Montreal covers a surface five miles long by two miles wide, and its situation gives it great commercial importance. The people call it "the Queen of the St. Lawrence," standing at the head of ship navigation, where cargoes are exchanged with the internal canal and lake navigation system, the Grand Trunk Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway crossing the continent, and both also having many connections with the United States. In 1809, the "Accommodation," the second steamboat in America, was built in Montreal, and began running to Quebec. The lion of Montreal is the Victoria Tubular Bridge, which was formally opened by the Prince of Wales on his American visit in 1860. It was designed by Robert Stephenson and built by James Hodges at a cost of over $6,000,000. It is nearly ninety-two hundred feet long and stands upon twenty-six piers and abutments, the centre being about sixty feet above the summer level of the river, which flows beneath at the rate of seven miles an hour. Elaborate ice-fenders are on the up-stream side of the piers, there being an enormous ice-pressure when the spring freshets are running. It is the greatest bridge in the Dominion, and near it stands a huge boulder, marking the burial-place of the army of Irish emigrants who came over in 1847, sixty-five hundred dying at Montreal of ship-fever. The Sulpician Order has always been the great educator of priests in all French-speaking peoples, and it was founded by the Abbé Olier. Carrying out his intention, the "Seminary of St. Sulpice" was opened in Montreal in 1647. This is now an enormous and prosperous religious establishment, holding large possessions in and around the city. The "Gentlemen of the Seminary," as the members of the Order of Sulpicians are called in Montreal, are the successors of the first owners of the island, and they conduct a large secular business as landlords. Down in the heart of the old city, at the Place d'Armes, they have an antique quadrangle, surrounding a quiet garden, which is the official headquarters, and was the location of their ancient house. The curious French-looking towers fronting the Seminary were at one time loop-holed for musketry, and were garrisoned, when necessary, to beat off Indian raids upon the infant settlement. In the western suburbs there is a broad domain, known as the "Priests' Farm," where are an elaborate mass of buildings, making their present noted foundation, the "Great Seminary" and Montreal College, the former for the education of priests and the latter for the general education of youth, the delicious surrounding gardens being regarded as the finest on the fertile island.