i at oS la lil ik 
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
The Province of Ontario, it is said, owes its poetic Indian name to its 
“beautiful prospect of hills and waters.” It is with the inhabitants of the latter 
_ that the present section of this Report deals, and it appears therefore to be an 
indispensable preliminary that some general account of the geographical disposi- 
_ tion of the numerous lakes and rivers of the Province should be given. 
The most important of these furnish the boundaries which separate Ontario 
from the United States on the south and from the neighbouring parts of the 
Dominion of Canada on the east and north-west. 
Thus the international boundary line between the Province and the States 
of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota passes 
through the River St. Lawrence and the chain of the Great Lakes, then by Pigeon 
River and the head-waters of Rainy Lake and River to the Lake of the Woods, 
a distance of some 1,600 miles, while the north-west boundary line, which separates 
it from Manitoba and Keewatin, stretches for some 800 miles through English 
River, Lac Seul, Lake Joseph and the Albany River to the mouth of the latter 
in Hudson’s Bay. From this point, the northern boundary—the Ontario sea- 
eoast— extends for 250 miles along James’ Bay to a point midway between Hannah 
Bay House and the mouth of the Nottawa River and due north of the head of 
Lake Temiscaming. The meridian which joins this point and the head of the 
lake forms an artificial boundary line of 275 miles in length between this part of 
Ontario and the North-Eastern Territory on the east, which is completed further 
_ south and east through a stretch of another 500 miles by the natural boundary, 
separating it from the Province of Quebec, formed by the lake above named and 
the magnificent Ottawa River which issues from it. 
The territory so bounded contains upward of 200,000 square miles, and its 
most distant points from east to west and from north to south are respectively 
upwards of 1,000 and 700 milesapart. All the waters named, and others included 
within the area of the Province belung to two great water-systems, the Hudson’s 
Bay system in the north, and the St. Lawrence system in the south. The water- 
shed separating these—the so-called “ Height of Land”—extends, so far as it lies 
within the Province, south and west from Lake Abittibe to within 100 miles of 
the north channel of Lake Huron, and then runs parallel therewith, and with the 
__- eoast line of Lake Superior, occasionally approaching within 50 miles of the coast 
___ or receding, as, for example, round Lake Neepigon, to a distance of 150 miles. West 
of Lake Neepigon, the height of land approaches Thunder Bay between Dog Lake 
and Lake Shebandowan which belong to the St. Lawrence system on the one hand, 
and Lac des Milles Lacs, which is tributary to the Hudson’s Bay system on the 
_ other. It then crosses the international boundary at a point immediately west 
of Arrow Lake. 
. At no point does the height of land attain any great elevation above the sea ; 
__ the highest levels in fact are reached comparatively abruptly from the shores of the 
Great Lakes, and the height of land is therefore constituted by the most elevated 
_ tracts of a great plateau extending between the Great Lakes and James’ Bay. 
