The wealth of Newfoundland is its fisheries. Dried codfish, fish oil, seal skins, and herrings are the leading articles of its export trade. The exports in 1848 and 1849 are given by Mr. Andrews as follows:

QUANTITY AND VALUE OF STAPLE ARTICLES EXPORTED IN 1848 AND 1849.

The deals, ship-timber, and lumber of New Brunswick are its staple exports. We extract a few figures from Mr. Andrews' detailed statements, showing exports for the year 1849 :—

The total exports amounted in value to $2,824,636.

The chief items of the natural wealth of Nova Scotia are its coal, and gypsum, its wood, and its fish. In 1849 the value of these articles exported was as follows:

From Cape Breton there were exported coals of the value of $20,092. Canada may take its place among the great wheat regions of America. We speak now of Canada West. When we think of the Canadas as a region of almost arctic climate, we forget that while it touches Labrador, on the north, the Peninsula of Canada West stretches down between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to latitude 42°, the latitude of Connecticut. Canada produces large quantities of oats also, and is rich in the products of the forest. The leading items in Mr. Andrews' tables of exports are oak timber, white and red pine, boards, plank and deals, ships' knees, spars of masts, pot and pearl ashes, butter and lard, flour and oats, horses and cattle.

Of these exports from all the colonies, a very large proportion went to

Great Britain. Out of £1,357,326, the total exports from the port of Quebec in 1848, £1,034,121 are for exports to Great Britain. The proportion in 1849 is £943,933 out of £1,044,101. Out of £460,769, the value of all exports from Nova Scotia in 1848, the value of exports to the British West Indies was £199,936. The total value of exports from New Brunswick in 1849 was £601,462, of which £463,814 were for exports to Great Britain.

The chief items of the import trade of Newfoundland, in 1849, were as follows:

Quantities.

Value.

The quantity and value of the chief imports into Nova Scotia, in 1848,

are stated in Mr. Andrews' report as follows:

The statistics of Canadian imports for 1849 exhibit, of course, the

A glance at these figures shows a marked difference in the import trade of

the seaboard Provinces and that of Canada. Flour, wheat, and bread are largely imported into the former, while these items are very trifling in the Canadian import trade. The imports of breadstuffs into the Eastern Provinces are principally from the United States, carried thither in those circuitous voyages, doubtless, which are so advantageous to British shipping. The total value of imports into Newfoundland in

The chief items of this trade are wheat, flour, corn meal, bread, and

tobacco.

Very different, as regards the nature of imports, are the features of the trade to Canada.

Total imports in 1849.
From Great Britain....

From United States..

.....

£3,002,599 12 4

1,669,002 12 7

1,242,855 00 10

Of this very large importation from the United States the chief items are tea, tobacco, salt meat, cottons and woolens, iron and hardware, fruit and spices. The value of grains and flour is only £5,859.

But in the trade with all the Provinces there has been a marked and rapid increase in imports from the United States. They have grown rapidly upon the English trade, so that, as our figures show, while our exports to Nova Scotia in 1828 were less than as one to two, and to Newfoundland in 1829 amounted to nothing at all, in 1849 our exports to all the Provinces equal or surpass the English.

The tables also present a striking contrast between the imports of the Provinces, almost one-half of which came from the United States, and the exports, which have hitherto chiefly gone to England and the West Indies. Mr. Andrews states the total imports of all the colonies for 1840 and 1849 as follows:

Imports from Great Britain...
Imports from United States.

Total........

1840.

$15,385,166

1849. $11,346,336

In the year 1850 the total exports of Canada alone were $13,287,996, of which nearly seven-and-a-half millions were exported by sea and went abroad, and of the residue, a considerable amount also were exports beyond the sea.

In fact, the products of the Provinces are too much like our own to find their largest and steadiest market in the United States. The most profitable trade is that which comes from diversity of exchangeable products. The lumber of Maine matches that of New Brunswick-the wheat of New

York the wheat of Canada-and even the fisheries of Newfoundland are rivaled by the labors of New England on its own banks; and yet there is a trade of no inconsiderable amount in products of the same kind between the Provinces and the States. Bread and breadstuffs form a large item of the imports into the Eastern Provinces, coming not directly from Canada, but from the United States. Convenience of communication by sea must account for this trade.

The imports into the Provinces are manufactures and the products of warmer climates. Manufactures have not so much as made a beginning in the Provinces. There is here a market, or the promise and prospect of a market, for our cottons, agricultural implements, and articles of domestic use, which needs only the fostering of a wise policy. As yet, the supply comes, in the main, from England. Moreover, while our States bordering upon the Provinces resemble them in climate, and produce all that they produce, our territory is not confined within the bands of the temperate zone: our dominions stretch down to where tropical heat prevails. We can supply the sugar and molasses, the tobacco, (we may yet supply the tea,) which form the bulk of their imports. Here is another opening to be improved by wise policy.

On the other hand, there are very large items of their import trade which we cannot supply. Wines, brandies, coffee, spices, must be sought in the foreign market by the Provinces as by ourselves. Again, the products of the Provinces, too similar to our own to find a steady market here, must, like our own, seek the foreign market.

Here, then, are two great branches of trade: the Domestic Trade between the States of British America and the United States in their own products, so full of promise for our manufactures and southern products, not unimportant for our grain and provisions in the Eastern Provinces; and on the other hand, the Transit Trade through the United States, of provincial products going to the foreign market, and of foreign products going back to the Provinces.

To increase this Domestic Trade, to attract this Transit Trade, must be the aim and interest of every American merchant-how it is to be done should be the study of every American statesman.

To and from the foreign market there are two routes of provincial trade, the one by sea through the seaboard ports and the St. Lawrence, the other inland across the American border and the Lakes. The St. Lawrence is the great channel of transit trade by sea. This river, perhaps the greatest natural feature of America, contains the largest body of fresh water in the world. Including the Lakes, which in fact are so many divisions of it, so many pearls of this glorious necklace, its basin covers nearly 1,000,000 square miles, while that of the Mississippi measures only 800.000 or 900,000 miles; but as a channel of communication with the sea and between distant points, the Mississippi has infinitely the advantage over its more beautiful rival.

At its mouth are the dense fogs which frequently delay navigation. Across the Gulf of St. Lawrence is the dangerous current or race from the Straits of Belle Isle to Cape Ray. The dangerous and inhospitable coast of Anticosti stands forbiddingly at the entrance. For 400 miles from the mouth to Quebec, the St. Lawrence affords a noble navigation even for ships-of-the

• Guyot, Physical Geography.

line, and ships of 600 tons burden can go up to Montreal, which is 180 miles further inland; but the rapids beyond Montreal, between Cornwall and Johnston, render it unfit for any but flat-bottomed boats of 10 to 15 tons; and the Rideau Canal, which can receive boats of 350 tons, attests the liberal policy of the home government, and the enterprise of the people, in successfully obviating this serious impediment. Next is Niagara, that most magnificent and least to be regretted of all fatal obstructions to river navigation. Here, again, Canadian enterprise has been at work. The Welland Canal, 28 miles long by one branch, 21 miles by another, will admit vessels of 300 tons burden, and this, with the Rideau, the lake, and the river, furnishes a tolerable navigation from Lake Erie to Montreal, a distance of 367 miles, or four miles more than by the Erie Canal to tide-water on the Hudson, where freight is 150 miles from the ocean. At Montreal it

has still 580 miles to go, to reach the sea. By the St. Lawrence Canals, the distance is somewhat less. These canals receive boats of about 100 tons capacity.

We will not go further up the St. Lawrence, or attempt the shoals of the Detroit, with only seven or eight feet of water, or the Falls of the Saut St. Marie, a monument of constitutional scruples and congressional neglect.* The St. Lawrence, geographically a continuous river from Fond du Lac to the sea, is practically and commercially a series of detached lakes, not dividing, but uniting, through the potency of steam, kindred people on the opposite shores. Canal navigation has done much to remedy its defects as a channel of continuous navigation to the ocean. It has done still more by providing short cuts to the seaboard through New York, Ohio, and Indiana. But there is still another and a formidable difficulty which attends the navigation of the St. Lawrence to the sea. It has been remarked that the course of the river is in the direction of a great circle of the earth. It is, therefore, a very short transatlantic route, for instance, from Quebec to Liverpool. But this great circle bends very rapidly north as well as east. It runs between parallels 47° and 50°-a wintry latitude in North America. For five months the Canadian winter lays its embargo upon the navigation of the river. According to Hon. George Pemberton, of Quebec, it opens, on an average of years, "at Quebec on the 1st of May, and closes about the 28th of November."t

Against fogs and currents, dangerous shoals and channels ice-bound five months out of twelve, canals, steamships, railroads, even, are of no avail. And some or all these difficulties all the ports of British America, of the eastern seaboard, as of Canada, labor under. Do they present any advantages of shorter and quicker route?

Mr. Andrews has an interesting map prefixed to his report, showing the comparative distances between American and British ports. This map makes the distance between Quebec and Liverpool, by the Straits of Belle Isle (Labrador) and the north of Ireland, 2,680 miles; by the less arctic route of the straits between Cape Ray and Cape Breton, 2,950. The distance from New York to Liverpool is 3,073 miles, or about four hundred miles more than the first, only one hundred and twenty-three miles more than the second route from Quebec.

A canal, less than one mile in length, and at an estimated cost of $225,000, is all that is required at the Sault.

+ Andrews' Report, page 324.