554 THE ST - LAWRENCE RIVER. 



opens up a waterway of unsurpassed grandeur through 

 the Dominion of Canada, fitly represents the Imperial 

 power of Great Britain in North America. 



The mighty river St. Lawrence is one of those rare 

 instances of a river, whose estuary is so perfect in 

 form that it issues unobstructed to the ocean, without 

 the usual defect of a sand barrier thrown up by the 

 lap of the surge at its junction with the stream. Taken 

 in connection with the great lakes, the St. Lawrence 

 affords the most magnificent system of inland naviga- 

 tion in the world, and the approximate area of its 

 basin is estimated at 510,000 square miles, of which 

 322,500 belong to Canada and 187,440 to the United 

 States. * It is usually accounted that the head- waters of 

 the St. Lawrence are represented by the St. Louis River, 

 which discharges into Lake Superior at Fond-du-Lac; 

 if we accept this as so, the distance from the sources 

 of the St. Louis to Cape Gaspe at the Gulf, is but 

 some 2100 miles. The St. Lawrence is pre-eminent 

 therefore not on account of the great length of the 

 cross section of its basin, but because of its enormous 

 catchment reservoirs the great lakes. It is however 

 a fact worthy of notice that the River St. Louis, its 

 reputed head, springs from the same plateau in Min- 

 nesota, that gives birth to its rival the Mississippi, as 

 well as to another important stream, the Red River ot 

 the North, f which is comprised among that remark- 

 able system of inland waters which issue via Lake 

 Winnipeg into the Hudson's Bay, by the Nelson River. 



Volumes might be written upon the wonderful 

 physical geography of the great St. Lawrence system, 



* Encycl. Brit., 9th Edition, Vol. xxi., p. 177-8. (Art. "St. Lawrence".} 

 f Ibid., p. 178. 



