On Commercial Relations with the Dominion of 
Canada. 
By P. H. Nind. 
|HERE is a tradition which was told to PLATO 
by the priests of Egypt, and has been handed 
down by him to us in the Timaeus, that in remote 
ages there existed a vast island filled with an enter- 
prising people and great cities, in the midst of the Atlantic 
Ocean, and it extended westward from the Pillars of 
Hercules, filling the bosom of the Atlantic from the 
islands that lie off the coast of Africa, to within a short 
distance of the shores of America, and through some 
terrible cataclysm of nature this large and important 
country disappeared beneath the waves. 
However civilized and important this country may 
have been ten thousand years ago, is a problem that 
merely excites the curiosity of those amongst us 
who are addi6ted to archaeological lore ; it does not in 
the smallest degree appeal to the sentiments of every 
day life, nor to the instinfts which animate us in the 
struggle for existence, — and so generally the subject is 
one that would be treated with indifference. 
Supposing, however, some fine morning we should 
read in our telegraphic despatches that this continent- 
island, as large as Australia, or the United States of 
America, had re-appeared, and was found to contain 
intelligent and well-to-do inhabitants, agriculture on an 
extensive scale, arts and manufactures, and a mercantile 
marine, and above all, that its people were influenced 
