THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARIES

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nected with the St. Lawrence at Kingston by the Rideau canal. A still greater mission has been planned for the noble river, viz: to become a link in a great highway from the north-western settlements to the ocean. It would then be connected by cuttings with Lake Huron; vessels passing west up the Mattawa, thence by canal into Lake Nipissing, and thence by French River, into the waters of Georgian Bay.

This engineering achievement would shorten the distance by water, from Liverpool to the Lake Ports, 760 miles; save a week in time; and probably reduce charges for insurance and freight. We hope that the plan will be carried out. We anticipate that this will be the route some day, from England to British Columbia; viz; from Liverpool by steam viâ the St. Lawrence and Ottawa, on through Lakes Huron and Superior to Fort William; thence by a Northern Pacific Railroad, through the "fertile belt" to New Westminster. This however is all in the future.

The Ottawa with its feeders forms the means of transit for the largest lumber trade in the world. On the South bank, such streams as the Mattawa, Madawaska, South Nation aud Rideau; on the North side, the Gatineau, the Rivières du Lièvre and du Moine, North Nation, Rouge and Assumption, contribute annually their cargoes of logs. The navigation has been greatly improvedespecially for timber-by the construction of dams and slides, to facilitate its passage over rapids and falls.

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balanced by the experience gained of forest-life. Here the forest-kings have fallen before the lumberer's axe. The settler has followed in his train; making the land yield increase to him-not once in a generation by its spoils of timber-but each year with cereals and fruit.

Reports reached England of alarming conflagrations in the forests of the Ottawa, and the lands bordering on the Gatineau. I came up in time to witness the last minuet of the flame-dance. The heat of the ball was over. The "greenwood" was gone. Kings and queens of woodland glory were stripped of their grandeur and lay stricken by the way-side. Flames still played languidly about blackened stumps, or sullenly smouldered among charcoal embers. We naturally ask how it is that forests full of living sap will burn? It is accounted for by the preponderance of trees of the pine species, each one loaded to tips of leaf and twig, with pitch and resin. Then again the dry heats of summer scorch the underwood into the condition of tinder. A spark from hunter's pipe or lumberers' camp-fire may kindle a mighty conflagration when all is so ready for the flames. Much mischief follows in some cases, as for instance, when farm boundary-fences are obliterated. Then comes angry wrangling and trials in the law-courts. In 1825 a terrible fire occurred in New Brunswick. On the Miramichi river 200 square miles of woods were destroyed; by this awful burning 500 people lost their lives, and 2,000 more were ruined.

"It is an ill-wind that blows no good," says an old proverb. The burnt forest is loss to the lumberer, but it is gain to the farmer. He will dibble his maize and wheat grains between the black stumps; vermin and brushwood are cleared away without his labours. In a

little while these spots of black desolation, will, as in a hundred clearings, smile gladly with harvest. Scotch settlers push up the country, winning such triumphs over swamp and tangle, that the saying of old comes true literally, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, the desert shall blossom as the rose."

I have described the "hanging gardens" of the South, and "Indian summer" in Maryland. The North has also great glories of leaf and fern, of vine and flower. The Ottawa has also its own autumn crown. A loving interpreter of nature has portrayed in glowing language, the aspects of life in a northern and southern zone. In that inimitable picture of word-painting, Ruskin carries us at once from a burning to a frozen land. Let us travel in fancy, with his swallow and stork, from the flowered pavements which are forecourts of the cypress-morass in Carolina, to the humbler jardinet, embossed amidst a northern cedar-swamp. We call this a wintry region, yet we are in the latitude of the Garonne. The green pines are festooned with wild vines. It has been said that the blistering grape-vines of the dismal swamp are poisonous. Not so those of Canada. Their leaves form garlands for the pillars of forest-aisles, and in autumn, clusters of black and purple fruit are set as symbols of teeming plenty. Nature's bountiful vineyard can never be gathered by man, so birds and wild animals luxuriate therein. Cartier's companions found them growing about Cape Diamond, and round the gloomy Saguenay. Coming to an island rock laden with them, they called it “Isle of Bacchus." Wild vine is worthy of a royal place in the Dominion cornucopia.

In lake-shallows, grows the folle avoine of the Jesuits-the wild rice of the English. Taller than a man, spring feathered stalks, laden with graceful drooping

ears of grain, black on the outside and pearly white within. When shaken by wind, much of the cereal treasure falls into the silt below. These rice-grounds are favorite feeding-haunts of wild-fowl :-ducks, turkeys and geese. They are sometimes charged with other billets. Flocks of migrating pigeons pause on their flight to enjoy the tempting dinner of ripe and ready food. From the stalks of folle avoine the ingenious people of Maine are now manufacturing paper.

Wild plums bending over lake-coves, may be gathered in bushels. Black bilberries or huckleberries, rasps, strawberries and white speckled dewberries, real blueberries, and rosy whortleberries (often miscalled cranberries,) are found in like abundance. Indians eat the latter raw and boil them with their meats; the settlers' wives boil them with maple sugar, into a delicious preserve for winter use. What Indian and white-men spare, squirrels and brown bears devour, sometimes even forestalling them at the banquet.

I often think of the heaven-given law of compensation. In Canada you find no "rosiers des Alps," you never sight a rhododendron in the wilds, but in their place the bilberry ranges northward even to "Greenland's icy mountains." High bush or low bush, always hardy and fruitful; the berry delicately hidden under green leaves. The humble bilberry is the free gift, the "gather and come again," of Canada. I prefer its simple wholesome fruit to the banana. It is a fairy sight when the orchards of Hereford are pink with blossom, yet it is perhaps a still more goodly vision, when in Canada, Indian summer brings round the season of fruits.

The turn of the leaf comes early in the north. After a frosty night the maples appear next morning in scarlet. The climbing creepers also change their colors, and