will carry little traffic but
that received at its terminals.

The western terminal connecting with the wheat railroads is the Pas, an
old, very old fur post of the French wood-runner days, on the
Saskatchewan west of Lake Winnipeg. Here the railroad touches the
Canada Northern and will doubtless later connect with the Canadian
Pacific Railroad and Grand Trunk. To any one who knows the region well
it seems almost a pity that the western terminus could not have been
Grand Rapids just northwest of Lake Winnipeg. Here is a fine wooded
high park country with the unlimited water power of nine miles of a
continental river walled into a canyon half a mile wide. But the
country west of Lake Winnipeg is as yet untouched by a railroad, though
one can hardly conceive of a city not some day springing up at this the
head of Manitoba navigation. Eastward from the Pas to Hudson Bay it is
four hundred miles plus. Construction presents no great difficulties
except bridging, and that can hardly be compared to the difficulties of
canyons in the Rockies and drouth in the desert.

For years there was sharp contest whether the terminus on the Bay
should be Nelson or Churchill. Churchill is one of the best harbors in
the world, land locked, rock protected and fathomless; and Nelson is
probably one of the worst--shallow, with sand bars caused by the
confluence of the two great rivers emptying here, exposed to open sea.
But the balance of favor on the Bay is how long can navigation be kept
open. Navigation is open a month earlier and a month later at Nelson
than at Churchill; so the Dominion dredges have gone to work to make
Nelson a fit harbor.

How long is navigation open on the Bay? The Dominion government has
sent three expeditions to ascertain this, though data might have been
obtained from the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company covering the
record of over two hundred years. Both the Archives and the official
expeditions record the same--navigation opens between the middle of May
and the first of June, and closes about the end of October. Seasons
have been known when navigation remained open till New Year's, but this
was unusual. So as far as the opening and closing of navigation is
considered, the Hudson Bay route is not far different from the Great
Lakes.

Hudson Bay itself is in area about the size of the Mediterranean.
Because it is so far north the impression prevails that it is afloat
with ice. This is a fals