Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

“The province of Prince Edward’s Island is separated from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia by straits only nine miles in width. It is crescent-shaped, 130 miles in length, and at its broadest part is 34 miles wide. It is a level region, of a more moderate temperature than that of Lower Canada, and well adapted to agricultural purposes. Its population in 1848 was 62,678.

“The island of Newfoundland has a seacoast 1000 miles in extent. It has an area of 23,040,000 acres, of which only a small portion is cultivated. Its spring is late, its summer short, but the frost of winter is less severe than in many parts of our own Northern States and Territories. It is only 1665 miles distant from Ireland. It possesses a large trade with various countries, including Spain, Portugal, Italy, the West Indies, and the Brazils.

“The chief wealth of Newfoundland and of the Labrador coast is to be found in their extensive and inexhaustible fisheries, in which the other Provinces also partake. The future products of these, when properly developed by human ingenuity and industry, defy human calculation. The Gulf Stream is met near the shores of Newfoundland by a current from the Polar basin, vast deposits are formed by the meeting of the opposing waters, the great submarine islands, known as ‘The Banks,’ are formed; and the rich pastures created in Ireland by the warm and humid influences of the Gulf Stream are compensated by the ‘rich sea-pastures of Newfoundland.’ The fishes of warm or tropical waters, inferior in quality and scarcely capable of preservation, cannot form an article of commerce like those produced in inexhaustible quantities in these cold and shallow seas. The abundance of these marine resources is unequalled in any portion of the globe.

“Canada, rather a nation than a province in any common acceptation of the term, includes not less than 346,863 square miles of territory, independently of its North-western Possessions not yet open for settlement. It is three times as large as Great Britain and Ireland, and more than three times as large as Prussia. It intervenes between the Great North-west and the Maritime Provinces, and consists chiefly of a vast territorial projection into the territory of the United States, although it possesses a coast of nearly 1000 miles on the river and gulf of the St. Lawrence, where fisheries of cod, herring, mackerel, and salmon are carried on successfully. Valuable fisheries exist also in its lakes. It is rich in metallic ore and in the resources of its forests. Large portions of its territory are peculiarly favourable to the growth of wheat, barley, and the other cereals of the north. During the life of the present generation, or the last quarter of a century, its population has increased more than fourfold, or from 582,000 to 2,500,000.

“The population of all the provinces may be fairly estimated as numbering 3,500,000. Many of the inhabitants are of French extraction, and a few German settlements exist; but two-thirds of the people of the provinces owe their origin either to the United States or to the British Islands, whose language we speak, and who ‘people the world with men industrious and free.’

“The climate and soil of these Provinces and Possessions, seemingly less indulgent than those of tropical regions, are precisely those by which the skill, energy, and virtues of the human race are best developed. Nature there demands thought and labour from man as conditions of his existence, but yields abundant rewards to wise industry. Those causes which, in our age of the world, determine the wealth of nations are those which render man most active; and it cannot be too often or too closely remembered in discussing subjects so vast as these, where the human mind may be misled if it attempts to comprehend them in their boundless variety of detail, that sure and safe guides in the application of political economy, and to our own prosperity, are to be found in the simple principles of morality and justice, because they alone are true alike in minute and great affairs, at all times and in every place.”

CHAPTER XVI.

The “Ashburton Capitulation”—Boundaries of Quebec—Arbitration in 1831—Lord Ashburton’s Mission—The Questions in Dispute—“The Sea” v. “The Atlantic”—American Diplomatists—Franklin’s Red Line—Compromise—The Maps—Maine—Damage to Canada—Mr. Webster’s Defence—His Opinion of the Road—Value of the Heights—Our Share of Equivalents—Value of Rouse’s Point—Vermont—New Hampshire.

It was by the celebrated Treaty of Washington, August 9th, 1842, that the boundary line between the British possessions in Canada and the State of Maine in the territories of the United States, was settled and determined. That treaty has been sometimes spoken of as the “Ashburton Capitulation.” The story of the two maps which played so distinguished a part in the negotiations, is tolerably well known, and has formed a subject of many discussions which have now settled down into fixed convictions. By many, if not by most Americans, acquainted with the subject, it is believed that Mr. Webster did a very smart thing. Englishmen, similarly instructed, believe their country to have been cheated by the great American elocutionist. Canadians are of opinion that they have suffered an irreparable injury at the hands of, or through the weakness of, those appointed to guard their interests by the Imperial Government. The Treaty of Paris, in 1783, did not define the north-eastern boundary of the United States; it merely declared that the boundary was drawn along the highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean. If we had had at that time the knowledge of geography and geology, with respect to the basin of the St. Lawrence, which, thanks to the labours of the United States’ engineers and of Sir William Logan, we now possess, there would not have been much difficulty in fixing on the real line, as there could not well be any dispute respecting the exact line of highlands from which the rivers flowing into the St. Lawrence came, and from the other side of which the water-shed was towards the Atlantic Ocean. Tons of pamphlets, years of controversy, and thousands of pounds might have been spared, not to speak of much national animosity.