"And then Canada, sir, once remote, inaccessible region--but now brought to our very door. If a journey had been contemplated in that direction in Dr. Franklin's time, it would have been with such feelings as a man would have now-a-days, who was going to start for the mouth of Copper Mine River, and the shores of the Arctic Sea. But no, sir; such a thing was never thought of--never dreamed of. A horrible wilderness, rivers and lakes unspanned by human art, pathless swamps, dismal forests that it made the flesh creep to enter, threaded by nothing more practicable than the Indian's trail, echoing with no sound more inviting than the yell of the wolf and the warwhoop of the savage; these it was that filled the space between us and Canada. The inhabitants of the British Colonies never entered Canada in those days but as provincial troops or Indian captives; and lucky he that got back with his scalp on. (Laughter.) This state of things existed less than one hundred years ago; there are men living in Massachusetts who were born before the last party of hostile Indians made an incursion to the banks of the Connecticut river. "As lately as when I had the honour to be the Governor of the Commonwealth, I signed the pension warrant of a man who lost his arm in the year 1757, in a conflict with the Indians and French in one of the border wars, in those dreary Canadian forests. His Honour the Mayor will recollect it, for he countersigned the warrant as Secretary of State. Now, Sir, by the magic power of these modern works of art, the forest is thrown open--the rivers and lakes are bridged--the valleys rise, the mountains bow their everlasting heads; and the Governor-General of Canada takes his breakfast in Montreal, and his dinner in Boston;--reading a newspaper leisurely by the way which was printed a fortnight ago in London. [Great Applause.] In the excavations made in the construction of the Vermont railroads, the skeletons of fossil whales and paloeozoic elephants have been brought to light. I believe, Sir, if a live spermaciti whale had been seen spouting in Lake Champlain, or a native elephant had walked leisurely into Burlington from the neighbouring woods, of a summer's morning, it would not be thought more wonderful than our fathers would have regarded Lord Elgin's journey to us this week, could it have been foretold to them a century ago, with all the circumstances of despatch, convenience and safety. [Applause.]