Such in rough outline is the basin of the St. Lawrence. It is a network of lakes and rivers which finds no parallel, unless it be in Central Africa. The present Dominion of Canada is not merely a political federation; it is a federation of regions which are geographically separate from each other. There is the eastern seaboard, the old Acadia; there is the basin of the St. Lawrence; there are the plains of the North-West and the regions of the Hudson Bay; and there are the lands of the Pacific coast. Only one of these four regions, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was the main scene of early Canadian history. Acadia comes into the story, it is true, but until the eighteenth century only indirectly, in connexion with the English colonies on the Atlantic coast rather than with the French in Canada. English and French collided on the shores of Hudson Bay; they collided also in Newfoundland; but Hudson Bay and Newfoundland alike were outside the sphere of Canada. The great prairies of the North-West were a possibility of the distant future; but not {53} till the days of railways did the western half of the present Dominion come within the range of practical politics. Along the St. Lawrence and its tributaries the drama of Canadian history was played; the furthest horizon was the Mississippi and the whole line of the lakes; a nearer view was bounded by the Ohio valley; while the immediate foreground was formed by the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Lake Ontario, the centremost point being the confluence of the Richelieu with the main river. Movement, constant movement, these waterways suggested; exploration, adventure, and ultimately conquest; pressing onward by strength or skill through a boundless area, with something unknown always beyond; making portages round impossible rapids, forcing paths through interminable forests, dealing with half-hidden foes. The land was one for the traveller, the explorer, the missionary, the soldier, the hunter, the fur-trader, but not so much for the settler and the agriculturist. Thus it was that the age of adventurers was perpetuated along the St. Lawrence, while the English colonists between the Alleghanies and the sea were living steady lives attached to the soil. [Sidenote: _The main object of North American exploration was a route to the East._]