ater to comprehend what immense quantities
of earth, sand, and mud are yearly carried down by it. And all this silt
is deposited in the flat delta below New Orleans. Therefore the delta
extends from year to year farther out into the Gulf of Mexico. This is
an easy way of increasing our territory, but we would willingly
sacrifice the gain if we could get rid of the terrible floods in
spring."

The train with our two travellers on board has now crossed the boundary
of Pennsylvania, and is making its way westwards through the states of
Ohio and Indiana. Boundless plains extend to north and south, planted
with maize, wheat, oats, and tobacco. Maize fields, however, are the
most frequent, and the harvest is just beginning. Gigantic reaping
machines, drawn by troops of horses, mow down the grain and bind it into
sheaves, while other machines throw it into waggons. The reapers have
only to drive the horses; all the rest is done by the machines.
Certainly men's hands could never be able to deal with all this grain;
whole armies could be hidden under the ears of maize.

Now the train skirts the shore of Lake Michigan, which stretches its
blue surface northwards, and a little later halts at Chicago.

* * * * *

Gunnar has been directed to an agency for Swedish workmen, and the first
thing he does is to call there. In a day or two he obtains work in the
timber business, and goes up to Canada in a large cargo steamer which
carries timber from the forests of Canada to Chicago. Here the timber
supplies seem to him inexhaustible when he sees the dark coniferous
woods on the shores and hills, and when he notices that hundreds of
steamboats are carrying the same freight. The workman beside him, an
Englishman, boasts of the immense territory which occupies almost all
the northern half of North America.

"Canada is the most precious jewel in the crown of Great Britain, next
to the mother-country and India."

"Why is Canada so valuable? I always thought that its population was
very small."

"It has not many people; you are right there. Canada has only seven
million inhabitants."

"Oh, not more! That is just about as many as Greater London."

"Yes; and yet Canada is as large as all Europe and as the United States
of America. It stretches so far to east and west that it occupies a
fourth part of the circuit of the earth, and if you travel from Montreal
to Vancouver you have a journey of 2906 miles. B