to ascertain in how far it might be available as a field for settlement. In fulfillment of this policy, Dr. Bell, Assistant Director of the Geological Survey, was sent up there with an exploring party for six successive seasons, and his observations constitute some of the most interesting portions of the reports of that survey. The vast importance of this region rapidly dawned upon the public mind, when it became known that here was an immense range of country, having a temperate climate, a fertile soil, and boundless wealth in forest and mine, awaiting the long-delayed advent of the farmer, the lumberman, and the miner. And not only so, but the phenomenal development of the great Northwest drew attention to Hudson Bay upon another and even more immediately important ground.
Entering as this bay does into the very heart of the continent, and being connected by navigable rivers with a network of great lakes which spreads out until it touches the western boundaries of Manitoba, the keen-eyed farmers of that fertile province espied in it a hopeful solution of the vital problem how they should most cheaply transport their grain to the markets of the Old World. By reference to a map of the northern hemisphere it will at once be seen that the shortest possible route between the Northwest Territories and Europe lies through Hudson Bay. As the result of careful calculations, it has been ascertained that even the city of Winnipeg, which is situated in the extreme southeastern part of these Territories, is at least eight hundred miles nearer to Liverpool, for instance, by the Hudson Bay route, than by the St. Lawrence, while the difference in favor of the former necessarily increases the farther we advance northwestward. If, as Dr. Bell has so clearly pointed out, we take the central point of the agricultural lands of the Northwest, we shall find that the distance from it to Winnipeg is about the same as it is to Churchill, the finest harbor in Hudson Bay. Now, the distance between Churchill and Liverpool is a little less (about sixty-four miles) than it is between Montreal and that great entrepot of commerce. The conclusion consequently is that, as between the above-named center and Liverpool, there is a saving of the whole distance from Winnipeg to Montreal by the use of Hudson Bay. This saving amounts to no less than twelve hundred and ninety-one miles by way of Lake Superior, and sixteen hundred and ninety-eight miles via Chicago.
The translation of miles into dollars and cents is an easy process nowadays, and it has been estimated that the difference in freight in favor of the Hudson Bay route is at least thirty-two cents on each bushel of grain, or, in other words, means an additional profit of over six dollars an acre to the farmers of the West. When this idea had once fairly taken hold of the public mind, a profound interest was awakened, not only throughout Canada, but also in England, where, at the 1880 meeting of the British Association, Sir J. H. Lefroy, President of the Geological Section, hesitated not to affirm that the natural
