est of summer mornings, that our steamer, belonging to the regular
daily line to Toronto, steamed slowly out from the harbor of Oswego. So
we were at last on the "beautiful water," for that is the meaning of
Ontario in the Indian tongue. Here, two hundred years before us, the
war-canoes of De Champlain and his Huron allies had spurned the foaming
tide. Here, a hundred years later the batteaux of that great soldier,
Montcalm, had swept round the bluff to win the fortress on its height,
then in English hands. Historic memories haunted it. The very waves
sparkling in the morning sunshine whispered of romantic tales.

Seated at the stern of the boat we looked back upon the fading city.
Hugh Warren was smoking, and his slow-moving blue eyes were fixed
dreamily upon the shore. He did not seem to be gazing at anything, and
yet we knew he saw more than any of us.

"A centime for your thoughts, Hugh!" cried Vincent, rising and
stretching his limbs.

"I was thinking," said the Historian, "of that Frenchman, Montcalm, who
one summer day came down on the English at Oswego unawares with his
gunboats and Indians and gendarmes. Of the twenty-five thousand people
in yonder city I don't suppose there are a dozen who know what his plans
were. They were grand ones. In no country on the face of the globe has
nature traced outlines of internal navigation on so grand a scale as
upon our American continent. Entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence we
are carried by that river through the Great Lakes to the head of Lake
Superior, a distance of more than two thousand miles. On the south we
find the Mississippi pouring its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, within
a few degrees of the tropics after a course of three thousand miles.
'The Great Water,' as its name signifies, and its numerous branches
drain the surface of about one million one hundred thousand square
miles, or an area twenty times greater than England and Wales. The
tributaries of the Mississippi equal the largest rivers of Europe. The
course of the Missouri is probably not less than twenty-five hundred
miles. The Ohio winds above a thousand miles through fertile countries.
The tributaries of _these_ tributaries are great rivers. The Wabash, a
feeder of the Ohio, has a course of above five hundred miles, four
hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever
completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on
the Illinois River, it will be possible