252 APPENDIX II. 



No. II. 



REFLECTIONS IN 1857 ON TIIE FUTURE OF BRITISH 

 AIVIERICA, BY THE HON. W. H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF 

 STATE, AFTER VISITING THE COAST OF LABRADOR AND 

 PARTS OF CANADA.* 



No one is more truly a waiter on Providence than the traveller 

 who depends on sails to be filled by favouring breezes. Ten 

 watches of the day and night have passed since we left Anti- 

 costi, and yet we are only seventy miles nearer our port. But 

 we have had balmy summer skies and a gentle summer sea. 

 Not a craft of any size or kind has darkened our horizon. It is 

 to us as if the human world beyond it was not. The sea birds 

 have circled our masts, crying for crumbs from our table, as it 

 has been bountifully spread a half dozen times on deck, either 

 in the sunshine or in the shade of the canvas. 



Dreamy existence is this living at sea in the summer. Per- 

 haps my meditations on the political destinies of the region 

 around me may be as unsubstantial. But I will nevertheless 

 confess and avow them. Hitherto, in common with most of 

 my countrymen, as I suppose, I have thought Canada, or to 

 speak more accurately, British America, a mere strip lying 

 north of the United States, easily detachable from the parent 

 state, but incapable of sustaining itself, and therefore ulti- 

 mately, nay, right soon, to be taken on by the Federal Union, 

 without materially changing or affecting its own condition or 

 developement. I have dropped the opinion as a national con- 



* A Cruise to Labrador, Log of the Schooner Emerence, Correspondence of 

 the Albany Evening Journal, by the Hon, W. H. Seward, Secretaiy of State, 

 United States. 



