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being derived from the United States, and the greater part of the exports going to Great Britain. The total value of the imports in 1879 amounted to nearly £15,000,000, and the value of the exports was but little less. Of the exports, over £10,000,000 worth were sent to Great Britain.

LESSON LVIII.

DOMINION OF CANADA.—GROWTH-PROVINCES CHIEF TOWNS-NEWFOUNDLAND.

1. The northern part of North America was first explored at least, in the neighbourhood of the St. Lawrence-by a Frenchman (Jacques Cartier), in 1535; and the French were the earliest European settlers. Early in the seventeenth century the New England States were founded by the "Pilgrim Fathers,"* and, as in India, a rivalry soon sprang up between the colonists of the two countries. When war broke out between the mother countries it extended to the colonies, and in 1759, after a memorable battle in which General Wolfe was killed, Quebec-the capital of the French colony-was captured, and the first great blow was struck at French dominion in Canada. At the Peace of Paris, in 1763, the whole colony was ceded to England. Twenty years later the New England or Southern States rebelled against the imposition of taxes by the parliament of England, and 1783 saw the commencement of the young American Republic, now the "United States" of America. The northern states, however, remained faithful to the mother country.

2. In 1867 the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, were united into one colony, under the title of the "Dominion of Canada." In 1869 the vast hunting-grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company were

*See Lesson XLVII.

purchased by the Government of the Dominion, and renamed the North-west Territory. A small portion of the southern part of this Territory, in the basin of the Red River, was erected into a separate province in 1870, and named Manitoba. In the next year British Columbia and Vancouver Island joined the Dominion; and Prince Edward Island was added in 1873.

3. The "Dominion of Canada" thus includes the province of Ontario, lying along the north of the chain of the Great Lakes; Quebec, extending on both sides of the St. Lawrence above the Gulf; New Brunswick, having Quebec, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, and the State of Maine, for its boundaries; Nova Scotia, a peninsula east of New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island, to the north of Nova Scotia; Manitoba, occupying the southern part of the great plain west of Ontario; British Columbia, occupying the table-lands and coastranges to the west of the main range of the Rocky Mountains; and the North-west Territories, being all that vast territory around the Hudson's Bay, stretching westwards to the Rocky Mountains, and northwards to the Arctic Ocean.

4. The total population is about four millions, or not much above the population of London. Ontario and Quebec are the most thickly, and the North-west Territory the most sparsely, populated provinces.

5. Ottawa, on the river of the same name, is the capital of the Dominion. This city is the centre of the lumber trade. A few miles above the city are the famous Chaudière Falls, the waters of which are utilised as the motive-power for enormous saw-mills. "The beauty of the Fall is much impaired, but it is a wonderful sight to see the logs drawn out of the water by the water into the different mills. Each log is first squared by one saw, then cut into boards by another. Even the edges are not wasted; they are cut up into thinner boards or made into laths by a very ingenious process. Nothing is thrown away but the saw-dust."

Toronto is the chief

town of Ontario, and the seat of the Provisional Govern

ment.

[graphic]

FALLS OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER, NEW BRUNSWICK.

6. Quebec and Montreal-both old French townsare the chief cities of the province of Quebec. Quebec, the capital, has a population of 75,000; whilst Montreal, with a population of 160,000, is the commercial metropolis, and indeed the chief port in British North America. Quebec has historic associations which few of the other Canadian towns possess; and the man must be deficient in sentiment who can visit the Heights of Abraham, or walk under the shadow of its battlements, without memories that take him far back to the days when Briton and Frenchman, under the heroic Wolfe and the chivalrous Montcalm, fought here for the mastery of the New World. Nine miles from Quebec are the celebrated Falls of Montmorency; and opposite the town is Point Levi, with its acres and acres of floating lumber.

7. Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, has a splendid harbour and dockyard, and is the chief British naval station in North America. St. John, at the mouth of the River St. John in New Brunswick, is also an important commercial town. Vancouver is the chief port on the Pacific coast. There are no towns in the Northwest Territories, and the seat of government is but a mere village.

8. The population of the Dominion is of a mixed origin. French, Irish, English, Scotch, and German predominate; but there are also many Africans, Dutch, Eskimo, and native Indians; and there is scarcely a country in Europe which does not add its quota-large or small-to the population of this colony.

9. The government of the Dominion is similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom. The executive authority is vested in the English Sovereign, and carried on in her name by a governor-general and privy council. The legislative power is exercised by a parliament of two Houses, called the "Senate" and the "House of Commons." In addition to the general government, each of the eight provinces has its own separate local government with a lieutenant-governor at the head of the executive. "Each province has full powers to regulate its own local affairs, dispose of its own revenues and

enact such laws as it may deem best for its own internal welfare, provided only they do not interfere with, or are adverse to, the action and policy of the central administration under the governor-general."

10. Newfoundland, the oldest American colony, has not yet joined the Dominion of Canada. It is an island about two-thirds the size of England and Wales, with the small population of about 170,000. The coast is deeply indented with bays and gulfs, which supply good harbours. The surface presents a barren and rugged appearance. It is covered with lakes (or "ponds," as they are commonly called), swamps, bare mossy tracts and rounded hills, with occasional forests of pine and birch.

11. The soil is too sterile to admit of cultivation, except in the few settled districts. The most fertile part is the valley of the Grand River. The interior is entirely uninhabited, even by the hardy Indians. The chief beasts of burden are the fine Newfoundland dogs, supposed to be natives of the island. Though in the same latitude as the north of France, the climate is liable to great extremes. The cold is very severe along the north and east coasts, caused by the quantity of ice brought down by the cold currents from the Greenland seas. The country is also very liable to dense fogs, which often last for weeks. These are caused by the meeting of the waters of the cold Polar current and the warm Gulf Stream. The quantity of icebergs and the fogs render navigation in the neighbourhood of the island both difficult and dangerous.

12. Stretching for some four or five hundred miles south and east of the island is a vast submarine bank, the seat of the great cod fishery of the world. This fishery constitutes the chief occupation and the chief wealth of the greater part of the inhabitants, who live for the most part along the south-east coast. In the winter months, from October to March, the cod is in best condition.

13. St. John's, the capital, and the port and commercial town, has a population of about 23,000. It is situated on the south-eastern peninsula, which is partly cut off from the mainland by Trinity Bay, and is the most

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