The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎78v] (161/244)

646
THE NINETEENTH CEN April
Should annexation be the indirect object at which the Washington
Grovernment is now aiming in McKinleying the products of the
Dominion, the Canadian Pacific would, in the event of the success
of this policy, be added to the Railway rings of the United States.
A free and uniquely advantageous highway to the East and to the
Australasian colonies would then be lost, and a great Imperial con
necting link be broken beyond the possibility of repair.
There are those in Lower Canada, and of course in England too,
who say that too much money has already been expended in the
opening up of the North-West, and that the building of the
Canadian Pacific has been a far too expensive enterprise from a
Lower Canadian point of view. This is a very shortsighted view to
take. Without the present and future development of the North-
West to count upon, the fate of Lower Canada would be sealed. She
might throw herself into the arms of the United States at once. Ten
years from now the North-West will be far more necessary to Lower
Canada than Lower Canada is to-day to British Columbia, Manitoba,
and the Territories. The Canadian Pacific has annexed an empire
of undeveloped resources to the Eastern section of the Dominion,
which must ultimately be the economic salvation of the older but
less naturally favoured Provinces. Certain I am, that if the Americans
only knew more about the mineral resources of British Columbia, its
wonderfully rich soil and teeming rivers, and of the riches represented
in the vast areas of arable and pasture lands of the Territories and
Manitoba, they would not hesitate in paying five times the amount
of money that has been expended upon the North-West, in railways
and other respects, in exchange for possessions representing untold
material wealth and priceless political importance.
The World's Fair at Chicago next year will, of course, invite an
immense number of visitors from the United Kingdom. Those who
have already seen the grounds upon which the Exposition will stand,
as I have, and who can therefore form some idea of the unparalleled
proportions, yet symmetrical arrangement, of the whole plans, will be
more or less prepared for the biggest, brightest, and best effort of the
kind ever put forth. But to those who have not had this advantage,
and who may never have visited the United States before, the
Chicago Exposition will offer a series of attractions which will leave a
lifelong agreeable recollection behind. Once at Chicago, a trip to
the Canadian North-West would be but an affair of an additional ten
or fifteen days, in which small space of time, however, it will be
possible to see a comparatively unknown and magnificent country,
and enjoy the ' Sea of Mountains,' as the Canadian Eockies have been
called, together with the softer but yet wild and incomparably varied
and enchanting scenery of the Canon of the Eraser Eiver, as that
monarch of western waters rolls down through gorge and precipice
and valley to the wooded plains of British Columbia. No one