The Story of Marble Island. Ill 



the crew of the Neptune had been fully aroused, I stood upon the 

 quarter-deck of our good ship and surveyed this prospect. 



It was the most north-westerly point that the Expedition would 

 reach, and it appeared to me, some way, that to have reached it, with 

 the good old flag of the Dominion floating over us, was no small 

 achievement. I regarded it as, to us, the signal of Canadian progress 

 a sign of the ever onward march of British power, British commerce, 

 and British freedom ; and, I thought of it, as to future generations, 

 embalmed in history, a landmark of Canadian advancement which 

 shall have added much importance to the world's greatest Empire- 

 Kingdom. It was, indeed, the place and the hour for contempla- 

 tion, and I could not readily turn away from its opportunities.. 

 Standing where I was, and looking back, so to speak,, over the in- 

 habited portions of Canada, and then over the history of the people 

 of Canada, and over the history of Great Britain, and over the 

 history of modern times, it seemed to me that, stretching from the 

 land of the Norsemen, and the waters of Archangel, to " India's coral 

 strand," all peoples, and tribes, and tongues, from the earliest days 

 of Chaldean power down through the history of Assyrian, Persian, 

 Grecian, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon supremacy, have, in the progress 

 of the arts and sciences, in the growth of political institutions of 

 government and civil liberty, in the development of commerce and 

 the advancement of industrial pursuits, and in the rise and glorious 

 reign of Christianity, been moving forward north-westerly. The 

 contemplation, visionaiy in one sense, was real in another, and his- 

 tory was the source of its inspiration. The general course of human 

 progress, for thousands of years, has been to the north-west ; it was 

 still in the flood tide of its strength north-westerly, and the flag of 

 the Dominion, floating from the mizzen-peak of the Neptune in the 

 little anchorage at Marble Island in the north-western waters of 

 Hudson's Sea, in the early morning light of September 2, 1884, was 

 beckoning that progress onward to higher latitudes. 



Mankind, in all ages, in marching along 



The highway of commerce, by mighty and strong 



Impulse of progress, invariably throng 



A course that leads north-westerly. 



