496 Our North Land. 



this nature existing in some part of these regions, but not in the 

 North- West Territories, there need be no objection to exporting live 

 stock from the latter by way of Hudson's Bay. 



" As a route for emigrants from Europe, that by Hudson s Bay 

 possesses not only the advantage of the short land journey, but the 

 still more important one to us of entirely avoiding the United 

 States and the populous parts of Canada, in both of which, it is 

 well known, a very serious percentage of the immigrants destined 

 for our North-West lands are every year enticed away to settle in 

 the great Republic. An inlet by Hudson's Bay is the only thoroughly 

 independent channel which can ever be established between the 

 British Islands and our great and, valuable territories in the interior 

 of North America ; and it is very desirable, on national grounds, 

 that it should be opened up. Troops have hitherto been sent to the 

 Red River settlement on more than one occasion, by way of Hud- 

 son's Bay, while the intervening country was, as it is yet, in a state 

 of nature. Were a short railway built through this tract, it would 

 at once become, for military purposes, an easy connecting link with 

 the Mother Country. 



" An impression has long prevailed that Hudson's Bay and Strait 

 could not be navigated for the ordinary purposes of commerce on 

 account of ice, but this idea is probably destined to prove chimerical. 

 The occasion for testing the point had not hitherto arisen, and the 

 fact that these waters have been successfully navigated by ordinary 

 vessels for two hundred years, in order to secure what little trade 

 the country afforded, indicates what may be expected from properly 

 equipped steamships, so soon as the larger business of the future 

 may require their services in that direction. The conditions of the 

 sea-borne commerce of the North- West, in relation to Hudson's 

 Bay, will probably turn out to be similar to those of the rest of 

 Canada with reference to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In both cases, 

 everything must be done during the summer. Yet Hudson's Bay 

 is, of course, open all the year round. No one would be likely to 

 suppose that a sea of such extent, in the latitude of the British 

 Islands, would ever freeze across. The Lower St. Lawrence is also 

 partly open even in the middle of winter. But the difficulty in 



