CANADA BALSAM-CANADIAN LITERATURE by Romish aggression and by the stimulus which the Ultramontane Church in Quebec has of late given to French ambition. The extent of the ecclesiastical domination was seen throughout the controversy over the Jesuits' Estates claims, which added $400,000 to the financial burdens of the French province, already almost swamped with debt, owing to the political corruption that has prevailed and the easy morals of men such as MM. Mercier, Senecal, and Chapleau. The feeling was further in evidence during the agitation all over the country on the Manitoba separate schools question, though the French hierarchy, in its attitude toward the discussion, had, in the recent election of M. Laurier, whom the Church frowned upon in the contest, a significant rebuke. Nothing more advantageous to the country could well have happened than this rebuff received by the Church, and it is to be hoped that, with the purifying of politics in the French province, as well as in the Dominion at large, the event heralds the dawn of a better day. 675 the advance in wealth, and all that wealth has brought in its train, there has been a steady rise in the moral and intellectual status of the people. The gain in this direction is perhaps not all that the ardent patriot could wish, but the progress has been upward, and the ascent has not been that of a class merely, but of the people as a whole. In the national outlook there is, as Canadians themselves admit, not a little still to perplex and bewilder, but there is also much to encourage and inspire. G. MERCER ADAM. CANADA BALSAM is a kind of turpentine obtained from the balm of Gilead fir (Abies or Pinus balsamea), a native of Canada and the northern parts of the United States. It exists, in the tree, in vesicles between the bark and the wood, and is obtained by making incisions, and attaching bottles for it to flow into. Canada balsam was formerly employed in medicine as a stimulant for the cure of mucous discharges, and as a detergent application to ulcers, but it is now rarely used as a remedy. The balsam is much valued for a variety of purposes in the arts-as an inIngredient in varnishes, in mounting objects for the microscope, in photography, and by opticians as a cement, particularly for connecting the parts of achromatic lenses to the exclusion of moisture and dust. Its value for optical purposes is very great, and depends not only on its perfect transparency, but on its possessing a refractive power nearly equal to that of glass. See BALSAM, Vol. III, p. 293. In 1872, dual representation in the Dominion and the provincial Parliaments was abolished. 1892, the legislative council of New Brunswick was wiped out of existence, and in the following year the legislative council and assembly of Prince Edward Island were merged into one body. In 1875 the supreme court of Canada was constituted. In 1880 the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and in 1881 the Royal Society of Canada, were founded. In 1877 the Halifax Fisheries Commission awarded $5,500,000 to England, to be paid by the United States for reciprocal rights in the fisheries; and eight years later, the United States terminated the fisheries clauses of the Washington Treaty. In 1893, the court of arbitrators respecting the seal fisheries in Bering Sea convened and declared their award. In 1895 the unorganized and unnamed portions of the Canadian Northwest were, by proclamation, given the following designations as provisional districts of the Dominion: Ungava, Franklin, Mackenzie, and Yukon. Despite many disadvantages under which the country suffers, only optimistic can be the chronicler of Canada's recent development. On her people devolves the care of half a continent, whose resources are illimitable and whose capabilities are untold. In population, if Canada has not as yet the numbers that betoken progress, she has a country vast and productive enough to rear numbers. In her Northwest she has a belt of land which could provide sustenance, with plenty, for thirty or forty millions. In Manitoba and the organized districts of Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan there are close upon 239,000,000 acres, which have been brought to the uses of the farmer and the ranchman to the extent of 7,832,200 acres. Included in this statement are the ranching-grounds, which, in 1895, covered 904, 187 acres, distributed among 185 lessees. In Ontario alone, twice the present population of the whole Dominion could be comfortably housed and fed. Nor has the progress only been material. Besides CANADA GOOSE, the common wild goose of North America (Bernicla canadensis). The plumage is gray, with black on head and tail. *CANADIAN LITERATURE. Although the Dominion of Canada, in age, physical characteristics, race and spirit has had much in common with her great neighbor the United States, she has as yet produced no national literature. Writers she has had in abundance, some of them of rare excellence, but she has had no great, distinctively Canadian writer, no sharply defined literary movement, no northern school of poets or novelists or historians. Amid a great wealth of literary material, surrounded by the grandest of natural scenery, and looking back over a history full of romantic episode, especially in the early French period, the Canadian has had little encouragement for literary effort. He has never had the inspiration of a firmly united, independent fatherland. "A dependency can never be a nation"; and it is an axiom that literature can flourish only where the idea of independent nationality is firmly established. In addition to this element of dependence there have been other serious impediments in the way of literary development. Despite the fact that the provinces are united in a confederacy under one executive and legislative head, much as are the United States, there is no real centralization. The Dominion lies in four widely separated sections: the maritime provinces; old Canada, including Quebec and Ontario; the prairie region, including Manitoba and the northwest territories; *Copyright, 1897, by The Werner Company. and British Columbia. While each of these communicates freely with the sections of the United States directly south of it, there is, owing to natural barriers, but little communication between the contiguous sections. The territory west of Ontario is as yet in its formative period, and is still too new for literary development. A history of Canadian literature must confine itself to the St. Lawrence valley and to the maritime provinces. But even within this restricted area there are almost impassable barriers to literary development. The provinces of Quebec and Ontario are separated by an antagonism both of race and of religion. Quebec is literally "a new France in the heart of English Canada," with a spirit, a religion, a language and a literature wholly unlike anything else in America. Its outlook, both in thought and literature, is toward. France. Thus the Canadian writer can expect no audience of his countrymen outside of his own province. The book published in Toronto seldom reaches the maritime provinces, since Quebec lies as a barrier between, and there is no demand for it in the new northwest. These conditions have made it hitherto impossible for the literary magazine, that most important factor in literary development, to flourish. All Canadian writers, who have become at all known outside the limits of their own province, have been compelled to seek publishers in the United States, in England or in France. Canada is as yet in her song period. Poetry is not widely popular among the masses of Canadian readers, yet from the first the bulk and the best of the literary product has been in verse. Aside from a few narratives chiefly valuable as sources of history, the Dominion is known to the literary world wholly from its lyrics. The earliest voices came naturally from the older sections about Quebec and the Lower St. Lawrence,-simple chansons sung by the French peasantry, lullabies and nonsense verses, rollicking boat-songs sung by hardy voyageurs and raftsmen, tender ballads of the ancienne mère-patric, rippling love ditties, and wild drinking-choruses. The most popular of all these old chansons is À la Claire Fontaine. "All the people in Canada sing the Claire Fontaine. One is not French-Canadian without that. Aside from a few historical narratives, the French have produced no valuable literary work outside the realm of song. There have been a few true poets, but no great original singer. All of them have kept carefully in tune with the voices of old France. The earlier poets, like Turcotte, Barthe, Derome and Garneau, were simply the Canadian exponents of the French school of 1830. The later group has been more national in its themes and its tones, and almost all of its members have belonged to the romantic school. Among its best representatives may be mentioned Octave Crémazie, Pierre Chauveau, Pamphile Le May, Louis Honoré Fréchette and Benjamin Sulte. Fréchette, who is easily the leading singer of French Canada, has taken his themes almost wholly from the national history. His sweet lyrics, published in collections, bearing such poeti cal titles as Les Fleurs Boréales and Les Oiseaux de Neige, won for him in 1880 the laurel crown of the French Academy. English-Canadian literature is of comparatively recent date. Commencing with Mackenzie's narrative of his travels in British America, published in 1802, there have been published, from time to time, many native books dealing with the exploration and the history of the northwest and of Lower Canada. The stormy times preceding the union of 1840-41 called forth not a few trenchant political brochures, and many valuable studies of important periods in Canadian history have been made from time to time, but native works of a purely literary nature were almost unknown until after the confederation of 1867. Following this union, which had in it the promise of a united fatherland, there came a sudden outburst of literary activity, especially in the region known as Upper Canada, now Ontario. The first true English-speaking poet was Charles Heavysege, who published, in 1857, at Montreal, Saul, a drama, one of the most remarkable English poems ever written out of Great Britain." Eight years later he published Jephthah's Daughter, a work full of imagination and feeling. Heavysege was not a native of Canada, and is Canadian neither in spirit nor in theme. It remained for Charles Sangster, a true poet of nature, to sing the first genuine songs in English of the Canadian woods and fields, of "the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay." He was followed closely by Alexander McLachlan, "The Canadian Burns," whose Idylls of the Dominion are fragrant with odors of forest and meadow, and musical with the heart-songs of his people. In the great choir of later singers a more extended mention should be given to Charles Mair, "The Northwest Poet," author of a drama entitled Tecumseh, and the singer of wild life on the prairie and the war-path; to Isabella V. Crawford, who died too early to reap the rich reward which her strong powers should have brought her; to E. Pauline Johnson, a young poet of rare promise, already the strongest singer that the Indian race has produced; to Archibald Lampman, who brings to his pictures of northern woods and pastures a rare classical spirit and culture; to K. Seymour McLean; to Ethelwyn Wetherald; to Seranus" (S. F. Harrison); to Duncan Campbell Scott; and to many another. Another English-speaking poet worthy of mention is John Reade of Montreal, whose Merlin and Other Poems has the Tennysonian grace and sweetness, combined with a striking originality. Of the maritime provinces, New Brunswick has become of late the literary center. The little school of poets headed by Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Barry Stratton and William W. Campbell is one of the most promising groups in literary America. Roberts, with his sweet, perfect lyrics, full of pictures of the marshes and uplands of his native coast, is now the unchallenged leader of northern song. His best work is in his Orion and Other Poems (1880) and his In Divers Tones, books distinctively Canadian in spirit and scene. CANADIAN RIVER-CANAL The leading singer of Nova Scotia is perhaps Arthur J. Lockhart, while Prince Edward Island has for its laureate John Hunter-Duvar, the author of many graceful lyrics of island life and scenes. 677 been but the preparation, and Canadian litera- CANADIAN RIVER, called also the Red Notwithstanding the fact that the Dominion, with its varied population and conditions, has in its history, its social life and its scenery a rich mine of materials for fiction, there has as yet been produced no Canadian novel of even second rank. James De Mille, a native of New Brunswick, and author of the widely popular Dodge Club in Italy, wrote little that was distinctly Canadian. Five or six names exhaust the list of writers who have written novels that are read outside of Canada. The leading novelist of French Quebec is M. Joseph Marmette, whose historical romances, L'Intendant Bigot and Le Chevalier de Mornac have found considerable favor in France. Among other French historical novels may be mentioned De Gaspé's Les Anciens Canadiens, and Bourassa's Jacques et Marie, a story treating of the expulsion of the Acadians. Of English nov- *CANAL. The construction of canal systems elists, only the names of Major Richardson, Miss. as the controlling instrument in internal transMachar ("Fidelis "), William Kirby, John Les-portation was characteristic of the development perance, Gilbert Parker, and the joint authors of An Algonquin Maiden need be mentioned. CANAJOHARIE, a village of Montgomery County, central eastern New York, situated on the south bank of the Mohawk, 55 miles W. of Albany, on the West Shore railroad. It is the seat of an academy, and contains manufactories of paper bags, malt, and lumber. A bridge across the Mohawk connects it with the village of Palatine Bridge. Population 1890, 2,089. In the field of historical literature Canada has produced several notable names, chief among which are those of Judge Haliburton, better known under his humorous sobriquet of "Sam Slick," whose Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia is a standard work; James Hannay, whose History of Acadia has taken a leading place, and Goldwin Smith, who, with many works, both historical and political, has made himself the leading prose writer of Canada. Dr. William Kingsford is now writing at considerable length a History of Canada, which is a painstaking and detailed narrative, though lacking in the attractive qualities of literary style. | Eight volumes of the work have appeared, which bring the annals down to the War of 1821. Another work, useful for consultation, and of which a new edition has recently been published, is Macmullen's History of Canada. It is written from the Liberal standpoint. Dent's Canadian Rebellion; the same writer's Last Forty Years; Goldwin Smith's Canada and the Canadian Question; Parkin's The Great Dominion; Grant's Picturesque Canada; and Adam's The Canadian Northwest, are worthy additions to historic literature. Biography has also made additions of more or less merit to native letters, the more notable works dealing with political memoirs and reminiscences. Science has also enlisted its writers, as have education, law and religion. The future of Canadian literature is hard to predict. It depends on the future history of the Dominion itself. The weakness of its past has come from its sense of dependence, its lack of self-reliance, its want of centralization. With a firmly united, independent government there would come at once an outburst of literary activity, for which the literature of the past has CANAIGRE, a species of dock (Rumex hymenosepalus) indigenous to western Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Its root is used in tanning. These roots vary in weight from a few ounces to a pound. In its habit of growth it resembles the sweet potato. of this country during the first half of the century. The opening up of the railway period checked further construction, especially in new territory, and occasioned the abandonment of a considerable mileage of canals, much of which was badly located and of limited capacity; still, many works were carried to completion, some new enterprises were entered upon, and the capacity of old canals increased, and the completion of some of the old systems was strongly urged as late as 20 years ago. It is probable that had railway development been deferred 20 years, canals would have so far determined industries and localized commercial routes, that they would have persisted better and been enlarged with the growing necessities of commerce, as has actually occurred with the earlier canals, and ere this their unification in a general system, with a standard type of prism and lock, would have been under way. Such has been the history of the canal system of France, the unification of which was undertaken by the government in 1876, and although by no means completed, the growth of traffic and the development of industries has fully justified the large expenditures made. At the present time there are in process of improvement and development some eight thousand miles of internal water routes, about one third the railway mileage, on an area equivalent to the combined areas of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, and less adapted to water routes. However, the old type of canal may be said to have become obsolete within the last 20 years, and the present very active thought in regard to water transportation is along quite different lines, though hardly yet formulated in any generally accepted conclusions. The end will doubtless be better than to have developed by mere departures from old precedents in the improvement of canal systems, originally conceived under very different economic condi * Copyright, 1897, by The Werner Company. tions that located the original canal will largely determine its modern successor, and the same resources in mineral and vegetable products will govern its usefulness. It will be well, therefore, to review briefly canal development in this country. tions, and when engineering resources were rela- | stroyed by a flood a few years since, but was tively meager. The same topographical condi- considered sufficiently valuable to be rebuilt. The James River and Kanawha canal extended to Buchanan, and plans for its extension across the mountains were matured in 1877. The canal has since been abandoned. The canal up the valley of the Susquehanna was designed to connect with the New York system and give a route from Chesapeake Bay to the northern lakes. This connection was never made, although the final link was under way in 1870. This development was largely confined to the territory lying between the seaboard and the Great Lakes and upper Ohio River, and again to the region lying between the lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. New York's topographical situation favored canal location, and she led the way, with canals reaching from tidewater of the Hudson to Lake Erie at Buffalo, Lake Ontario at Oswego, and Lake Champlain at Whitehall, and, by the Richelieu River, the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal. The lakes of the central part of the state were brought into the system, and laterals were built into the Black River valley north from Rome; into the Susquehanna valley via the Chenango canal from Utica to Binghamton and by the Chemung canal from Seneca Lake to Elmira; and into the Ohio valley by the Genesee canal from Rochester to the Allegheny River at Olean. Extensions were going on as late as 1870 to unite the system with that of Pennsylvania. With the exception of the Delaware and Hudson canal, the canal system was built and operated by the state. In its maximum extension, including the central lakes and interior rivers, it aggregated 1, 188 miles. The non-paying laterals were abandoned in the 70's, and the system now aggregates 851 miles. Between 1838 and 1862 enlargement of the main canals took place, effecting 567 miles, and by popular vote in November, 1895, it was determined to expend nine million dollars in further enlargement. system has been free since 1882. The Following New York's example, the territory to the south, including the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, entered actively upon canal construction. Deep bays and tidal arms, as Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay and New York Bay, invited canals of a semimaritime type, as the Delaware and Raritan, the Chesapeake and Delaware and the Albemarle and Chesapeake, and the enlargement of these for strategic purposes and the coasting trade is advocated. The mineral resources carried canals up the valleys far into the recesses of the mountains. Three lines were intended to reach the Ohio, and Pennsylvania actually constructed a line from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. by a combination of railway, canal and portage railway, by which boats were carried 50 miles, in sections, across the Alleghany Mountains from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown. This line gave rise to the Pennsylvania Railway Company, which still operates a part of the original canal system. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal extended up the valley of the Potomac to Cumberland, and a project was matured for an extension to the Ohio at Pittsburg as late as 1876. This canal was nearly de The Morris canal extended from Jersey City across northern New Jersey to Phillipsburg. It was remarkable in the. use of inclines for overcoming many high lifts across a precipitous country. The Lehigh navigation made use of beartrap dams, which were lowered in floods, and this idea was carried to France, and gave rise to very extended river improvements in that country and Germany. Various modifications and adaptations were made, and these have been re-imported within the last 20 years. The principles developed by the engineers who projected the Morris canal and the Lehigh navigation are destined to extended future application. Throughout the territory, 1,586 miles of canal were developed, 899 miles of which are still in actual service. Some of the lines were abandoned without proper justification. In the territory lying between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, lines were carried from Lake Erie, at Erie, Pennsylvania, and at Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio, reaching the Ohio at Beaver, Pennsylvania, Marietta, Portsmouth and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Evansville, Indiana. Five main lines crossed the territory, and these had many laterals. Two of these, the Pennsylvania and Erie and the Wabash and Erie, have been abandoned. All these canals belonged to the early type of small canals. Nearly all the routes have been reexamined within the last twenty years for canals of larger capacity, and a shipcanal is now being actively promoted through the territory between Cleveland and Erie and south to the Ohio River, so the abandonment of canals in this region was evidently a mistake. gregate mileage of the various canal systems was 1,624 miles, 708.5 of which are still in service. The ag In the territory lying between Lake Michigan and the upper Mississippi River, Illinois projected a route by the Illinois River and built a canal from Chicago to La Salle, and deepened the summit-level so as to feed the same from Lake Michigan, in 1866-71. A proposed branch from Hennepin to Rock Island is now being built by the general government. The Kankakee valley branch, designed to reach Lake Erie by the Wabash and Erie route, has been abandoned. Wisconsin projected the Fox-Wisconsin route and carried it out as far as Portage. The works are now being maintained by the general government. The Illinois and Wisconsin canals have a length of 369.4 miles in operation and under way, and 21 miles have been abandoned, Kentucky undertook many important works in CANAL the way of canalizing rivers, as the Kentucky and Green rivers, but constructed no canals of the ordinary type. These are in active service, and in recent years there has been a notable increase in the mileage of canalized rivers in the Ohio basin. At the present writing there are 646 miles of rivers improved by locks and dams, many of the movable type. Only 94 miles have been abandoned, and these were very inadequately carried out. The Illinois River has been canalized for 227 miles, and a few minor works give 10.6 miles more in the upper Mississippi basin. New England executed 133 miles of work, of which 13.5 miles are in use. In the South, 168.3 miles were developed, of which 75 were abandoned, mostly of a small class. New works are being carried out in several localities in the way of canalizing rivers and overcoming abrupt The Pacific Coast has but two short canals, overcoming rapids, one on the Willamette and one at the cascades of the Columbia. ascents. Canada has had an active canal policy from an early day. Among those first constructed were the ordnance canals for military purposes. They consisted of three short canals, around rapids of the Ottawa River, by which Ottawa is reached, and thence the Rideau canal, 1264 miles to Kingston. The Trent canal was intended to extend the system to Georgian Bay, and was partially opened up, and this is now being completed. The Rideau-Trent system aggregates 395 miles. What are known as the St. Lawrence canals consist of seven detached canals of an aggregate length of 72.8 miles, overcoming the rapids of the St. Lawrence and the ascent from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie through the Welland canal. The enlargement of this system has been under way since 1872, with many delays, and its completion is expected in 1898. The locks are 270 feet long and 45 feet wide, with 14 feet of water on the miter-sills. A ship-canal 1% miles long has also been constructed around St. Mary's Falls at the outlet to Lake Superior, and opposite the one constructed by the United States. The Chambly canal and the St. Ours lock unite Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence through the Richelieu River. The entire mileage of Canadian canals is 450.5, excluding the 28 miles of the abandoned improvement of Grand River. Several short canals have been constructed for the purpose of overcoming rapids and falls in rivers, as the Louisville and Portland on the Ohio, the Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee, the Des Moines on the upper Mississippi and the one at the cascades of the Columbia. These are hardly canals in the old sense, but in conjunction with the improvement and canalization of rivers, they illustrate the tendency of modern waterway development, both in this country and abroad. aggregate length of these special canals is small, and is no index of their importance, and each would call for separate mention in any complete discussion. In the foregoing summaries, no canal is included that merely constitutes an artificial strait 679 without locks, designed to shorten the passage between two navigable waters. A complete summary, so far as data are obtainable, of all the canals constructed in the United States and Canada, including canalized rivers and land-locked waters made part of canal systems, gives 6,548 miles. Of these 2,277.6 miles have been abandoned, while those in actual service aggregate 4,270.4 miles. Considered in the light of what now is actually being done, the abandonment. of at least 1,000 miles was a mistake, and they are likely to be replaced by more adequate works in the future. The remainder probably had no sufficient reason for their construction. The change in conditions brought about by modern railway facilities accounts for the decadence of the early type of canal and defines the line of future development. In the segregation of commerce between the two agencies, it is found that coarse freights of low value lying at the basis of industrial operations naturally seek the water routes, and also commodities to be moved in bulk over long distances, while the railway better satisfies the requirements of the detailed and distributive traffic and high-grade freight. Thus it is found on the Western rivers that the old-style steamboat is being replaced by barges moved in fleets over long distances. On the lakes, the average movement by water is from five to eight times that of the railways operating in the same territory. The reason is therefore clear why the old type of canal persists in mineral regions, and where forming part of long-distance water routes, and has fallen into disuse in other situations. Following further this line of reasoning, it is apparent that future development will be largely in the direction of uniting natural waters and the canalization of rivers, so as to form connected systems by which exchanges may be effected between remote sections, and that the capacity of these natural waters and their possibilities of development will determine the scale of the undertakings. There are, however, certain limiting conditions, based on the unit cargo, which can be moved in competition with the railway. This was considered a generation ago by John G. Stevens and John B. Jervis, veteran authorities in such matters, and placed at 600 to 800 tons, or the maximum capacity of the best-equipped freight train. This limit to-day should not be placed at less than 1,000 tons of cargo, and a navigation suited to boats of this capacity over long routes may be relied upon to maintain its vitality in railway competition, and develop resources not otherwise practicable. Future canals will then be of the ship or barge canal type, suited to large vessels or to fleet movement. The engineering resources of the waterway engineer have developed so radically in the last 20 years that the principles of location have materially changed. Larger prisms are demanded, not only for larger hulls, but for their free and rapid movement. These are best provided by canalizing the watercourses proper, by straight |