le are fond of tracing ancestry back to feudal
barons of the Middle Ages. What feudal baron of the Middle Ages, or
Lord of the Outer Marches, was heir to such heritage as Canada may
claim? Think of it! Combine all the feudatory domains of the Rhine
and the Danube, you have not so vast an estate as a single western
province. Or gather up all the estates of England's midland counties
and eastern shires and borderlands, you have not enough land to fill
one of Canada's inland seas,--Lake Superior.

If there were a population in eastern Canada equal to France,--and
Quebec alone would support a population equal to France,--and in
Manitoba equal to the British Isles, and in Saskatchewan equal to
France, and in Alberta equal to Germany, and in British Columbia equal
to Germany,--ignoring Yukon, Mackenzie River, Keewatin, and Labrador,
taking only those parts of Canada where climate has been tested and
lands surveyed,--Canada would support two hundred million people.

{ix} The figures are staggering, but they are not half so improbable as
the actual facts of what has taken place in the United States.
America's population was acquired against hard odds. There were no
railroads when the movement to America began. The only ocean goers
were sailboats of slow progress and great discomfort. In Europe was
profound ignorance regarding America; to-day all is changed. Canada
begins where the United States left off. The whole world is gridironed
with railroads. Fast Atlantic liners offer greater comfort to the
emigrant than he has known at home. Ignorance of America has given
place to almost romantic glamour. Just when the free lands of the
United States are exhausted and the government is putting up bars to
keep out the immigrant, Canada is in a position to open her doors wide.
Less than a fortieth of the entire West is inhabited. Of the Great
Clay Belt of North Ontario only a patch on the southern edge is
populated. The same may be said of the Great Forest Belt of Quebec.
These facts are the magnet that will attract the immigrant to Canada.
The United States wants no more immigrants.

And the movement to Canada has begun. To her shores are thronging the
hosts of the Old World's dispossessed, in multitudes greater than any
army that ever marched to conquest under Napoleon. When the history of
America comes to be written in a hundred years, it will not be the
record of a slaughter field with contending nations battling fo