British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government

ion which multiplied all distances in Canada at least four-fold. It was perhaps this sense of distance, and difficulty of locomotion, which first impressed the settler and the visitor. To begin with, the colony was, for practical purposes, more than a month's distance from the centre of government. Steam was gradually making its way, and the record passage by sailing ship, from Quebec to Portsmouth, had occupied only eighteen days and a half,[1] but sails were still the ordinary means of propulsion, and the average length of voyage of 237 vessels arriving at Quebec in 1840 was well over forty days.[2] To the immigrant, however, the voyage across the Atlantic was the least of his troubles; for the internal communications of Canada left much to be desired. The assistance {10} of railway transportation might be entirely ignored,--as late as 1847 only twenty-two miles of railway lines had been laid and worked.[3] There was, of course, during the open season, the wonderful passage by river and lake into the heart