540 Our North Land. 



cans not only a common descent, but a similar position on this con- 

 tinent and a like probable destiny. The community of feeling 

 reaches beyond the fellowship arising from the personal interest 

 attaching to the dignity of a high office sustained with honour, and 

 to the reverence for the tender ties of hearth and home, sacred 

 though these be; for Canadians and Americans have each a common 

 aim and a common ideal. Though belonging to very different 

 political schools, and preferring to advance by very different paths, 

 we both desire to live only in a land of perfect liberty. When the 

 order which ensures freedom is desecrated by the cowardly rancour 

 of the murderer, or by the tyranny of faction, the blow touches 

 more than one life, and strikes over a wider circle than that where 

 its nearer and immediate consequences are apparent. The people of 

 the United States have been directed into one political organization, 

 and we are cherishing and developing another ; but they will find 

 no men with whom a closer and more living sympathy with their 

 triumphs or with their trouble abides than their Canadian cousins 

 of the Dominion. Let this be so in the days of unborn generations, 

 and may we never have again to express our horror at such a deed 

 of infamy as that which has lately called forth in so striking a 

 manner the proofs of international respect and affection. 



" To pass to other themes awaking no unhappy recollections you 

 will expect me to mention a few of the impressions made upon us 

 by what we have seen during the last few weeks. Beautiful as are 

 the numberless lakes and illimitable forests of Keewatin — the land 

 of the north wind to the east of you — yet it was pleasant to ' get 

 behind the north wind ' and to reach your open plains. The con- 

 trast is great between the utterly silent and shadowy solitudes of 

 the pine and fir forests, and the sunlit and breezy ocean of meadow- 

 land, voicef ul with the music of birds, which stretches onward from 

 the neighbourhood of your city. In Keewatin the lumber industry 

 and mining enterprise can alone be looked for, and here it is impos- 

 sible to imagine any kind of work which shall not produce results 

 equal to those attained in any of the great cities in the world. Un- 

 known a few years ago except for some differences which had arisen 

 amongst its people, we see Winnipeg now with a population unani- 



