=Source.=--A Speech delivered by Lord Dufferin at Winnipeg, quoted
in _Round the Empire_, by Mr. G. R. Parkin. London, 1893.
As a poor man cannot live in a big house, so a small country cannot
support a big river.
Now to an Englishman or a Frenchman the Severn or the Thames, the
Seine or the Rhone, would appear considerable streams; but in the
Ottawa, a mere affluent of the St. Lawrence, an affluent, moreover,
which reaches the parent stream six hundred miles from its mouth,
we have a river nearly five hundred and fifty miles long, and three
or four times as big as any of them.
But even after having ascended the St. Lawrence itself to Lake
Ontario, and pursued it across Lake Erie, St. Clair, Lake Huron,
and Lake Superior to Thunder Bay--a distance of fifteen hundred
miles, where are we? In the estimation of a person who has made
the journey, at the end of all things; but to us, who know better,
scarcely at the beginning of the great fluvial systems of the
Dominion; for from that spot, that is to say, from Thunder Bay,
we are able at once to ship our astonished traveller on to the
Kaministiquia, a river of some hundred miles long. Thence, almost
in a straight line, we launch him on to Lake Shebandowan and Rainy
Lake and River--a magnificent stream three hundred yards broad
and a couple of hundred miles long, down whose tranquil bosom he
floats to the Lake of the Woods, where he finds himself on a sheet
of water which, though diminutive as compared with the inland
seas he has left behind him, will probably be found sufficiently
extensive to render him fearfully sea-sick during his passage
across it.
For the last eighty miles of his voyage, however, he will be
consoled by sailing through a succession of land-locked channels,
the beauty of whose scenery, while it resembles, certainly excels,
the far-famed Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence.
From this lacustrine paradise of sylvan beauty we are able at once
to transfer our friend to the Winnipeg, a river whose existence
in the very heart and centre of the continent is in itself one of
Nature's most delightful miracles--so beautiful and varied are its
rocky banks, its tufted islands; so broad, so deep, so fervid is
the volume of its waters, the extent of their lake-like expansions,
and the tremendous power of their rapids.
At last let us suppose we have landed our traveller at the town
of Winnipeg, the half-way house of the continent, the capital of
the Prairie Province.... Having had so much of water, having now
reached the home of the buffalo, like the extenuated Falstaff he
naturally "babbles of green fields" and careers in imagination
over the green grasses of the prairie. Not at all.... We take him
down to your quay and ask him which he will ascend first--the Red
River or the Assiniboine--two streams, the one five hundred miles
long, the other four hundred and eighty, which so happily mingle
their waters within your city limits. After having given him a
preliminary canter up these respective rivers, we take him off
to Lake Winnipeg, an inland sea 300 miles long and upwards of 60
broad, during the navigation of which, for many a weary hour, he
will find himself out of sight of land, and probably a good deal
more indisposed than ever he was on the Lake of the Woods, or even
the Atlantic.
At the north-west angle of Lake Winnipeg he hits upon the mouth
of the Saskatchewan, the gateway of the North-West, and the
starting-point to another 1500 miles of navigable water flowing
nearly due East and West between its alluvial banks.
Having now reached the foot of the Rocky Mountains, our Ancient
Mariner--for by this time he will be quite entitled to such an
appellation--knowing that water cannot run uphill, feels certain
his aquatic experiences are concluded.
He was never more mistaken. We immediately launch him upon the
Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers, and start him on a longer trip than
he has yet undertaken--the navigation of the Mackenzie River alone
exceeding 2500 miles. If he survives this last experience we wind
up his peregrinations by a concluding voyage of 1400 miles down the
Fraser River, or, if he prefers it, the Thompson River, to Victoria
in Vancouver, whence, having previously provided him with a first
class return ticket for that purpose, he will probably prefer
getting home _via_ the Canadian Pacific.
Now, in this enumeration, those who are acquainted with the country
are aware that, for the sake of brevity, I have omitted thousands
of miles of other lakes and rivers which water various regions
of the North-West: the Qu'Appelle River, the Belly River, Lake
Manitoba, Lake Winnipegosis, Shoal Lake, and others, along whose
interminable banks and shores I might have dragged, and finally
exterminated, our way-worn guest.