On Monday a number of Canadians dined together at the
Westminster Palace Hotel to celebrate " Dominion Day,"' —the day of the inauguration of the British North America. Act. The chairman, Sir Charles Tupper, made an interesting speech expounding the prosperity of Canada, which seems to- be going to fill in the New World the role of Switzerland in the old. Its snows, its woods, waters, and wastes, and its differences of language, point the analogy. Canada's savings- banks' deposits now amount to nearly R50,000,000, and its 3 per cent. stock is nearly at par,-97 is the exact figure. Sir Charles mentioned that within a few weeks the Sault Ste. Marie Canal will be opened, and then there will be unbroken inland navigation on Canadian territory from the Straits of Belle Isle to Lake Superior,—a distance of 2,260 miles. We 'wish he had reminded the British public of some more of the facts in regard to Canadian water communication. No other -country in the world approaches the Dominion in water facilities. One of Lord Dufferin's best speeches while Governor-General was devoted to an admirable description of the rivers and lakes of the Dominion, and would have borne quotation. Do people realise that the Ottawa, an obscure affluent of the St. Lawrence, has a course of some , 550 miles, is about four times as big as the Thames, and flows into the receiving river at a point 600 miles inland P Think, too, of Lake Winnipeg. That inland sea is 300 miles long and 60 miles broad, and into it flows a river, the Saskatchewan, which is the starting-point of 1000 miles of inland navigatidn.
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