The Hamilton Steamboat Company has two fine powerful screw steamers, the _Macassa_ and _Modjeska_, plying between Hamilton and Toronto. Both were built on the Clyde, and have been very successful financially, and also as seaworthy, fast sailing vessels. Kingston, which occupies an important position at the foot of the lake and head of the river navigation, owns a fleet of no less than forty-six steamers, and is the headquarters of half a dozen steamboat companies, some of which are largely interested in the Lake Superior trade, while others connect Kingston with ports on the Bay of Quinte, Rochester and Cape Vincent, N. Y., and Gananoque and the Thousand Islands. The _James Swift_ plies between Kingston and Ottawa, _via_ the Rideau Canal. The _Passport_, the oldest steamer now afloat in Canada, is registered at Kingston, and was built, as already stated, in 1847. [Illustration: HON. JOHN HAMILTON.] The Hon. John Hamilton, whose name is so intimately associated with the rise and progress of steam navigation in Western Canada, was born at Queenston, Ontario, in 1802—the seventh and youngest son of the Hon. Robert Hamilton, formerly of Edinburgh. One of the sons founded the city of Hamilton, another attained distinction in the medical profession. John devoted the greater part of his life to the development of commerce between Montreal and the cities and towns bordering on Lake Ontario, having his headquarters at Kingston. Mr. Hamilton was a man of fine presence and highly accomplished; was called to the Legislative Council of Upper Canada by Sir John Colborne in 1831, and to the Senate of the new Dominion, by writ of Her Majesty’s sign-manual, in 1867. He was an influential member of the Presbyterian Church, and many years chairman of the Board of Trustees of Queen’s College, Kingston. He died in 1882. IN MANITOBA.[63] The first steamer to ply on the Red River was brought in pieces across the country from a tributary of the Mississippi, and rebuilt at Georgetown, a small place some twenty miles north of the present town of Moorhead. The boat was called, before its transportation, the _Anson Northrup_, and was afterwards known as the _Pioneer_. She began her career on the Red River in 1859, and in that year took a cargo to Fort Garry. She was the joint property of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Messrs. J. C. and H. C. Burbank & Co., of St. Paul, Minnesota. (A cut of this steamer may be seen in a book called “The Winnipeg Country,” published by Cupples, Upham & Co., Boston.)