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.