412 Our North Land. 



shorter than any American line can get the wheat of Dakota 

 there." 



To take another American witness, the following is an extract 

 from a letter of the late Honourable William Seward, the Foreign 

 Secretary to the late President Lincoln during the war with the 

 South. His statement is both frank and explicit : — " Hitherto, in 

 common with most of my countrymen, as I suppose, I have thought 

 Canada a mere strip lying north of the United States, easily detached 

 from the parent State, but incapable of sustaining itself, and there- 

 fore ultimately, nay, right soon, to be taken on by the Federal 

 Union, without materially changing or affecting its own develop- 

 ment. I have dropped the opinion as a national conceit. I see in 

 British North America, stretching as it does across the Continent 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in its wheat-fields of the West, its 

 invaluable fisheries, and its mineral wealth, a region grand enough 

 for the seat of a great empire." 



" It is a physical reality of the highest importance," says Captain 

 Palliser, " to the interests of British North America, that this connti- 

 uous belt can be settled and cultivated from a few miles west of Lake 

 of the Woods to the passes of the Rocky Mountains ; and any line of 

 communication, whether by waggon or railroad, passing through it, 

 will eventually enjoy the great advantage of being fed by an agricul- 

 tural population from one extremity to the other. No other part of 

 the American Continent possesses an approach even to this singu- 

 larly favourable disposition of soil and climate. The natural resources 

 lying within the limits of the Fertile Belt, or on its eastern borders, 

 are themselves of great value as local elements of future wealth and 

 prosperity ; but in view of a communication across the continent, 

 they acquire paramount importance. Timber, available for fuel and 

 building purposes, coal, iron ore, are widely distributed, of great 

 purit} 7 and in considerable abundance ; salt, in quantity suffi- 

 cient for a dense population. All these crude elements of wealth 

 lie within the limits or on the borders of a region of great fertility." 



His Honour Lieut. -Governor Robinson. — The following is an 

 extract from a letter of His Honour Lieut.-Governor Robinson, of 

 the Province of Ontario, to the Hon. J. H. Pope, Minister of Agri- 

 culture, dated Nov. 1st, 1882, descriptive of a recent visit to the 



