File:Canada under British rule, 1760-1900 (1900) (14744073916).jpg

Identifier: canadaunderbrit00bour (find matches)
Title: Canada under British rule, 1760-1900
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Bourinot, John George, Sir, 1837-1902
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Publisher: Cambridge, University Press
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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iion from theAtlantic to the Pacific Ocean, 1869 1873. The government and parliament, to whom were entrustedthe destinies of the federation of four provinces, had a greatwork to accomplish in the way of perfecting and extending theDominion, which was necessarily incomplete whilst its westernterritorial limits were confined to the boundaries of Ontario,and the provinces of British Columbia on the Pacific coast andof Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of the St Lawrenceremained in a position of isolation. The provisions of theBritish North America Act of 1867 provided in general termsfor the addition of the immense territories which extend fromthe head of Lake Superior in a north-westerly direction as faras the Rocky Mountains. Three great basins divide theseterritories; Hudson Bay Basin, with probably a drainage of2,250,000 square miles; the Winnipeg sub-basin tributary to the former, with nearly 400,000 square miles; the MackenzieRiver basin with nearly 700,000 square miles. The Winnipeg
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CHAP. IX.) Confederation. 1867—1900. 223 basin covers a great area of prairie lands, whose luxuriantgrasses and wild flowers were indented for centuries only bythe tracks of herds of innumerable buffaloes on their way to the tortuous and sluggish streams which flow through thatwide region. This plain slopes gently towards the arctic seasinto which its waters flow, and is also remarkable for risinggradually from its eastern limits in three distinct elevations orsteppes as far as the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains.Forests of trees, small for the most part, are found only whenthe prairies are left and we reach the more picturesque un-dulating country through which the North Saskatchewan flows.An extraordinary feature of this great region is the continuouschain of lakes and rivers which stretch from the basin of theSt Lawrence as far as the distant northern sea into which theMackenzie, the second largest fiver in North America, carriesits enormous volume of waters. As we stand on the

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