Mr. Low made the return journey in fine style, “shooting all the rapids along the river,” and arriving at Lake St. John on September 1st. Thus his explorations occupied more than nine weeks, and—rendering testimony on yet another important point—he mentions a sustained experience of fine weather, “not a day having been lost by rain or head-winds.”
Thus by following in the footsteps of a scientific scout of civilisation, we have had a peep at one morsel of a huge territory which man has scarcely begun to utilise. There are no means of measuring its natural resources; we know only that they are vast. Conjecture may, however, be based on analogy. The present population of Quebec is practically restricted to a tenth part of the province. What is being done in that tenth part does not by any means represent finality, since development in many districts is still at an early stage. Nevertheless, the achievements of a part supply a clue to the possibilities of the whole, so I will mention a few instructive facts.
Last year some fifty million bushels of oats were grown in the province of Quebec; and since to most persons 50,000,000 is an indefinite total, and only vaguely impressive, like 5,000,000 or 500,000,000, I may mention, for the purpose of affording the reader a standard of comparison, that in 1909 the quantity of that grain grown in Scotland—the national head-quarters of oat-cakes and porridge—was only thirty-eight million bushels. Let me quote another item from the long list of products yielded by the fraction of Quebec province that is at present under cultivation. The French-Canadians and their neighbours annually grow about seventeen million bushels of potatoes, or enough to supply the entire population of Ireland from one year’s end to another, allowing for a consumption of 2½ lbs. per week for every man, woman and child. They also grow enough tobacco (principally black and strong kinds, but including a good deal of Havana) to meet the annual requirements of over a million moderate smokers; while Quebec’s immense quantities of apples, cheese, cherries, butter, pears, pumpkins and melons also provide the statistician with much food for thought.
And, while I am about it, let me give a hint or two with reference to the present mineral output of the province. Note, then, that in 1909 some three thousand miners received £270,000 as wages for wresting £459,000 worth of asbestos from the serpentine rocks of Quebec—a region which in the same year enriched the world with over a million barrels of Portland cement (representing a value of £263,000), besides noteworthy quantities of copper, graphite, marble, granite, phosphate, mica, chromite, and ochres.
GATHERING MAPLE SYRUP IN EASTERN CANADA
TOBACCO GROWING, QUEBEC PROVINCE
As to the forests, they represent a vast treasury from which the lumber and pulp industries draw annually a value of about £4,000,000; nor should we forget the six thousand tons of luscious syrup tapped from the maple trees. Again, there is not an area of the earth more richly endowed with water-power; and therefore to Quebec’s manufacturing activity, which has had a brilliant beginning, no man can foresee the end.
Those of my readers who are well-read sportsmen will have been wondering why, all this time, I have omitted to mention a supreme attraction of the region under notice. With its vast virgin forests full of game, its thousands of lakes and rivers alive with fish, Quebec has won the title, in Canada and the United States, of the Angler’s and Sportsman’s Paradise. Many a wealthy American whiles away delightful months hunting the caribou, moose and red deer, the beaver, mink and yellow fox, the woodcock, partridge and widgeon, in that beautiful country of the St. Lawrence River and the Laurentian Range. American angling clubs lease Quebec’s famous salmon pools, and hundreds of New York’s busy citizens spend their holidays capturing the monster trout, bass, pike, and whitefish for which the province is famous.