At a luncheon given on board the _Canada_ to leading members of the Dominion Government, Mr. Torrance said that the Dominion Line had been sold out to a company composed of men of tremendous energy and enterprise, with any amount of money at their backs, and, after looking at the matter in all its bearings, they decided that the time had come for a forward movement. They determined to build the largest steamer they could for the St. Lawrence trade. The _Canada_ was contracted for by Messrs. Harland and Wolff, Belfast, as a sixteen-knot ship, and on her trial trip made seventeen and a half knots. He believed that she would average sixteen knots at sea, that she would reach Rimouski in six and a half days from Liverpool, and deliver her mails at the Montreal post-office within seven days. If that expectation comes to be realized, as it is most likely to be, the arguments in favour of a fast mail service between Canada and Britain will be materially strengthened. Mr. Torrance added that the _Canada_ was built to carry 7,000 tons of cargo, that if she had a speed of seventeen knots she would only carry 4,000 tons of cargo; if eighteen knots, she would carry but 3,000 tons, and that with a speed of twenty knots it would not be safe to calculate on her capacity for more than 1,000 tons of freight: “in short, that the twenty-knot ship must be, virtually, a passenger ship, and well subsidized.” The Canadian Government has not been slow to back up private enterprise of this nature in the past, and will doubtless continue to do so in the future. For reasons not made public the _Canada_ was withdrawn from the St. Lawrence service and placed on the route from Boston and Liverpool, where she has been so successful that another vessel of the same class is being built for that route. In the meantime other large vessels have been put on the St. Lawrence route, the latest addition to the fleet being the _New England_, having a tonnage of nearly 11,600 tons, fine accommodation for a large number of passengers, and room for an enormous cargo. THE BEAVER LINE.