"If the Maritime Provinces [of Britain] would join us,
spontaneously, to-day - sterile as they may be in the soil under a sky
of steel - still with their hardy population, their harbours, fisheries,
and seamen, they would greatly strengthen and improve our position,
and aid us in our struggle for equality upon the ocean. If we would
succeed upon the deep, we must either maintain our fisheries or
ABSORB THE PROVINCES."
E. H. DERBY, Esq, Report to the Revenue Commissioners of the United
States, 1866.
In the absence of any formal Dedication, I feel that to no one could
the following pages be more appropriately inscribed than to Lady Watkin.
On her have fallen the anxieties of our home life during my many
long absences away on the American Continent - which Continent she once,
in 1862, visited with me. My business, in relation to Canada, has, from
time to time, been undertaken with her knowledge, and under her good
advice; and no one has been animated with a stronger hope for Canada,
as a great integral part of the Empire of the Queen, than herself.
E. W. WATKIN.
ROSE HILL, NORTHENDEN,
2nd May, 1887.
PREFACE.
The following pages have been written at the request of many old
friends, some of them co-workers in the cause of permanent British rule
over the larger part of the Great Northern Continent of America.
In 1851 I visited Canada and the United States as a mere tourist, in
search of health. In 1861 I went there on an anxious mission of
business; and for some years afterwards I frequently crossed the
Atlantic, not only during the great Civil War between the North and
South, but, also, subsequent to its close. In 1875 I had to undertake
another mission of responsibility to the United States. And, last year,
I traversed the Dominion of Canada from Belle Isle to the Pacific. I
returned home by San Francisco and the Union Pacific Railways to
Chicago; and by Montreal to New York. Thence to Liverpool, in that
unsurpassed steamer, the "Etruria," of the grand old Cunard line. I
ended my visits to America, as I began them, as a tourist. This passage
was my thirtieth crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
Within the period from 1851 to 1886, history on the North American
Continent has been a wonderful romance. Never in the older stories of
the world's growth, have momentous changes been effected, and,
apparently, consolidated, in so short a time, or in such rapid
succession.
Regarding the United States, the slavery of four millions of the negro
race is abolished for ever, and the black men vote for Presidents. A
great struggle for empire - fought on gigantic measure - has been won for
liberty and union. Turning to Canada, the British half of the Continent
has been moulded into one great unity, and faggotted together, without
the shedding of one drop of brothers' blood - and in so tame and quiet a
way, that the great silent forces of Nature have to be cited, to find a
parallel.
