THE MARITIME PROVINCES. 11 



needy settler returning from market to his distant farm 

 on the Eastern Road. Now frequent roadside chippings 

 strewed about attest the curiosity of the modern traveller 

 through the gold districts. 



Of much greater importance, however, to these colonies 

 than the recently discovered gold-fields are their bound- 

 less resources as coal-producing countries, paralysed 

 though their works may be at present by the pertinacious 

 refusal on the part of the United States to renew the 

 Reciprocity Treaty. To this temporary prostration an 

 end must soon be put by the opening up of intercolonial 

 commerce, to be brought about by the speedy completion 

 of an uninterrupted railway communication between the 

 Canadas and the Lower Provinces, and well-established 

 commercial relations throughout the whole of the New 

 Dominion. 



The coal-fields of Acadie are numerous and of large 

 area, the carboniferous system extending throughout the 

 province of Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton, bounding 

 the metamorphic belt of the Atlantic coast, and passing 

 through the isthmus, which joins the two provinces, into 

 New Brunswick, where it attains its broadest development. 

 In the latter province, however, the actual coal seams are 

 unimportant ; and it is in certain localities in Nova 

 Scotia and Cape Breton where the magnificent collieries 

 of British North America are found, and from which it 

 has been said the whole steam navy of Great Britain 

 might be supplied for centuries to come, as well as the 

 demands of the neighbouring colonies. It is impossible 

 to over-estimate the political importance accruing from 

 so vast a transatlantic storehouse of this precious mineral 

 both to England and the colonists themselves, whilst 



