424 A GLANCE AT THE POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
duce, which will soon extend to home manufactures of the coarser 
description. 
Meanwhile communication with British Columbia under the pro- 
jects contemplated by the new Hudson’s Bay Company will rapidly 
progress, and also with Canada wid Lake Superior, and the United 
States vid Red River and St. Paul. 
Apprehensions may arise that the present easy access which the 
navigation of Red River offers to immigrants from the States will, in 
view of various circumstances gradually developing .themselves, in- 
troduce a population to the fertile valley of the Saskatchewan, hostile 
to British Institutions and British connection. 
The grounds for these apprehensions are as follow : 
First: The limit which the American Desert establishes to the 
westward progress of settlement in the States. This limit is about 
one degree of longitude west of Fort Garry* and beyond it, south of 
the boundary line, large agricultural settlements cannot extend in 
Minnesota or Nebraska, or further south than these states; nor 
north, even in Central British America, until the limits of the 
“ Fertile Belt” are reached. . 
Second: The necessity for a new line of Pacific Railway other 
than that near the 32nd parallel, adopted by the United States Go- 
vernment, which lies within the country claimed by the Southern 
States. 
Third: The incomparable superiority of the country in Central 
British America for a railroad or postal route to the Pacific to any 
part of the United States north of the 32nd parallel. This superiority 
consists in the line of route passing through’ rich arable land to 
the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in contradistinction to an unin- 
habitable desert through which a railroad or common road would 
have to pass in any part of the United States; and also to the low 
altitude of the Pass in the Rocky Mountains. 
Fourth: The existence of gold widely distributed, and in al taal 
according to the latest intelligence, amply sufficient to prove remu- 
nerative to the industrious miner, not only on the east flank of the 
Rocky Mountains but also in the Drift, near the western shores of 
*The longitude of Fort Garry is 95°, 52’ 27", latitude 49° 52’6". Pembina Mountain 
which marks the limit of the good land in the State of Minnesota, west of Red River, is on 
an average about thirty miles distant from the River. Beyond the 101st degree of longitude 
in the United States, agricultural settlements on a large scale are not possible on account of 
aridity. 
