In 1784, before the full tale of Loyalist immigration was yet complete, Canada, including the three districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, had a population of 113,000,[192] the towns of Quebec and Montreal containing in either case between 6,000 and 7,000 residents. This was really the population of what was afterwards the province of Lower Canada, exclusive of Ontario and the Maritime Provinces which were the main scenes of Loyalist settlement. The overwhelming majority of the population in the province of Quebec, as Canada, other than the Maritime Provinces, was styled prior to the Act of 1791, consisted of French Canadians, and the citizens of British birth were still comparatively few in number: but, as has been seen, the incoming of British citizens was actively in process under Haldimand’s administration; and during the same administration a beginning was made of the canals which have played so great a part in the history of Eastern Canada. Between the years 1779 and 1783, mainly for military reasons, Royal Engineers under Haldimand’s directions constructed canals with locks round the rapids between Lake St. Francis and Lake St. Louis above Montreal, and in 1785 proposals were first made--though not at the time carried into effect--for a canal to rectify the break in navigation on the Richelieu river, caused by the rapids between St. John’s and Chambly, and so to give unimpeded water-communication between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence. This latter project was of great importance to Vermont, which had not yet been admitted as a state to the American Union. Thus Dorchester came back to the land of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes amid indications of a new era with wider developments and corresponding difficulties. He came back as the man who had saved Canada in war, had given to the French Canadians the Quebec Act, and had stood firm at New York for protection of the Loyalists. [Sidenote: The political situation in 1786.] It was not an easy time for any man, however popular, who was responsible for the security and the welfare of Canada. British garrisons still held the frontier posts which, by the Treaty of 1783, Great Britain was bound to hand over to the United States, viz., Detroit, Michillimackinac, Erie or Presque Isle, Niagara, Oswego, Oswegatchie, and, on Lake Champlain, Point au Fer and Dutchman’s Point. The Indians were at open war with the Americans down to the year 1794, claiming as their own the lands to the north of the Ohio; and they were embittered against the English, because no provision had been made in the treaty to safeguard their rights, their homes and their hunting grounds. The Americans in their turn were irritated by the withholding of the forts, and suspected the English of instigating Indian hostilities and encouraging Indian claims. Meanwhile the internal affairs of Canada were rapidly growing more complicated, and the constitutional question pressed for solution.