modern reprints of _Champlain and L'Escarbot_, there are not any I have
not consulted more or less.  Especially am I indebted to the
_Documentary History of New York_, sixteen volumes, bearing on early
border wars; to _Documents Relatifs a la Nouvelle France, Quebec_; to
the _Canadian Archives_ since 1886; to the special historical issues of
each of the eastern provinces; and to the monumental works of Dr.
Kingsford.  Nearly all the places described are from frequent visits or
from living on the spot.




{v}

INTRODUCTION

"The Twentieth century belongs to Canada."

The prediction of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of the Dominion, seems
likely to have bigger fulfillment than Canadians themselves realize.
What does it mean?

Canada stands at the same place in the world's history as England stood
in the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth--on the threshold of her future as
a great nation.  Her population is the same, about seven million.  Her
mental attitude is similar, that of a great awakening, a consciousness
of new strength, an exuberance of energy biting on the bit to run the
race; mellowed memory of hard-won battles against tremendous odds in
the past; for the future, a golden vision opening on vistas too far to
follow.  They dreamed pretty big in the days of Queen Elizabeth, but
they did n't dream big enough for what was to come; and they are
dreaming pretty big up in Canada to-day, but it is hard to forecast the
future when a nation the size of all Europe is setting out on the
career of her world history.

To put it differently: Canada's position is very much the same to-day
as the United States' a century ago.  Her population is about seven
million.  The population of the United States was seven million in
1810.  One was a strip of isolated settlements north and south along
the Atlantic seaboard; the other, a string of provinces east and west
along the waterways that ramify from the St. Lawrence.  Both possessed
and were flanked by vast unexploited territory the size of Russia; the
United States by a Louisiana, Canada by the Great Northwest.  What the
Civil War did for the United States, Confederation did for the Canadian
provinces--welded them into a nation.  The parallel need not be carried
farther.  If the same development {vi} follows Confederation in Canada
as followed the Civil War in the United States, the twentieth century
will witness the birth and growth of a world power.

To no one has the future opening before Canada come as a greater
surprise than to Canadians themselves.  A few years ago such a claim as
the Premier's would have been regarded as the effusions of the
after-dinner speaker.  While Canadian politicians were hoping for the
honor of being accorded colonial place in the English Parliament, they
suddenly awakened to find themselves a nation.  They suddenly realized
that history, and big history, too, was in the making.  Instead of
Canada being dependent on the Empire, the Empire's most far-seeing
statesmen were looking to Canada for the strength of the British
Empire.  No longer is there a desire among Canadians for place in the
Parliament at Westminster.  With a new empire of their own to develop,
equal in size to the whole of Europe, Canadian public men realize they
have enough to do without taking a hand in European affairs.

As the different Canadian provinces came into Confederation they were
like beads on a string a thousand miles apart.  First were the Maritime
Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec,
but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia,
and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a
thousand miles of untracked forest.  Only the Ottawa River separated
Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English,
aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs.  A thousand
miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the
scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba.  Not an interest was in
common between the little province of the middle west and her sisters
to the east.  Then prairie land came for a thousand miles, and
mountains for six hundred miles, before reaching the Pacific province
of British Columbia, more completely cut off from other parts of Canada
than from Mexico or Panama.  In fact, it would have been easier for
British Columbia to trade with Mexico and Panama than with the rest of
Canada.

{vii} To bind these far-separated patches of settlement, oases in a
desert of wilds, into a nation was the object of the union known as
Confederation.  But a nation can live only as it trades what it draws
from the soil.  Naturally, the isolated provinces looked for trade to
the United States, just across an invisible boundary.  It seemed absurd
that the Canadian provinces should try to trade with each other, a
thousand miles apart, rather than with the United States, a stone's
throw from the door of each province.  But the United States erected a
tariff wall that Canada could not climb.  The struggling Dominion was
thrown solely on herself, and set about the giant task of linking the
provinces together, building railroads from Atlantic to Pacific, canals
from tide water to the Great Lakes.  In actual cash this cost Canada
four hundred million dollars, not counting land grants and private
subscriptions for stock, which would bring up the cost of binding the
provinces together to a billion.  This was a staggering burden for a
country with smaller population than Greater New York--a burden as big
as Japan and Russia assumed for their war; but, like war, the
expenditure was a fight for national existence.  Without the railroads
and canals, the provinces could not have been bound together into a