494 Our North Land. 



natural seaports of that vast interior, now thrown open to settle- 

 ment, Keewatin, Manitoba, and other provinces unborn, must be 

 sought there. York Factory, which is nearer Liverpool than New 

 York, has been happily called by Professor H. Y. Hind the Archangel 

 of the West. The mouth of the Churchill, however, although some- 

 what further north, offers far superior natural advantages, and may 

 more fitly challenge the title. It will undoubtedly be the future 

 shipping port for the agricultural products of the vast North-West 

 Territory, and the route by which emigrants will enter the country." 

 Sir Henry Lefroy knows whereof he writes, being personally well 

 acquainted with Hudson's Bay and the North-West Territories. 



"It has been shown that the Canadian North- West Territories, 

 embracing hundreds of millions of acres of fine land, are capable of 

 becoming the greatest wheatfield in the world. The centre of this 

 immense agricultural region probably lies to the north of the Sas- 

 katchewan. If we look at the map of the Northern Hemisphere, we 

 shall see at a glance that the shortest route between these territories 

 and England is through Hudson's Bay. Mr. Lindsay Russell, the 

 Surveyor-General of Canada, has recently made a close calculation 

 of relative distances, and found that even the City of Winnipeg, 

 which is near the south-eastern extremity of these territories, is at 

 least eight hundred miles nearer to Liverpool by the Hudson's Bay 

 route than by the St. Lawrence, while the distance in favour of the 

 former will be increased continually as we advance northward into 

 the interior. Now let us consider the relative progress of two 

 persons travelling to Liverpool from the centre of this vast region, 

 the one going by Winnipeg and the valley of the St. Lawrence, and 

 the other by the Nelson valley and the Churchill Harbour. In 

 about the same time which the former requires to reach the City of 

 Winnipeg, the latter arrives at the sea-coast at Churchill. From 

 Winnipeg our first traveller has still to go one thousand two hundred 

 and ninety-one miles by the Lake Superior route, or one thousand 

 six hundred and ninety-eight miles if he prefer the all-rail journey 

 through American territory, via Chicago, before he reaches Montreal, 

 where he will be still about as far from Liverpool as our other 

 traveller when he has reached Churchill. In other words, the route 



