peting second to
be found elsewhere. {2} It forms a class of its own. And well it may,
even for its minor attributes, when the island of Newfoundland at its
mouth exceeds the area of Ireland; when the rest of its mouth could
contain Great Britain; when an arm of the true deep sea runs from Cabot
Strait five hundred miles inland to where the Saguenay river soundings go
down beyond an average of a hundred fathoms; and when, three hundred
miles farther inland still, on an island in an archipelago at the mouth
of the Ottawa, another tributary stream, there stands the city of
Montreal, one of the greatest seaports in the world.

But mere size is not the first consideration. The Laurentian waters are
much more important for their significance in every stage of national
development. They were the highway to the heart of America long before
the white man came. They remained the same great highway from Cartier to
Confederation--a period of more than three hundred years. It is only
half a century since any serious competition by road and rail began.
Even now, in spite of this competition, they are one of the greatest of
all highways. Nor does their significance stop here. Nature laid out
the St Lawrence basin so that it not only {3} led into the heart of the
continent, but connected with every other system from the Atlantic to the
Pacific and from the Tropics to the Polar sea. Little by little the
pioneers found out that they could paddle and portage the same canoe, by
inland routes, many thousands of miles to all four points of the compass:
eastward to the Atlantic between the Bay of Fundy and New York; westward
till, by extraordinary efforts, they passed up the giant Saskatchewan and
through the mighty ranges that look on the Pacific; southward to the
Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico; northward to Hudson Bay, or down the
Mackenzie to the Arctic ocean.

As settlement went on and Canada developed westwards along this
unrivalled waterway man tried to complete for his civilized wants what
nature had so well provided for his savage needs. There is a rise of six
hundred feet between Lake St Peter and Lake Superior. So canals were
begun early in the nineteenth century and gradually built farther and
farther west, at a total cost of $125,000,000, till, by the end of the
century, with the opening of the Canadian 'Soo,' the last artificial link
was finished and direct navigation was established between the western
end of La