CHAPTER I 



A LAND OF WATERWAYS 



CANADA is the child of the sea. Her infancy 

 was cradled by her waterways; and the life- 

 blood of her youth was drawn from oceans, 

 lakes, and rivers. No other land of equal area 

 has ever been so intimately bound up with the 

 changing fortunes of all its different waters, 

 coast and inland, salt and fresh. 



The St Lawrence basin by itself is a thing to 

 marvel at, for its mere stupendous size alone. 

 Its mouth and estuary are both so vast that 

 their salt waters far exceed those of all other 

 river systems put together. Its tide runs 

 farther in from the Atlantic than any other tide 

 from this or any other ocean. And its ' Great 

 Lakes' are appropriately known by their 

 proud name because they contain more fresh 

 water than all the world beside. Size for size, 

 this one river system is so pre-eminently first 

 in the sum of these three attributes that there 

 is no competing second to be found elsewhere. 



A. A. A 



