fully in keeping with the
other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging
these little preliminary matters so essential to the work I was about to
engage in, let us examine for a moment the objects and scope of that
work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my
journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected
that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started
some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort William, on
the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between
Toronto and Thunder Bay is about 600 miles, 100 being by railroad
conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded expanse of Lake Huron,
known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of
the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards
of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of
fresh water has rendered necessary the construction of a canal of
considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory-a
fact which gives our friendly cousins the exclusive possession of the
great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the
Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition.
Poor Canada! when one looks at you along the immense length of your noble
river boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your
youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding
colonial minister through the particular whig, or tory spectacles of his
party, subject to violent and radical alterations of policy because of
some party vote in a Legislative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest
coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the
limits of your possible future, parties every where in your provinces,
and of every kind, except a national party; no breadth, no depth, no
earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for
himself and no-one for the country; men fighting for a sect, for a
province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this
while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth,
looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with
perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time,'
digging his canals and grading, his railroads, with one eye on the
Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself,