silver quarries of the sea a harvest of thirty-four million dollars, and of that amount, fifteen million dollars comes from the maritime provinces.[7] Conservationists have sung their song in vain if the world does not know that the fisheries of the United States have been ruthlessly depleted, but here is a land the area of England whose fisheries have increased in value one hundred per cent. in ten years. It is not, however, as the great resource of fisheries that the maritime provinces must play their part in Canada's destiny. It is as the nursery of seamen for a marine power. No southern nation, with the exception of Carthage, has ever dominated the sea; partly for the simple reason that the best fisheries are always located in temperate zones, where the glacial silt of the icebergs feeds the finny hordes with minute infusoria; and the fisherman's smack—the dory that rocks to the waves like a cockleshell, with meal of pork and beans cooking above a chip fire on stones in the bottom of the boat, and rough grimed fellows singing chanties to the rhythm of the sea—the fisherman's smack is the nursery of the world's proudest merchant marines and most powerful navies. Japan knows this, and encourages her fishermen by bounties and passage money to spread all over the world, and Japanese to-day operate practically all the fisheries of the Pacific. England knows this and in the North Sea and off Newfoundland protects her fishermen and draws from their ranks her seamen.

Japan dominates seventy-two per cent. of the commerce of the Pacific, not through chance, but through her merchant marine built up from rough grimed fellows who quarry the silver mines of the sea. England dominates the Seven Seas of the world, not through her superiority man to man against other races, but through her merchant marine, carrying the commerce of the world, built up from simple fisher folk hauling in the net or paying out the line through icy salty spray above tempestuous seas. No power yet dominates the seas of the New World. The foreign commerce of the New World up to the time of the great war was carried by British, German and Japanese ships. Canada has the steel, the coal, the timber, the nursery for seamen. Will she become a marine power in the New World? It is one of her dreams. It is also one of England's dreams. No country subsidizes her merchant liners more heavily than Canada[8]—in striking contrast with the parsimonious policy of the United States. It is Canada's policy of ship subsidies that has established regular merchant liners—all liable to service as Admiralty ships—to Australia, to China, to Japan and to every harbor on the Atlantic.

Whether heavy subsidies to large liners will effect as much for a merchant marine for Canada as numerous small subsidies to small lines remains to be seen. The development of seamen from her fisheries is one of the dreams she must work out in her destiny, and that leads one to the one great disadvantage under which Canada rests as a marine power. She lacks winter harbors on the Atlantic accessible to her great western domain, whence comes the bulk of her commerce for export. True, the maritime provinces afford those harbors—Saint John and Halifax. A dozen other points, if need were, could be utilized in the maritime provinces as winter harbors; but take a look at the map! The maritime provinces are the longest possible spiral distance from the rest of Canada. They necessitate a rail haul of from two to three thousand miles from the west. What gives Galveston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Buffalo preeminence as harbors? Their nearness to the centers of commerce—their position far inland of the continent, cutting rail haul by half and quarter from the plains. Montreal has this advantage of being far inland; but from November to May Montreal is closed; and Canadian commerce must come out by way of American lines, or pay the long haul down to the maritime provinces. There can be no doubt that this disadvantage is one of the factors forcing the West to find outlet by Hudson Bay—where harbors are also closed by the ice but are only four hundred miles from the wheat plains. There can also be no doubt that the opening of Panama will draw much western commerce to Europe by way of the Pacific.

III

When one comes to consider Quebec under its new boundaries, one is contemplating an empire three times larger than Germany, supporting a population not so large as Berlin.[9] It is the seat of the old French Empire, the land of the idealists who came to propagate the Faith and succeeded in exploring three-quarters of the continent, with canoes pointed ever up-stream in quest of beaver. All the characteristics of the Old Empire are in Quebec to-day. Quebec is French to the core, not in loyalty to republican France, but in loyalty to the religious ideals which the founders brought to the banks of the St. Lawrence three centuries ago. Church spire, convent walls, religious foundations occupy the most prominent site in every city and town and hamlet of Quebec. From Tadousac to Montreal, from Labrador to Maine or New Hampshire, you can follow the thread of every river in Quebec by the glitter of the church spires round which nestle the hamlets. No matter how poor the hamlet, no matter how remote the hills which slope wooded down to some blue lake, there stand the village church with its cross on the spire, the whitewashed house of the curé, the whitewashed square dormer-windowed school.

Outside Quebec City and Montreal, Quebec is the most reposeful region in all America. What matter wars and rumors of wars to these habitants living under guidance of the curé, as their ancestors lived two hundred years ago? They pay their tithes. They attend mass. At birth, marriage and death—the curé is their guide and friend. He teaches them in their schools. He advises them in their family affairs. He counsels them in their business. At times he even dictates their politics; but when you remember that French is the language spoken, that primary education is of the slimmest, though all doors are open for a promising pupil to advance, you wonder whether constant tutelage of a benevolent church may not be a good thing in a chaotic, confused and restless age. The habitant lives on his little long narrow strip of a farm running back from the river front. He fishes a little. He works on the river and in the lumber camps of the Back Country. He raises a little tobacco, hay, a pig, a cow, a little horse and a family of from ten to twenty. When the daughters marry—as they are encouraged to do at the earliest possible age—the farm is subdivided among the sons; and when it will subdivide no longer, there is a migration to the Back Country, or to a French settlement in the Northwest, where another curé will shepherd the flock; and the habitant, blessed at his birth and blessed at his marriage, is usually blessed at his death at the ripe age of ninety or a hundred. It is a simple and on the whole a very happy, if not progressive, life. Some years ago, when hard times prevailed in Canada and the manufacturing cities of New England offered what seemed big wages to habitants, who considered themselves rich on one hundred dollars a year—a great migration took place across the border; but it was not a happy move for these simple children of the soil. They missed the shepherding of their beloved curé, and the movement has almost stopped. Also you find Jean Ba'tiste in the redwoods of California as lumber-jack, or plying a canoe on MacKenzie River. The best fur-traders of the North to-day are half-breeds with a strain of French Canadian blood.

If you take a look at the map of Quebec under its new boundaries up into Labrador—it seems absurd to call a region three times the area of Germany "a province"—you will see that only the fringe of the river fronts has been peopled. This is owing to the old system of parceling out the land in mile strips back