* * * * * Donald A. Smith, now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, who was associated with Lord MountStephen in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was born at Archieston, Morayshire, August 6th, 1820. He came to Canada in 1839 on the Hudson’s Bay Company’s staff, and eventually became Governor of that corporation. He has represented the city of Montreal in the Dominion Parliament, is President of the Bank of Montreal, and Chancellor of McGill University. He succeeded Sir Charles Tupper as High Commissioner for Canada in London in August, 1896. He received the honour of knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen in May, 1886, and was raised to the peerage on the occasion of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, in 1897. The gifts of both these gentlemen for educational and philanthropic purposes have been upon a princely scale, running up into millions of dollars. FOOTNOTES: [27] “Whitaker’s Almanack,” 1897, p. 543. [28] “Our Ocean Railways,” p. 119. [29] “Statistical Year-Book, 1896,” under Railways, p. 20. CHAPTER VI. STEAM IN THE BRITISH NAVY. The British Navy—Marine Distances—Sunday at Sea—Icebergs and Tidal Waves. Great as have been the changes brought about by steam navigation applied to commercial uses, the transformations of the navies of the world have been even more remarkable. It seems almost incredible that at the commencement of Her Majesty’s reign there were less than twenty steamships in the British navy, and none of them over 1,000 tons burthen. Of the 560 “sail” comprising the navy of 1836, ninety-five were “ships of the line.” The largest of these were styled “first-rate ships;” all of them wooden three-deckers, carrying 100 guns each, or more. One of the most difficult problems the Admiralty of that time had to solve was how to ensure a sufficient supply of oak timber for ship-building purposes. Forty full-grown trees to an acre of ground was accounted a good average; at that rate it required the growth of fifty acres to produce enough timber to build one seventy-four-gun ship; and as the oak required at least a hundred years to reach maturity, and the average life of a ship was not much over twenty-five years, the acreage required to produce the entire quantity was enormous. But the prospect of an oak famine was speedily dispelled by the substitution of iron and steel for wood in naval architecture. [Illustration: “DUKE OF WELLINGTON” BATTLE-SHIP, 1850.]