20 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



eral provinces outside of Manitoba, as large and productive as Minnesota,- 

 and to be the principal wheat-growing district of Canada ; and, finally, 

 the gold-producing province of British Columbia, whose mountains are 

 rich with undeveloped treasures, and whose mild climate invites a 

 considerable industrious population to cultivate its slopes and plateaus, 

 and collect the riches of its river and deep-sea fisheries. Even that 

 inhospitable Arctic region of the far northwest of Canada through which 

 the Yukon and its tributaries flow appears to be rich with untold 

 treasures of gold and other minerals, and promises to be a source of 

 wealth to a country which is still in the infancy of its material develop- 

 ment.^ 



IX. 



The population, which owns this vast territory, is confined chiefly at 

 present to the countries by the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the 

 Atlantic Ocean. A considerable number of people has within a few 

 years flowed into the Northwest, where the province of Manitoba is 

 exhibiting all the signs of a prosperous agricultural country, and its 

 capital, "Winnipeg, has grown up in the course of sixteen years into a 

 city of nearly 30,000 souls. The population of the whole Dominion may 

 now be estimated at about 5,200,000 souls, and has increased four times 

 since 183*7. Of this population more than a million and a quarter are 

 the descendants of 70,000 or 65,000 people who were probably living in 

 the French province at the time of the conquest (1759-60). The re- 

 mainder of the population is made up of English, Scotch, and Irish. 

 The immigration of late years has been insignificant compared with that 

 which has come into the United States, and consequently at present the 

 natural born population amounts to about 85-09 per cent of the whole. 

 The people of Canada have already won for themselves a large amount 

 of wealth from the riches of the land, forest, and seas. The total value 

 of the imports is now about $110,000,000 and of exports at least $120,- 

 000,000, or an aggregate of $230,000,000 a year, an increase of |175,000,- 

 000 within half a century. Of this large export trade at least $50,000,000 

 represent the products of the farms. The province of Ontario now 

 raises over 28,000,000 bushels of wheat alone, or an increase of over 

 19,000,000 since 1837. The Northwest and Manitoba raise upwards of 

 50,000,000 bushels, or an increase of 20,000,000 in ten years. The people 

 have now deposited in government savings-banks, leaving out of the calcula- 

 tion the ordinary monetary institutions of the country, about $60,000,000, 



1 As I read the proof of the text the world of enterprise and adventure is startled 

 by the reports of the wealth of the region of the Thron-Diuck (corrupted to 

 Klondike), one of the tributaries of the Yukon in Canadian territory. 



