384 Our North Land. 



changed. A short time ago, within the memory of the writer, 

 Canada was not regarded, either at home or abroad, as a country of 

 any considerable importance ; no one believed there was, to say 

 the least, a great future for this country. To the south of us, the 

 great Republic of the United States, with its broad areas, stretch- 

 ing from Mexico to the 49th parallel, and from ocean to ocean, 

 challenged the admiration of the world by its wonderful strides in 

 material and national progress. All the while Canada was for- 

 gotten, or thought of only as a fragment of territory bordering the 

 St. Lawrence, where a sort of wretched population, struggling 

 under many natural disadvantages, wore out a miserable existence. 

 But in those days Canada was really undiscovered, or locked up 

 from the gaze of the world by the Hudson's, Bay Company, 

 Recently, however, there has been a great revelation in and of this 

 country. Canada has grown, in the short space of ten years, from 

 a miserable, winding, narrow, fragmentary stretch of sterile country, 

 to the grandest territorial possession to be found anywhere on 

 earth under one flag It is all at once discovered that by far the 

 most valuable portion of the continent lies north of the 49th 

 parallel, and that Canadians possess a country, stretching from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, and northward to the Arctic Circle, that is 

 absolutely unlimited in the possibilities of its future greatness. A 

 few years ago we felt ourselves to be on the borders of a great 

 country lying to the south of us, without the slightest possibility 

 of nationality, and subjects for commiseration. Now, flushed 

 with a slight but still inadequate appreciation of our vast heritage, 

 we dare to enter into the great race of international competition, 

 and set up a claim to national importance. We are a people 

 of less than five millions ; our commerce is comparatively small • 

 our industrial enterprises are in the first pulsations of life ; our civil 

 and political institutions are in the first stages of growth ; and yet 

 we prophesy of a day when we shall be a people of over fifty 

 millions, with a commerce unsurpassed by any other nation, and 

 with an industrial trade vastly greater than that of the United 

 States to-day. These hopes rest upon the great North-West. 



In summing up the vastness of the Canadian North-West, Mr 



