In order to develop her resources, and to open the way for immigration, that her immense tracts of unused land may more rapidly become the granary of the world, Canada is furrowing her domains with canals and interlacing them with lines of railroads. The Grand Trunk railway, traversing the country from Portland, Me., to Detroit, has been built, with its Victoria bridge (one of the most noted structures in the world) crossing the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal. Immense sums of money have been spent in order to convert the St. Lawrence into a canal. And now she is constructing a transcontinental road, which, binding the two oceans from Port Moody to Halifax, will cross the entire confederation. They expect to finish this route in 1886, and it is estimated that the journey from Liverpool or Havre to Japan will be a thousand miles shorter by this road than by the transcontinental routes of the United States. Almost in the middle of the Dominion, at an equal distance from the pole to the equator, lies the territory of Manitoba. There lived in 1869, a population half nomadic, called the half-breeds, sprung from marriages between the French Canadians and the Indians. They spoke the French language, and professed the Catholic religion. After the delivery of this country by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Dominion, the government determined to direct toward it a stream of English emigration. They sent a governor and some surveyors to reside at Winnipeg, the capital. But the natives warned them they might look for trouble if they attempted to place, without consulting them, new inhabitants upon the land which they and their ancestors, from time immemorial, had held and enjoyed. The government was not to be frightened, and so the conflict came. The half-breeds obliged the governor to leave, and constituted a provisional government, with a president at its head. They then drew up a declaration, of which the following is the preamble: “We, the representatives of the people, assembled in council at Fort Garry, November 24, 1869, after having invoked the God of nations, … solemnly declare, in the name of our constitution and in our own name, before God and men, that we refuse to recognize the authority of Canada, which pretends to have the right to command us and impose upon us a despotic form of government.”