and out of it as the Slave River, which
in its turn issues from the Great Slave Lake and flows into the Arctic
Ocean as the Mackenzie River (total length 2,800 miles); the Albany and
the Churchill, flowing into Hudson Bay, and the Nelson, which discharges
from Lake Winnipeg into Hudson Bay the united waters of the Assiniboine,
the Saskatchewan, the Red River and the Winnipeg.

West of the Great Lakes the scenery is less varied. From the lakes to
the Rockies stretches a vast level plain of a prairie character, slowly
rising from 800 feet at the east end to 3,000 feet at the foothills of
the Rockies.

The eastern and western portions of the Dominion are heavily wooded, and
comparatively little inroad has been made on the forest wealth of the
country. It is estimated that there are 1,200,000 square miles of
woodland and forest, chiefly spruce and pine, including about a hundred
varieties; consequently the industries connected with the forest are of
great importance, especially since the development of the pulp industry.
The central prairie plain is almost devoid of forest. Agriculture is the
dominant industry in Canada, not only in the great fertile plains of the
centre, but also on the lands which have been cleared of forest and
settled in other parts of the Dominion.

The Canadian climate is cold in winter and warm in summer, but healthy
all the year round. With all its extremes of cold it permits of the
cultivation in the open air of grapes, peaches, tobacco, tomatoes, and
corn. The snow is an essential condition of the prosperity of the timber
industry, the means of transport in winter, the protector of the soil
from frost, and the source of endless enjoyment in outdoor sports.

The French Canadians are almost exclusively the descendants of the
French in Canada in 1763, there being practically no immigration from
France. The French language is by statute, not by treaty, an official
language in the