The More Perfect
Discoveries Of Our New Gold Fields On The Pacific, The Indian Mutiny,
The Completion Of Great Works
In Canada, the treaties with Japan and
with China, the visit of the Prince of Wales to the American Continent,
And, at the moment, the sad dissensions in the United States, combine
to interest us in the question, and to make us ask, 'How is this hope
to be realized; not a century hence, but in our time?'
"Our augmenting interests in the East, demand, for reasons both of
Empire and of trade, access to Asia less dangerous than by Cape Horn,
less circuitous even than by Panama, less dependent than by Suez and
the Red Sea. Our emigration, imperilled by the dissensions of the
United States, must fall back upon colonization. And, commercially, the
countries of the East must supply the raw materials and provide the
markets, which probable contests between the free man and the slave may
diminish, or may close, elsewhere. Again, a great nation like ours
cannot stand still. It must either march on triumphantly in the van, or
fall hopelessly into the rear. The measure of its accomplishment must,
century by century, rise higher and higher in the competition of
nations. Its great works in this generation can alone perpetuate its
greatness in the next.
"Let us look at the map: there we see, coloured as 'British America,' a
tract washed by the great Atlantic on the East, and by the Pacific
Ocean on the West, and containing 4,000,000 square miles, or one-ninth
of the whole terrestrial surface of the globe. Part of this vast
domain, upon the East, is Upper and Lower Canada; part, upon the West,
is the new Colony of British Columbia, with Vancouver's Island (the
Madeira of the Pacific); while the largest portion is held, as one
great preserve, by the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company, who, in right
of a charter given by Charles II., in 1670, kill vermin for skins, and
monopolise the trade with the Native Indians over a surface many times
as big again as Great Britain and Ireland. Still, all this land is
ours, for it owes allegiance to the sceptre of Victoria. Between the
magnificent harbour of Halifax, on the Atlantic, open throughout the
year for ships of the largest class, to the Straits of Fuca, opposite
Vancouver's Island, with its noble Esquimault inlet, intervene some
3,200 miles of road line. For 1,400 or 1,500 miles of this distance,
the Nova Scotian, the Habitan, and the Upper Canadian have spread, more
or less in lines and patches over the ground, until the population of
60,000 of 1759 amounts to 2,500,000 in 1860. The remainder is peopled
only by the Indian and the hunter, save that at the southern end of
Lake Winnipeg there still exists the hardy and struggling Red River
Settlement, now called 'Fort Garry:' and dotted all over the Continent,
as lights of progress, are trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company.
"The combination of recent discoveries places it at least beyond all
doubt that the best, though, perhaps, not the only, thoroughly
efficient route for a great highway for peoples and for commerce,
between the Atlantic and the Pacific, is to be found through this
British territory. Beyond that, it is alleged that while few, if any,
practicable passes for a wagon-road, still less for a railway, can be
found through the Rocky Mountains across the United States' territory,
north-west of the Missouri, there have been discovered already no less
than three eligible openings in the British ranges of these mountains,
once considered as inaccessible to man. While Captain Palliser prefers
the 'Kananaskakis,' Captain Blakiston and Governor Douglas, the
'Kootanie,' and Dr. Hector the 'Vermilion' Pass, all agree that each is
perfectly practicable, if not easy, and that even better openings may
probably yet be found as exploration progresses. Again, while British
Columbia, on the Pacific, possesses a fine climate, an open country,
and every natural advantage of soil and mineral, it has been also
discovered that the doubtful region from the Rocky Mountains eastward
up to the Lake of the Woods, contains, with here and there some
exceptions, a 'continuous belt' of the finest land.
"Professor Hind says: -
"'It is a physical reality of the highest importance to the interests
of British North America that this continuous belt can be settled and
cultivated from a few miles west of the Lake of the Woods, to the
passes of the Rocky Mountains; and any line of communication, whether
by wagon, road, or railroad, passing through it, will eventually enjoy
the great advantage of being fed by an agricultural population from one
extremity to the other.'
"Although the lakes and the St. Lawrence give an unbroken navigation of
2,000 miles, right to the sea, for ships of 300 tons burden, yet if
there is to be a continuous line, along which, and all the year round,
the travel and the traffic of the Western and Eastern worlds can pass
without interruption, railway communication with Halifax must be
perfected, and a new line of iron road, passing through Ottawa, the Red
River Settlement, and this 'continuous belt,' must be constructed. This
new line is a work of above 2,300 miles, and would cost probably
20,000,000l., if not 25,000,000l., sterling.
"The sum, though so large, is still little more than we voluntarily
paid to extinguish slavery in our West Indian dominions; it does not
much exceed the amount which a Royal Commission, some little time ago,
proposed to expend in erecting fortifications and sea-works to defend
our shores. It is but six per cent, of the amount we have laid out on
completing our own railway system in this little country at home. It is
equal to but two and a-half per cent. of our National Debt, and the
annual interest upon it is much less than the British Pension List.
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