The area of the Dominion of Canada is larger than that of the United States, excluding Alaska. It is fair, however, in the comparison, to add Alaska, for Canada has in its domain enough arctic and practically uninhabitable land to offset Alaska. Excluding the boundary great lakes and rivers, Canada has 3,470,257 square miles of territory, or more than one-third of the entire British Empire; the United States has 3,026,494 square miles, or, adding Alaska (577,390), 3,603,884 square miles. From the eastern limit of the maritime provinces to Vancouver Island the distance is over three thousand five hundred miles. This whole distance is settled, but a considerable portion of it only by a thin skirmish line. I have seen a map, colored according to the maker’s idea of fertility, on which Canada appears little more than a green flush along the northern boundary of the United States. With a territory equal to our own, Canada has the population of the single State of New York—about five millions. Most of Canada lies north of the limit of what was reckoned agreeably habitable before it was discovered that climate depends largely on altitude, and that the isothermal lines and the lines of latitude do not coincide. The division between the two countries is, however, mainly a natural one, on a divide sloping one way to the arctic regions, the other way to the tropics. It would seem better map-making to us if our line followed the northern mountains of Maine and included New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces. But it would seem a better rectification to Canadians if their line included Maine with the harbor of Portland, and dipped down in the North-west so as to take in the Red River of the North, and all the waters discharging into Hudson’s Bay. The great bulk of Canada is on the arctic slope. When we pass the highlands of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York we fall away into a wide champaign country. The only break in this is the Lauren-tian granite mountains, north of the St. Lawrence, the oldest land above water, now degraded into hills of from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. The central mass of Canada consists of three great basins: that portion of the St. Lawrence in the Dominion, 400,000 square miles; the Hudson’s Bay, 2,000,000 square miles; the Mackenzie, 550,000 square miles. That is to say, of the 3,470,257 square miles of the area of Canada, 3,010,000 have a northern slope.