Montreal and Quebec. The first vessel to
cross the Atlantic wholly under steam, the Royal William, was built
in Quebec and sailed from that port in 1833. Following and rivaling
American enterprise, side-wheelers, marvels of speed and luxury for
the day, were put on the lakes in the thirties. Canals were built, the
Lachine in 1821-25, the Welland around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the
Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the
stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in
1817. On land, road making made slower progress. The blazed trail gave
way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage.
Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which
for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States
to the south. But at best neither roads nor vehicles were fitted for
carrying large loads from inland farms to waterside markets.

Money and banks were as necessary to develop intercourse as roads and
canals. Until after the War of 1812, when army gold and army bills ran
freely, money was rare and barter served pioneer needs. For many years
after the war a jumble of English sovereigns and shillings, of Spanish
dollars, French crowns, and American silver, made up the currency in
use, circulating sometimes by weight and sometimes by tale, at rates
that were constantly shifting. The position of the colonies as a link
between Great Britain and the United States, was curiously illustrated
in the currency system. The motley jumble of coins in use were rated in
Halifax currency, a mere money of account or bookkeeping standard, with
no actual coins to correspond, adapted to both English and United States
currency systems. The unit was the pound, divided into shillings and
pence as in England, but the pound was made equal to four dollars in
American money; it took 1 pound 4s. 4d. in Halifax currency to make
1 pound sterling. Still more curious was the influence of American
banking. Montreal merchants in 1808 took up the ideas of Alexander
Hamilton and after several vain attempts founded the Bank of Montreal
in 1817, with those features of government charter, branch banks, and
restrictions as to the proportion of debts to capital and the holding
of real property which had marked Hamilton's plan. But while Canadian
banks, one after another, were founded on the same model and throughout
adhered to an asset-secured currency basis,