The distinctive feature of this period of Canadian development, however, was the growth of canals and railroads. The forties were the time of canal building and rebuilding all along the lakes and the St. Lawrence to salt water. Canada spent millions on what were wonderful works for their day, in the hope that the St. Lawrence would become the channel for the trade of all the growing western States bordering on the Great Lakes. Scarcely were these waterway improvements completed when it was realized they had been made largely in vain. The railway had come and was outrivaling the canal. If Canadian ports and channels were even to hold their own, they must take heed of the enterprise of all the cities along the Atlantic coast of the United States, which were promoting railroads to the interior in a vigorous rivalry for the trade of the Golden West. Here was a challenge which must be taken up. The fifties became the first great railway era of Canada. In 1850 there were only sixty-six miles of railway in all the provinces; ten years later there were over two thousand. Nearly all the roads were aided by provincial or municipal bonus or guarantee. Chief among the lines was the Grand Trunk, which ran from the Detroit border to Riviere du Loup on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and which, though it halted at that eastern terminus in the magnificent project of connecting with the railways of the Maritime Provinces, was nevertheless at that time the longest road in the world operating under single control. The railways brought with them a new speculative fever, a more complex financial structure, a business politics which shaded into open corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world. The general substitution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during this period aided further in lessening the isolation of what had been backwoods provinces and in bringing them into closer relation with the rest of the world. It was in closer relations with the United States that this emergence from isolation chiefly manifested itself. In the generation that followed the War of 1812 intercourse with the United States was discouraged and was remarkably insignificant. Official policy and the memories of 1783 and 1812 alike built up a wall along the southern border. The spirit of Downing Street was shown in the instructions given to Lord Bathurst, immediately after the close of the war, to leave the territory between Montreal and Lake Champlain in a state of nature, making no further grants of land and letting the few roads which had been begun fall into decay thus a barrier of forest wilderness would ward off republican contagion. This Chinese policy of putting up a wall of separation proved impossible to carry through, but in less extreme ways this attitude of aloofness marked the course of the Government all through the days of oversea authority.