A work no less significant than immigration in the creation of a "new northern nation" was railway construction, and in its advocacy McGee was quite as ardent. Nature had endowed the British colonies of North America with a magnificent road system. In the seventeenth century the French settlements in Canada had clustered round the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers, and these winding watercourses constituted the one bond of communication. The United Empire Loyalists later erected their log houses along the wooded shores of the lakes and rivers further west, and the St. Lawrence waterway was their means of contact with Quebec and Britain. Without the St. Lawrence the Canadas would have broken in two like a bridge without piers. But one gift Nature failed to bestow on the British colonies. She provided no easy means of transit between the Canadian and Maritime provinces. Mountain spurs with dense forests constituted an almost impenetrable wall, blocking overland travel between the two groups of British colonies. The sea-route through the Gulf was tediously long, and was closed by ice part of the year. It was clear, as Lord Durham in 1838 had recognized with quick insight, that political association between the colonies must await the building of a railway cutting through the mountain and forest area and bringing Quebec closer to Halifax. In the years following Durham, the aspiration for such a line grew among the more far-sighted of colonial statesmen. It was considered as a necessary basis not merely for colonial union, but for colonial prosperity. The Maritime provinces were in need of it to reap the benefits of trade with the Canadian and American west, and to forge a commercial route which would make their harbours the winter ports of the northern part of the continent. The Canadas no less required it in order that they might have access to the Atlantic frontage of British North America, and find consumers for their produce amongst the seamen of the lower provinces.