Canada is really two countries, separated from each other by the vast rocky wilderness between the lakes and James Bay. For a thousand miles west of Ottawa, till the Manitoba prairie is reached, the traveller on the line of the railway sees little but granite rock and stunted balsams, larches, and poplars—a dreary region, impossible to attract settlers. Copper and other minerals there are; and in the region north of Lake Superior there is no doubt timber, and arable land is spoken of; but the country is really unknown. Portions of this land, like that about Lake Nipigon, offer attractions to sportsmen. Lake navigation is impracticable about four months in the year, so that Canada seems to depend for political and commercial unity upon a telegraph wire and two steel rails running a thousand miles through a region where local traffic is at present insignificant. The present government of Canada is an evolution on British lines, modified by the example of the republic of the United States. In form the resemblances are striking to the United States, but underneath, the differences are radical. There is a supreme federal government, comprehending a union of provinces, each having its local government. But the union in the two countries was brought about in a different way, and the restrictive powers have a different origin. In the one, power descends from the Crown; in the other, it originates with the people. In the Dominion Government all the powers not delegated to the provinces are held by the Federal Government. In the United States, all the powers not delegated to the Federal Government by the States are held by the States. In the United States, delegates from the colonies, specially elected for the purpose, met to put in shape a union already a necessity of the internal and external situation. And the union expressed in the Constitution was accepted by the popular vote in each State. In the provinces of Canada there was a long and successful struggle for responsible government. The first union was of the two Canadas, in 1840; that is, of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada—Ontario and Quebec—with Parliaments sitting sometimes in Quebec and sometimes in Toronto, and at last in Ottawa, a site selected by the Queen. This Government was carried on with increasing friction. There is not space here to sketch the politics of this epoch. Many causes contributed to this friction, but the leading ones were the antagonism of French and English ideas, the superior advance in wealth and population of Ontario over Quebec, and the resistance of what was called French domination. At length, in 1863-64, the two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals (or, in the political nomenclature of the day, the “Tories” and the “Grits”—i. e., those of “clear grit”), were so evenly divided that a dead-lock occurred, neither was able to carry on the government, and a coalition ministry was formed. Then the subject of colonial confederation was actively agitated.