f intelligence show in regard to our
river of which all Americans should be proud.

"Ours is the Greater Rhine. The German Rhine is less than a thousand
miles long; our Rhine is nearly twenty-five hundred miles long: the
German Rhine can at almost any point be easily spanned with bridges;
our Rhine defies bridges, except in its narrowest boundaries. The
great inland seas of Superior, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Erie
require a width of miles for their pathway to the ocean. The Rhine
falls cannot be compared with Niagara, nor the scattered islands of
the old river with the Lake of a Thousand Islands of the new. Quebec
is as beautiful as Coblentz, and Montreal is in its situation one of
the loveliest cities of the world.

"The tributaries of the old Rhine are small; those of the new are
almost as large as the old Rhine itself,--the gloomy Saguenay, and the
sparkling Ottawa.

"Think of its lakes! Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, contains
only 6,330 square miles. Lake Superior has 32,000 square miles, and
Michigan 22,000 square miles.

"You will soon have a view of the mountain scenery of the lower St.
Lawrence. The pine-covered walls along which trail the clouds of the
sky are almost continuous to Montreal."

"But why," asked Charlie Leland, "is the German Rhine so famous, and
ours so little celebrated?"

"The German Rhine gathers around it the history of two thousand years;
ours, two hundred years. What will our Rhine be two thousand years
from to-day?"

He added:--

"I look upon New England as one of the best products of civilization
thus far. But there is rising a new New England in the West, a vast
empire in the States of the Northwest and in Canada, to which New
England is as a province,--an empire that in one hundred years will
lead the thought, the invention, and the statesmanship of the world.
Every prairie schooner that goes that way is like a sail of the
'Mayflower.'

"In yonder steerage are a thousand emigrants. The easy-going,
purse-proud cabin passengers do not know it; they do not visit them or
give much thought to them: but there are the men and women whose
children will one day sway the empire that will wear the crown of the
world.

"The castles are fading from view on the hills of the old Rhine; towns
and cities are leaping into life on the new. The procession of cities,
like a triumphal march, will go on, on, on. The Canadian Empire will
probably one day lock hands with the imperia