180 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 



one great obstacle in the way of annexation will fade 

 away. But the good sense of the Canadian people will, 

 it is to be hoped, cause them to keep their expenditure 

 within bounds, and the enormous debt and oppressive 

 taxation of her neighbour will serve as a warning to 

 Canada against public extravagance. 



Its insular position has many drawbacks, but it has also 

 its compensating advantages. When commercial failures 

 spread ruin over the continent, little Prince Edward 

 Island never feels the shock, but jogs on as usual, whilst 

 her neighbours are enduring the miseries of a commercial 

 panic. The ice-bound straits, however, must not get all 

 the credit for this. The island is mainly a farming 

 country, and farmers, while unable to make fortunes 

 quickly, are at least as secure as any other class on the 

 globe from disastrous loss. When crops are poor, prices 

 rule high ; when one crop fails from want of rain, another 

 is doubled by the same cause. Prince Edward Island 

 also, perhaps, owes her immunity from blights and devas- 

 tating insects to her insular position. There is little or 

 no potato disease, and the grasshopper, the potato bug, 

 the army worm, and hoe genus omne are unknown. No 

 epidemic has ever reached the cattle, and island stock 

 are proverbially healthy and hardy. 



Prince Edward Island is about 150 miles in length, its 

 greatest width 35 miles, but so indented by arms of the 

 sea that in some places it narrows to 3 or 4 miles. The 

 extreme extent of coast-line is favourable not only to 

 fishermen but also to the farmers, who are in no instance 

 out of reach of a harbour from whence to export their 

 surplus produce. Many of the larger indentations form 



