lippine Islands.

[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (EXTERIOR)]

[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (INTERIOR)]

CHAPTER XXI

CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND

A very large part of Canada is so far north that the ordinary
food-stuffs cannot be grown there; the river-valleys of British Columbia
and the basin of the Saskatchewan excepted, there are but few marks of
human industry beyond the fiftieth parallel. The general conditions of
topography resemble those of the United States--a central plain between
the high Rocky Mountain ranges in the west and the lower Laurentian
ranges in the east.

Canada is an agricultural country, and because of the great skill with
which its resources have been made commercially available, it is the
most important colony of Great Britain. The basin of the Great Lakes and
the St. Lawrence River is the most populous part of the country. This
region is highly cultivated and produces dairy products, beef, and the
ordinary farm-crops.

From Lake Winnipeg westward, nearly to the Rocky Mountains, the land is
a succession of prairies admirably suited to wheat-growing.[56] The
wheat is a hard, spring variety, and the average yield per acre is about
one-fourth greater than the average yield in the United States.

The area of forestry includes the larger remaining part of the great
pine belt, together with a very heavy reserve of merchantable
oak-timber. The part of the forest area in Canada aggregates one and
one-quarter million square miles, and yields an annual product of about
eighty million dollars; about one-third of the lumber is exported.

The northerly region of Canada produces furs and pelts. As long ago as
1670, Charles II. granted to Prince Rupert and a stock company the lands
comprising a very large part of Canada around Hudson Bay, and secured to
them the sole right to trap the fur-bearing animals of the region. In
time the company, known as the Hudson Bay Company, transferred all its
lands to Canada, and out of the domain thus annexed various provinces
and unorganized districts have been created.

The company now exists as a corporation for the merchandise of furs. For
the greater part, Indians are employed as hunters and trappers, and the
pelts are collected at the various trading-posts, known as "houses" and
"factories," to be sent to the head-quarters of the company near
Winnipeg. Nearly every Arctic animal furnishes a merchantable pelt. The
cheaper skins are made into gar