Upon the whole, however, it may be said that one of the strongest points of the Canadian climate generally is its amount of sunshine and clear weather. Even in the high latitudes the summer, though short, is warm, and, of course, as one goes further north, the possible number of hours of sunshine in the day during the summer increases, so that growth is extremely rapid. Thus results the ripening of crops of grain and vegetables and certain kinds of fruit much farther north than a mere glance at the map would lead one to expect. There has as yet been little systematic experiment as to what crops can be grown in the higher latitudes; but for generations vegetables have been cultivated in the gardens of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s factors, and also at many a mission station in the northern wilderness; and it is an interesting circumstance that the imaginary line beyond which profitable farming has been supposed impossible has again and again been pushed farther north. Till within the last half century, indeed, the “North-West Territories” were held by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and as agriculture and fur trading are hardly compatible industries, it was not to the interest of this powerful fur trading corporation to advertise the agricultural possibilities of the country, nor to set right the popular misconception of British North America as a land of nothing but snow and ice. It is quite true that it has snow and ice in plenty; but there is a golden side to the shield as well as a silver one; and Canada might just as fairly claim the title of “Our Lady of the Sun” as that of “Our Lady of the Snows.” A feature of the Dominion, of which the ordinary small-scale map gives little idea, is the diversity of surface. Every map indeed suggests in the west the bold line of the Rocky Mountains, but even in that case scarcely hints at the fact that between the Pacific Ocean and the prairie regions, the mountain barrier is ranged rank behind rank, peak above peak. In the ordinary map, moreover, the eastern provinces look as level as the prairies; but they are not so. The Maritime Provinces, Quebec and Ontario, may be described generally as a land of plains and valleys and hills, which, in some regions, rise to an elevation deserving the name of mountains—a word which is used somewhat freely in Canada. The map usually does make clear to a careful student of it the fact that the Dominion upon the whole is a land of noble rivers and of lakes, some small, some large enough to deserve the name of inland seas, though they have neither the salt of the sea nor its tides; and that Canada does actually possess one great inland sea, a thousand miles long and six hundred miles broad, in Hudson Bay. This thrusts itself deep into the heart of the country, and for a couple of centuries was, as it may soon be again, a recognized gateway to the interior.