Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/462

456 the Rocky Mountains, she has provided for the country's second transcontinental a route, farther north, remarkable for its exceptionally low gradients, and including the easiest pass to be found in the whole length of the Rockies.

The natural waterways of the Dominion have been developed and improved systematically for many years past, until this great work has come to be regarded as a fixed national policy, which no government, even though it were so inclined, would have the hardihood to abandon. Up to the present time Canada has spent upon her canals over one hundred and seven millions of dollars, and is likely to expend many

times that amount in the years to come. The history of Canadian canals goes back even to the French régime, when small canals and locks were built to overcome the Lachine and other rapids on the St. Lawrence. These were but canals in miniature—ditches, 6 or 7 feet wide by perhaps 2 2 feet deep, designed to meet the needs of the fur traders' canoes. A similar canal was constructed by the Northwest Fur Company, at Sault Ste. Marie, in the eighteenth century—the earliest progenitor of the gigantic twin canals, American and Canadian, of the present day, through which passes annually a much greater tonnage than that of the Suez canal. The 2-foot Lachine canal of two hundred years ago has grown to a depth of 18 feet on the sill, 45 feet wide and 270 feet long, in each of five locks, the entire length of the canal with the approaches being eight and a half miles.

From the earliest history of the country the east and west trend of transportation has been marked. The first railways of the country were built to connect a handful of small towns, villages and settlements,