414 A GLANCE AT THE POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
best lands in the country have already been sold.* With this unex- 
pected and startling announcement before us, we are justified in as- 
suming that the present surveyed lands of the Province on the north 
side of the St. Lawrence, determine with considerable accuracy the 
boundaries of the portion likely ever to be settled with an agricultu- 
ral population, and, until manufactures spring up, they are a rude 
measure of the future increase in our population through immigration. 
Lumbering operations are constantly retreating farther North, 
and must soon find their limits; but they merely sweep the wilder- 
ness of its best forest growth, and do not lead to permanent agricul- 
tural settlements if the soil be not favourable. Emigrants prefer to 
go farther West in search of good land, and if this is not to be found in 
Canada they must betake themselves to the United States, or to 
Central British America. We cannot look to mining enterprise as 
at all likely to lead to centres of population in the back country 
north of the St. Lawrence, for very many years to come. Iron and 
copper ores exist in almost unlimited quantities within a few miles 
of the shores of the Great Lakes or great rivers, and, indeed, in 
Lower Canada, within easy reach of the Grand Trunk Railway, and 
they are much nearer to coal, and to markets, than the mineral 
wealth of the back country. 
That part of the valley of the St. Lawrence which lies within the 
limits of Canada, occupies about 330,000 square miles, and of this 
portion 280,000 square miles lie wholly on the north side of the St. 
Lawrence. By far the greater portion of this vast region is inter- 
sected with lakes, and “the profusion in which the lakes exist, with, 
in some instances, only a short interval of land between them, though 
they may belong to different river-systems, affords with the aid of 
birch-bark canoes, a ready means of passing from one navigable 
gtream to another, in whatever part an explorer may be; and then, 
if he is well acquainted with the country, he can reach almost any 
position he may wish to attain without any very great deviation from 
@ direct route.’’+ 
The length of the Province of Canada from Quebec to the Fort 
William, on Lake Superior, is about 1100 miles, and the greatest 
* Tt is the fact that the best lands of the Crown in both sections of the Province have al- 
ready been sold. The quantity of really good land now open for sale, is, notwithstanding 
recent surveys, much less than formerly, and is rapidly diminishing.—Report of the Com~ 
massioner of Crown Lands for 1862. 
+ Report on the Geology of Canada.—By Sir W. E. Logan, F.R.8. 
