Then, quite distinct from all these Canadian government activities, is
the British consular service, maintained by the Imperial government
alone, but available for every British subject. And round everything,
afloat and ashore, supporting, protecting, guaranteeing all, stands the
oldest, most glorious, and still the best of all the navies in {177}
the world--the Royal Navy of the motherland.

This is only a glance at the conditions of the present; while each
Imperial and Canadian service, department, branch, and sub-division has
a long, romantic, and most important history of its own. The
lighthouse service alone could supply hero-tales enough to fill a book.
The weather service is full of absorbing interest. And, what with
wireless telegraphy, submarine bells, direction indicators,
microthermometers as detectors of ice, and many other new appliances,
the whole practice of navigation is becoming an equally interesting
subject for a book filled with the 'fairy tales of science.' Even
hydrography--that is, the surveying and mapping (or 'charting') of the
water--has an appealing interest, to say nothing of its long and varied
history. Jacques Cartier, though he made no charts, may be truly
called the first Canadian hydrographer; for his sailing directions are
admirably clear and correct. In the next century we find Champlain
noting the peculiarities of the Laurentian waters to good effect; while
in the next again, the eighteenth, we come upon the famous Captain
Cook, one of the greatest hydrographers of all time. Cook was {178} at
Quebec with Wolfe, and afterwards spent several years in making a
wonderfully accurate survey of the St Lawrence and Gulf. His pupil,
Vancouver, after whom both a city and an island have been named, did
his work on the Pacific coast equally well. The principal hydrographer
of the nineteenth century was Admiral Bayfield, who extended the survey
over the Great Lakes, besides re-surveying all the older navigational
waters with such perfect skill that wherever nature has not made any
change his work stands to-day, reliable as ever. And it should be
noted that all the successful official surveys, up to the present
century, were made by naval officers--another little known and less
remembered service done for Canada by the British guardians of the sea.

{179}

CHAPTER XI

NAVIES

This is not the place to discuss the naval side of craft and waterways in
Canada. That requires a boo