35 
were unpacked, labelled, catalogued, and repacked in numbered boxes. 
This was the beginning of what is now the National Museum. In a letter 
of December 11 to Mr. R, W. Rawson, Secretary to the Governor General, 
Logan wrote: “The collection of specimens the Survey has brought together 
is quite overwhelming, and when I observe the small impression Murray 
and I have yet made on our seventy great boxes, most of them requiring 
at least two men to lift, I am almost in despair. The fossils alone would 
be quite occupation enough for a palaeontologist for six months." 
To understand the struggle for existence of the Geological Survey 
and its Museum, the extremely limited facilities for its development, 
and the personal courage and self-sacrifice of Logan and his associates 
during the next ten years or so, it is necessary to consider briefly what 
conditions in Canada were at that time. Canada then comprised the 
two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, now Ontario and Quebec. 
In 1843 there were about 1,100,000 people in the two provinces, less than 
450,000 in Upper Canada, and nearly 700,000 in Lower Canada. These 
were distributed chiefly along St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes, 
as far as lake Huron. The chief towns were Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, 
and York (Toronto). There was a small outpost settlement at Sault 
Ste. Marie and a still smaller and more isolated one at Prince’s Harbour, 
now Port Arthur, and Fort William. The first railway had been built 
in 1836 between St. Johns and Laprairie, in Lower Canada, a distance 
of 16 miles, for the purpose of shortening the journey to New York; and 
even in 1850 there were only 66 miles of railway in all Canada. Queen’s 
University was opened at Kingston in 1842 and Kings College (now Uni- 
versity of Toronto) at Toronto in 1843. Kingston was the seat of govern- 
ment until May 10, 1844, when parliament was moved to Montreal and 
still later to Toronto. Ottawa, then Bytown, was a village, connected 
with Kingston only eleven years before by completion of the Rideau 
canal, and not to be the seat of government of Canada until 1866. There 
were over 400,000 persons living in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and 
Prince Edward Island, but communication between this maritime settle- 
ment and Canada was by water and irregular. Vancouver had planted 
a small British colony near Victoria on Vancouver island, but, except 
for the small Selkirk colony at Fort Garry (now Winnipeg), there was 
no white settlement between it and the head of lake Superior and no roads 
or railway. Except for these small settlements along the Atlantic seaboard, 
St. Lawrence river, and the Great Lakes, and on Vancouver island, what 
is now the Dominion of Canada was known only to the Hudson’s Bay 
Company and to a few adventurers. 
Money was scarce and people’s efforts were being directed chiefly 
to clearing land, building roads, and obtaining a livelihood. Fifteen 
hundred pounds sterling was a considerable offering to be made to the 
cause of scientific research and additional contributions to the same cause 
could not lightly be given. Logan must have known that this sum would 
only begin to finance such a task as the geological survey of a region of 
unknown size but many times larger than England and mainly wilderness. 
He was sagacious enough to see that something practical must be clone 
if further money were to be obtained for his Survey. Accordingly, he 
devoted special attention to economic geology and the study of minerals. 
In a letter to Murray, dated March 7, 1844, he wrote, “I must get a house 
or set of rooms for our collection. Managing this, we must put our econo- 
