The Welland Canal naturally leads one to reflect on the great sources of power spread before the Canadian nation; for, although it will never, never be la nation Canadienne, yet it will inevitably some day or other be the Canadian nation, and its limits the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
President Polk—they say his name is an abbreviation of Pollok—can no more dive into "the course of time" than that poet could do, and it is about as vain for him to predict that the American bald eagle shall claw all the fish on the continent of the New World, as it is to fancy that the time is never to come when the Canadian races, Norman-Saxon as they are, shall not assert some claim to the spoils.
Canada is now happier under the dominion of Victoria than she could possibly be under that of the people of the States, and she knows and feels it. The natural resources of Canada are enormous, and developing themselves every day; and it needs neither Lyell, nor the yet unheard-of geologists of Canada to predict that the day is not far distant when her iron mines, her lead ores, her copper, and perhaps her silver, will come into the market.[6]
I see, in a paper lying before me, that Colonel Prince, a person who has already flourished before the public as an enterprising English farming gentleman, who combines the long robe with the red coat, has, with a worthy patriotism, obtained a very large grant of lands from the government to explore the shore of Lake Superior, in order to find whether the Yankees are to have all the copper to themselves; and that, in searching a little to the eastward of St. Mary's Rapids, a very valuable deposit has been discovered, which has stimulated other adventurers, who have found another mine nearer the outlet of the lake and still more valuable, the copper of which, lying near the surface, yields somewhere about seventy-five per cent.[7]
We know that rich iron mines exist, and are steadily worked in Lower Canada; we know that a vast deposit of iron, one of the finest in the world, has lately been discovered on the Ottawa, a river in the township of M'Nab; and we know that nothing prevents the Marmora and Madoc iron from being used but the finishing of the Trent navigation. Lead abounds on the Sananoqui river, and at Clinton, in the Niagara district; whilst plumbago, now so useful, is abundant throughout the line, where the primary and secondary rocks intersect each other. Mr. Logan, employed by the government, ex cathedra, says there is no coal in Canada; but still it appears that in the Ottawa country it is very possible it may be found, and that, if it is not, Cape Breton and the Gaspé lands will furnish it in abundance; and, as Canada may now fairly be said to be all the North American territory, embraced between the Pacific somewhere about the Columbia river, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, for a political union exists between all these provinces, if an acknowledged one does not, coal will yet be plentiful in Canada.
Canada, thus limited, is now, de facto, ay, and de jure, British North America; and a fair field and a fertile one it is, peopled by a race neither to be frightened nor coaxed out of its birthright.
The advantages of Canada are enormous, much greater, in fact, than they are usually thought to be at home.
The ports of St. John's and of Halifax, without mentioning fifty others, are open all the year round to steamers and sea-going vessels; and when railroads can at all seasons bring their cargoes into Canada proper, then shall we live six months more than during the present torpidity of our long winters. John Bull, transported to interior Canada, is very like a Canadian black bear: he sleeps six months, and growls during the remaining six for his food.
Then, in summer, there is the St. Lawrence covered with ships of all nations, the canals carrying their burthens to the far West and the great mediterraneans of fresh water, opening a country of unknown resources and extent.
These great seas of Canada have often engaged my thoughts. Tideless, they flow ever onward, to keep up the level of the vast Atlantic, and in themselves are oceans. How is it that the moon, that enormous blister-plaster, does not raise them? Simply because there is some little error in the very accurate computations which give all the regulations of tidal waters to lunar influences.