STEAMERS 135 



the first steam railway train ran from La 

 Prairie to St Johns, the Torrance Line, in 

 opposition to the Molson Line, was running the 

 Canada, which was then the largest and fastest 

 steamer in the whole New World. Meanwhile 

 steam navigation had been practised on the 

 Great Lakes for twenty years ; for in 1817 the 

 little Ontario and the big Frontenac made 

 their first trips from Kingston to York (now 

 Toronto). The Frontenac was built at Finkles 

 Point, Ernestown, eighteen miles from Kings- 

 ton, by Henry Teabout, an American who had 

 been employed in the shipyards of Sackett's 

 Harbour at the time of the abortive British 

 attack in 1813. She was about seven 

 hundred tons, schooner rigged, engined by 

 Boulton and Watt, and built at a total cost 

 of $135,000. A local paper said that ' her 

 proportions strike the eye very agreeably, and 

 good judges have pronounced this to be the 

 best piece of naval architecture of the kind 

 yet produced in America.' 



Canals and steamers naturally served each 

 other's turn. There was a great deal of 

 canal building in the twenties. The Lachine 

 Canal, opening up direct communication west 

 of Montreal, was dug out by 1825, the Welland, 

 across the Niagara peninsula, by 1829, and the 



