IMPORTANCE OF CENTRAL BRITISH AMERICA. 425 
Lake Winnipeg, with the probability of its matrix being found both 
in the Rocky Mountains and also near the western flanks of the 
Laurentian Range. 
As opposed to these apprehensions we have,— 
First: The comprehensive scheme of settlement proposed by the 
new Hudson’s Bay Company, which will tend to people the valley of 
Red River and the Saskatchewan with settlers possessing British 
sympathies, and the strongest attachment to British rule. 
Second: The fact that the best lands in Canada are now sold, and > 
immigrants will prefer to go farther west in search of cheap available 
prairie land of the best description in Central British America, to 
settling on the comparatively poor timbered lands which yet remain 
in Canada at the disposal of the government. 
Third: The manifest eagerness with which the people of Canada 
look forward to the opening of an easy, and rapid communication 
between Lake Superior and Red River, and the unanimous deter- 
mination which exists amongst all classes to uphold British rule on 
British soil. 
Fourth: The material assistance ($50,000 per annum) which the 
Canadian Government, and the Government of British Columbia 
($50,000 per annum), propose to render the Hudson’s Bay Company 
in providing a rapid and easy ineans of communication across the 
continent through British territory, and in the construction of a 
telegraph, already commenced, to connect the Pacific with the At- 
lantic Ocean, also through British America. The electric telegraph 
annihilates distance, and will, when completed, unite all parts of this 
vast dominion and, in effect, bring it within reach of the central or 
governing power. 
Fifth: The prospect of not only regaining, on a vastly enlarged 
scale, extending to China and Japan, the lucrative transit trade which 
in the time of “The Nor’-West Company” enriched so many of 
our merchants, but also that prospective trade which must neces- 
sarily spring up with a country abounding in all things suitable for 
the maintenance of a large population, and whose course towards 
the ocean lies naturally through the St. Lawrence, and in its most 
direct line seaward, exclusively through British America. 
Sixth: The consciousness that the physical difficulties which 
oppose the direction of that trade i the desired channel, are of | 
such a character as the means now at the disposal! of those who have 
Vor. VIII. QF 
