ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 107 



must soon be called into action, if we would play our part as an 

 integral portion of British America. There is enough of talent and 

 ability amongst ourselves to take secondary action in their devel- 

 opment, although neither speculation nor capital at present 

 appears very eager to make them available. It certainly does 

 seem strange, that we cannot even point to the existence of a 

 cotton-mill, with a chief city which is the Atlantic entrepot of a 

 Dominion stretching from Halifax to the shores of the Pacific, 

 possessing as we do railway communication for a long distance 

 inland, and, as we shall do in a few years, from hence to British 

 Columbia, to say nothing of the limitless coal and iron in Nova 

 Scotia, and a cotton growing country within twenty days' sail of 

 our chief port. A reason may be found on the part of our own peo- 

 ple in the want of capital for so expensive and important an under- 

 taking, and ignorance of its management. But that our unsurpass- 

 ed geographical position, and the acknowledged decadence of Brit- 

 ish manufactures, through rivalry of foreigners, should not have 

 turned the attention of the cotton lords of England to Nova 

 Scotia, from whence to supply the growing Dominion, and to 

 carry the war into the enemy's territory, is something not easily 

 understood. I may be pardoned this allusion. It is not so far 

 beyond the domain of natural science, involving as it does many 

 of its branches, that our wishes and hopes may not centre in such 

 an enterprise. 



Of our other industries connected with natural science, I 

 will speak briefly. Coal is inexhaustible, and I hope to see the 

 day when cotton and sugar and iron, and other manufactories at 

 home, shall preclude the necessity of looking for a market abroad 

 for this valuable mineral; and when our own Dominion, the 

 western part of it especially, shall be more ready to buy from us 

 than we to sell to them. This is the true solution of the 

 problem of coal mining as a source of national wealth. The time 

 will surely arrive, and we hope is not far distant, whoever may 

 live to witness it. Strange that even now our interests should 

 be diverse, or not to be reconciled, and that we cannot work to- 

 gether as an united people. 



Iron is as inexhaustible as coal, and more valuable. One blast 

 furnace is at work for the reduction of its ores, requiring scienti- 

 fic knowledge and practical industry and economy to sustain it, 

 and these will no doubt multiply as markets are realized and 

 demand increases. 



The rocks of the Atlantic coast line, from Canso to Yarmouth, 

 and for a considerable breadth inland, are prolific in gold, which, 



