afford all-rail communication right through to the eastern sea-board: and it remains to be seen whether, with such means of transit at command, any considerable proportion of traffic will follow a route which, it is alleged, can only be depended upon for three months in the year, and which, in the opinion of some seafaring men, may occasionally be found difficult to work even during that period from the presence of ice in Hudson Strait. On the other hand, there comes, of course, the consideration that, if the development of the north-west should answer the expectations generally entertained, there may by-and-by be sufficient surplus produce for exportation to keep a Hudson Bay railway and steam-boat line, as well as all the other practicable outlets of that vast region, in remunerative operation.--ED.] CHAPTER XVI. THE PROGRESS OF THE CANADIAN NATION. Canada is, in respect of extent, the noblest colonial possession over which any nation has ever exercised dominion. It covers an area of three million three hundred and thirty thousand square miles. Our great Indian Empire is scarcely larger than one-fourth of its size. Europe is larger by only half a million square miles; the United States is smaller to nearly the same extent. The distances with which men have to deal in Canada are enormous. From Ottawa to Winnipeg is fourteen hundred miles--a journey equal to that which separates Paris from Constantinople: the adventurous traveller, who would push his way from Winnipeg to the extreme north-west, has a farther distance of two thousand miles to traverse. The representatives of Vancouver Island must travel two thousand five hundred miles in order to reach the seat of Government. The journey from London to the Ural Mountains is not greater in distance, and is not by any means so difficult. From Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, to New Westminster, the capital of British Columbia, there is a distance of four thousand miles--about the distance as that which intervenes between London and Chicago, or between London and the sources of the Nile.