The road down the Cumberland, in a valley at times spreading out into fertile meadows, is nearly all the way through magnificent forests, along hill-sides fit for the vine, for fruit, and for pasture, while frequent outcroppings of coal testify to the abundance of the fuel that has been so long stored for the new civilization. These mountains would be profitable as sheep pastures did not the inhabitants here, as elsewhere in the United States, prefer to keep dogs rather than sheep. I have thus sketched hastily some of the capacities of the Cumberland region. It is my belief that this central and hitherto neglected portion of the United States will soon become the theatre of vast and controlling industries. I want space for more than a concluding word about western Kentucky, which deserves, both for its capacity and its recent improvements, a chapter to itself. There is a limestone area of some 10,000 square miles, with a soil hardly less fertile than that of the blue-grass region, a high agricultural development, and a population equal in all respects to that of the famous and historic grass country. Seven of the ten principal tobacco-producing counties in Kentucky and the largest Indian corn and wheat raising counties are in this part of the State. The western coal-field has both river and rail transportation, thick deposits of iron ore, and more level and richer farming lands than the eastern coal-field. Indeed, the agricultural development in this western coal region has attracted great attention. Much also might be written of the remarkable progress of the towns of western Kentucky within the past few years. The increase in population is not more astonishing than the development of various industries. They show a vigorous, modern activity for which this part of the State has not, so far as I know, been generally credited. The traveller will find abundant evidence of it in Owensborough, Henderson, Hopkinsville, Bowling Green, and other places. As an illustration: Paducah, while doubling its population since 1880, has increased its manufacturing 150 per cent. The town had in 1880 twenty-six factories, with a capital of $600,000, employing 950 men; now it has fifty factories, with a cash capital of $2,000,000, employing 3250 men, engaged in a variety of industries—to which a large iron furnace is now being added. Taking it all together—variety of resources, excellence of climate, vigor of its people—one cannot escape the impression that Kentucky has a great future. COMMENTS ON CANADA. I.