In the fullness of time, the French people had their call to take part in the over-sea expansion of Europe, and they found their way to Canada. They entered the New World at its widest point, where the American continent extends furthest from west to east; but they entered it also at the point where the interior of the continent is most accessible from the sea by means of a great navigable river and a group of lakes. Thus the advent of the French into Canada meant the coming of a people, who in their old home were partly continental, partly sea-going, into a sphere of colonization, which was a vast extent of continent, but which at the same time was more intersected and more dominated by water than perhaps any other portion of the mainland of the globe. {331} Like came to like when the French came to Canada. Their old home had given them at once the instincts of land conquerors, and the knowledge of men whose way is on the waters. Quick to move and loving motion, they found the route into the New World to be one which invited and facilitated quick movement; for, important as is inland water communication at the present day, it was all important before the days of railways. The great highroad of North America was the St. Lawrence, and that highroad became owned by a quick, ambitious people, who were not content to remain as traders by the side of the sea. [Sidenote: _Greatness of the St. Lawrence water system._] The combination of accessibility from the open sea, of length of navigable waters, and of volume of waters, makes the St. Lawrence basin almost, if not quite unique. Up to Three Rivers, 330 miles from the sea, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Up to the Falls of Niagara, 600 miles from the sea--nearly as far as London is from Berlin--there is no break of navigation. From the westernmost point of Lake Superior to the Atlantic is a distance of 2,000 miles--much further than is the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Lake Superior alone is larger in size than Scotland. [Sidenote: _It is almost connected with the basin of the Mississippi, of Hudson Bay, and of the Hudson river._] [Sidenote: _Colonization in Canada was colonization by water._] Further, this wonderful chain of waters, as has been pointed out, is nearly continuous with the Mississippi basin on the southern side, and on the north-western side with the lakes and rivers which drain into Hudson Bay; while one of the smaller affluents of the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, carries into the St. Lawrence the waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the southern end of Lake George being but very few miles distant from the upper waters of the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic. In short, Canada, within its ancient limits, was a network of inland waters. Here was a continent to be conquered and settled by water rather than by land, and the congenial task of conquering and attempting to settle it was allotted by Providence to the French.