GEOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



The Province of Ontario, it is said, owes its poetic Indian name to its 

 ■" beautiful prospect of hills and waters." It is with the inhabitants of the latter 

 that the present section of this Report deals, and it appears therefore to be an 

 indispensable preliminary that some general account of the geographical disposi- 

 tion of the numerous lakes and rivers of the Province should be given. 



The most important of these furnish the boundaries which separate Ontario 

 from the United States on the south and from the neighbouring parts of the 

 Dominion of Canada on the east and north-west. 



Thus the international boundary line between the Province and the States 

 of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota passes 

 through the River St. Lawrence and the chain of the Great Lakes, then by Pigeon 

 River and the head-waters of Rainy Lake and River to the Lake of the Woods, 

 a distance of some 1,600 miles, while the north-west boundary line, which separates 

 it from Manitoba and Keewatin, stretches for some bOO miles through English 

 River, Lac Seul, Lake Joseph and the Albany River to the mouth of the latter 

 in Hudson's Bay. From this point, the northern boundary — the Ontario sea- 

 <;oast — extends for 250 miles along James' Bay to a point midway between Hannah 

 Bay House and the mouth of the Nottawa River and due north of the head of 

 Lake Temiscaming. The meridian which joins this point and the head of the 

 lake forms an artificial boundary line of 275 miles in length between this part of 

 Ontario and the North -Eastern Territory on the east, which is completed further 

 south and east through a stretch of another 500 miles by the natural boundary, 

 separating it from the Province of Quebec, formed by the lake above named and 

 the magnificent Ottawa River which issues from it. 



The territory so bounded contains upward of 200,000 square miles, and its 

 most distant points from east to west and from north to south are respectively 

 upwards of 1,000 and 700 miles apart. All the waters named, and others included 

 within the area of the Province belong to two great water-systems, the Hudson's 

 Bay system in the north, and the St. Lawrence system in the south. The water- 

 shed separating these — the so-called " Height of Land " — extends, so far as it lies 

 within the Province, south and west from Lake Abittibe to within 100 miles of 

 the north channel of Lake Huron, and then runs parallel therewith, and with the 

 coast line of Lake Superior, occasionally approaching within 50 miles of the coast 

 or receding, as, for example, round Lake Neepigon, to a distance of 150 miles. West 

 of Lake Neepigon, the height of land approaches Thunder Bay between Dog Lake 

 and Lake Sheban do wan which belong to the St. Lawrence system on the one hand, 

 and Lac des Milles Lacs, which is tributary to the Hudson's Bay system on the 

 other. It then crosses the international boundary at a point immediately west 

 of Arrow Lake. 



At no point does the height of land attain any great elevation above the sea ; 

 the highest levels in fact are reached comparatively abruptly from the shores of the 

 Great Lakes, and the height of land is therefore constituted by the most elevated 

 tracts of a great plateau extending between the Great Lakes and James' Bay. 



