Seated at the stern of the boat we looked back upon the fading city. Hugh Warren was smoking, and his slow-moving blue eyes were fixed dreamily upon the shore. He did not seem to be gazing at anything, and yet we knew he saw more than any of us.
"A centime for your thoughts, Hugh!" cried Vincent, rising and stretching his limbs.
"I was thinking," said the Historian, "of that Frenchman, Montcalm, who one summer day came down on the English at Oswego unawares with his gunboats and Indians and gendarmes. Of the twenty-five thousand people in yonder city I don't suppose there are a dozen who know what his plans were. They were grand ones. In no country on the face of the globe has nature traced outlines of internal navigation on so grand a scale as upon our American continent. Entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence we are carried by that river through the Great Lakes to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of more than two thousand miles. On the south we find the Mississippi pouring its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, within a few degrees of the tropics after a course of three thousand miles. 'The Great Water,' as its name signifies, and its numerous branches drain the surface of about one million one hundred thousand square miles, or an area twenty times greater than England and Wales. The tributaries of the Mississippi equal the largest rivers of Europe. The course of the Missouri is probably not less than twenty-five hundred miles. The Ohio winds above a thousand miles through fertile countries. The tributaries of these tributaries are great rivers. The Wabash, a feeder of the Ohio, has a course of above five hundred miles, four hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on the Illinois River, it will be possible to proceed by lines of inland navigation from Quebec to New Orleans. There is space within the regions enjoying these advantages of water communication, and already peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race, for four hundred millions of the human race, or more than double the population of Europe at the present time. Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi, and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant room for a population of a hundred million.
"In Montcalm's day all this territory belonged to France. It was that soldier's dream, and he was no less a statesman than a soldier, to make here a great nation. Toward that end a great chain of forts was to be built along the line from Ontario to New Orleans. Sandusky, Mackinaw, Detroit, Oswego, Du Quesne, were but a few links in the contemplated chain that was to bind the continent forever to French interests. It was for this he battled through all those bloody, brilliant campaigns of the old French war. But the English were too strong for him. Montcalm perished, and the power of France was at an end in the New World. But it almost overwhelms me at the thought of what a mighty empire was lost when the English huzza rose above the French clarion on the Plains of Abraham."
"Better for the continent and the world that England won," said Vincent.
"Perhaps so," allowed Hugh. "Though we cannot tell what might have been. But that does not concern this Ulysses and his crew. Onward, voyagers and voyageresses."
"Your simile is an unfortunate one. Ulysses was wrecked off Circe's island and at other places. Rather let us be the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece."
"Mercenary wretch!" exclaimed Hugh. "My taste is different. I am going in search of a dinner."
Hugh Warren's ability for discovering anything of that sort was proverbially good, so we, having the same disposition, followed him below to the dining-saloon.
We arrived at Toronto, one hundred and sixty miles from Oswego, a little before dusk. This city, the capital of the province of Ontario, is situated on an arm of the lake. Its bay is a beautiful inlet about four miles long and two miles wide, forming a capacious and well-protected harbor. The site of the town is low, but rises gently from the water's edge. The streets are regular and wide, crossing each other generally at right angles. There is an esplanade fronting the bay which extends for a distance of two miles. The population of the city has increased from twelve hundred in 1817 to nearly sixty thousand at present. In the morning we took a hurried survey of its chief buildings, visited Queen's Park in the centre of the city, and got round in season to take the afternoon steamer for Buffalo.