with the sea, are immense deposits of coal, furnishing extraordinary facilities for transportation by sea and land. It may be doubted if any coal-supplies in the world are so admirably situated for the prosecution or defence of commerce as those of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, or those of Vancouver Island on the Pacific. At both points excellent steaming coal can be delivered to waiting steamships almost directly from the mouth of the mine.
Across the whole breadth of the continent means of communication are multiplying with a rapidity which seems astonishing to those who watched the beginnings of the movement thirty years ago. The Canadian Pacific Railway already crosses the country from sea to sea; a second one, the Grand Trunk Pacific, by a more northern route, is in course of construction, backed up by all the resources of a prosperous people; a third, the Canadian Northern, is being pushed through by private enterprise between these two national lines from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, and it also undoubtedly looks to ultimate connection with both oceans. Between these main lines a network of branches is being built to supply the needs of the stream of emigrants which flows in to fill up the prairie country.
Eastward, a great canal system, on which thirty million dollars have been spent, supplements and simplifies the natural lines of water communication, and, as compared with railways, cheapens the transport of grain in bulk.
Should Hudson Bay prove available for navigation, as now seems likely, a new economy in transportation, a new safety by reason of greater isolation, will be given to what will soon be the great line of bread-supply for the United Kingdom.
The new situation which has arisen in the Far East as the result of the Russo-Japanese War gives this geographical position of Canada, as part of the Empire, added significance. The ports of Canada on the Pacific coast are only ten days' steaming distance from those of
