from the Atlanti

ED LONDON N

notions of opening up the British portion of the Great Continent of America. A while later a leading article written by me appeared in the "Illustrated

y be ultimately peopled in an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population.' The aspiration, so strikingly expressed, found a fervent echo in the national heart, and it

ct 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

es, 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 st

mpany, 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.

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 ea

sor Hin

ted 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

ar 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

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 rai

sh an unbroken line of

acific through Br

horter distances by both sea and l

igation of 6,000 miles to Japan, of 5,000 miles to Canton, and of 3,000 miles to Sydney. For Japan, for China, for the whole Asiatic Archipelago, and for Australia, s

on the Atlantic, though none equal to Halifax, there is no available harbour at all fit for the great Pacific trade, from Acapulco to our harbour of Esquimault, on Vancouver's Island, except San Francisco-and that is in the wrong place, and is, in many states of the wind, unsafe and inconvenient. The country north-west of the Missouri is found to be sterile, and at least one-third of the whole United States territory, and situated in this region, is now known as the 'Great American Desert.' Again, the conflicting interests of separate and sovereign States present an almost insuperable bar to agreement as to route, or as to

, the whole help of both the Local and Imperial Parliaments must be given. That help once offered, by guarantee or by grant, pri

t cases, towards the sea-level on the western or Pacific side, than a great wall barring the country for hundreds of miles, as some had dreamed. Every inquiry from trappers, traders, Indian voyageurs, missionary priests of the Jesuits, and from all sorts and conditions of men and women, made difficulty after difficulty disappear. The great work began to appear to me comparatively easy of execution between Fort Garry, or the lower town of Selkirk and British Columbia; the cost less; and, owing to facilities of transport, especially in winter, the time of execution much shorter than had been previously assumed. In addition, an examination into the physical conditions of the various routes proposed through the United States, convinced me that here again the diffi

hing great and out of the ordinary rut of our rule at home, he would always find an earnest advocate and helper in the Prince, to whom he said he "felt endeared with the affection of a father to a son." I called the Duke's special attention to the position and attitude of the Hudson's Bay authorities. How they were always crying down their territory as unfit for settlement; repelling all attempts from the other side to open up the land by roads, and use steamers on such grand rivers as, for instance, the Assiniboin and the Saskatchewan. He said Sir Frederick Rogers, the chief permanent official at the Colonial Office, whose wife's settlement was in Hudson's Bay shares, and who, in consequence, was expected to be well informed, had expressed to him grave doubts of the vast territory in question being ever settled, unless in small spots here and there. The Duke fully recognized, however, the difficulty I had put my finger upon. I never spent

aine wants to be annexed to our territory." I made no reply, but I doubted the correctness of the Duke's information. Still, with civil war just commencing, who could tell? "Sir," said old Gordon Bennett to me one day, while walking in his garden, beyond New York, "here everything is new, and nothing is settled." Fail

unpaid, never-tiring agent in these great enterprises, and, undoubtedly, in