dit were all growing,
energetic digging was begun on the St Lawrence system of canals, and by
1848 vessels of twenty-six foot beam and drawing nine feet of water
could sail from the ocean to Chicago.

Land transport came later than water {17} transport, and developed by
slower stages. Road-making was an art which the settler learned
slowly. The blazed trail through the woods sufficed for the visit to
the neighbour or the church, or for the tramp to the nearest grist-mill
with a sack of wheat on one's back. 'He who has been once to church
and twice to mill is a traveller,' the common saying ran. The trail
broadened to a bridle-road for pack-horse or saddle-horse. The winter,
that maligned stepmother of Canada, gave the settler an excellent
though fleeting road on the surface of the frozen river or across the
hard-packed snow. Through the endless swamps jolting 'corduroy' roads
were built of logs laid crosswise on little or no foundation. With
more hands and more money there came the graded road, fenced and
bridged, but more rarely gravelled. Finally, little earlier than the
railway, came the macadamized road, and that peculiar invention of
Upper Canada, the plank road, built of planks laid crosswise on a level
way, and covered with earth to lessen the wear and noise. Upon these
roads carriole or caleche, 'cutter' or 'lumber-wagon,' carried the
settler or his goods to meeting-place and market. By 1816 a stage
route was established from Montreal to Kingston, a year later {18} from
Kingston to York (Toronto), and in 1826 from Toronto to Niagara and
from Ancaster to Detroit.

Road-making policy fluctuated between the Scylla of local neglect and
the Charybdis of centralized jobbery. At first the settler was
burdened with the task of clearing roughly the road in front of his own
land, but the existence of vast tracts of Clergy Reserves, or other
grants exempt from clearing duties, made this an ineffective system.
Labour on roads required by statute, whether shared equally by all
settlers or allotted according to assessed property, proved little more
successful. On the other hand, the system of provincial grants for
road-building too often meant log-rolling and corruption, and in the
Canadas it was discontinued after the establishment of municipal
institutions in 1841. The reaction to local control was perhaps too
extreme, and we are to-day recognizing the need of more aid and control
by the central provincial au