YUKON, formed into a Provisional District in 1895, comprises the upper basin of the Yukon River, which is formed by the junction of the Pelly and the Lewes Rivers. This region, the climate of which is intensely rigorous in winter, has proved to be an extensive and valuable gold-field. A large town has sprung up at Dawson (9), in the Klondyke District, and the whole region, hitherto almost unknown, is being rapidly opened up by exploring parties in search of new gold-fields. Klondyke is usually reached via the American port of Dyea and the White Pass Railway, a distance from Victoria of about 1,600 miles.

MACKENZIE includes the lower basin of the Mackenzie River, which contains the Great Bear and the Great Slave Lakes. There are several forts or stations along the river, engaged in the trapping and hunting of wild animals, which furnish the skins collected and exported by the Hudson Bay Company.

The NORTH-EAST TERRITORY embraces the country bordering on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, and since 1895 has formed the Provisional District of Ungava.

BRITISH COLUMBIA, the westernmost Province of the Dominion, is also the largest and yet the least populous. Its area, including Vancouver, Queen Charlotte, and other islands along the coast, is about 370,000 square miles, or 6 times that of England and Wales, but the population does not exceed 190,000, including a number of Indians and Chinese.

British Columbia is, in many respects, the most remarkable portion of the "country of magnificent distances," as Canada might well be called. This Province, which is 760 miles in length and about 500 miles in breadth, is in itself larger than any other organized division of the Confederation, and has an area exceeding that of England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Holiand, and Belgium, taken together, by about 8,000 square miles. Between the Rocky Mountains and the meridian of 120° W. long., which divide it on the east from Alberta and Athabasca respectively, and the Pacific Ocean on the west, the United States frontier (49° N. lat.) on the south, and the 60th parallel on the north, all the great natural features of the other Provinces are reproduced on a magnified scale. This "Sea of Mountains has a greater variety of climate than all the other Provinces together, for the upper slopes of the Rockies are as cold as Labrador, while on the southern coast, oranges and grapes ripen in the open air. Its wonderful coastline, its unrivalled fisheries, its magnificent forests, its incalculable wealth in those minerals which are the most valued and the most necessary to man, and its splendid geographical position on the Pacific Ocean-almost the counterpart of that of Great Britain on the Atlantic-all indicate a great future for the "England of the Pacific."

The natural features of British Columbia are extremely diversified. A deeply. indented coastline fringed with hundreds of islands, lofty mountains, numerous rivers and lakes, long, narrow, well grassed valleys, with dense forests of gigantic pines, com bine to make this Province the most picturesque portion of the continent. "New wonders," says Lord Lansdowne, "are revealed at every turn of the road. Snow. capped pinnacles of vast height and fantastic shape, great glaciers, precipitous cliffs, raging torrents, and tranquil lakes, while there rise on all sides trees, the like of which I had dreamt of, but never seen." Of the British Columbian coasts, the Earl of Dufferin says, "Such a spectacle as this coastline presents is not to be paralleled anywhere by any area in the world. Day after day for a whole week, in a vessel of nearly 2,000 tons, we threaded an interminable labyrinth of watery lanes and reaches that wound end lessly in front of a network of islands, promontories, and peninsulas, for thousands of miles, unruffled by the slightest swell from the adjoining ocean, and presenting at every turn an ever-shifting combination of rock, verdure, forest, glacier, and snow-capped mountains of unrivalled grandeur and beauty. When it is remembered that this wonderful system of navigation (ie., the channels between Vancouver Island and the mainland), equally well adapted to the largest line-of-battle ship and the frailest canoe, fringes the entire sea-board of the Province, and communicates at points, sometimes more than a hundred miles from the coast, with a multitude of valleys stretching eastwards into the interior,

while at the same time it is furnished with innumerable harbours on either hand, one is lost in admiration of the facilities for intercommunication which are thus provided for the future inhabitants of this wonderful region."

Physically, British Columbia may be divided into four districts: (1) the islands, (2) the mountains along the coast of the mainland, (3) the high interior plateau, and (4) the lofty mountain ranges that rise along the eastern border.

The vast range of the Rocky Mountains forms the eastern boundary of British Columbia from the International Boundary (49° N. lat.) to the Smoky River Pass (54° N. lat.), south of which lies Robson's Peak, 13,700 feet high; from thence, north to the 60th parallel of N. lat., the boundary is formed by the 120th meridian of W. longitude, and thus an extensive territory to the east of the Rockies, comprising the valleys of the Upper Peace and the Liard Rivers, are included in the Province. Between the main range of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast are a number of minor ranges, such as the Purcell and the Selkirk Ranges, within the " 'great bend" of the Columbia River; the Gold Range, between the Columbia River and the Thompson River and Shushwap Lake; the Cariboo Mountains, in the "great bend" of the Fraser River; with the Peak and other mountains in the north, and the Coast Range along the coast. The interior plateau of British Co. lumbia, between the Gold Range and the Coast or Cascade Range, has an average width of 100 miles and an elevation of 3,500 feet. It is traversed by the Fraser and its tributaries, which, with the Upper Columbia and its affluents, the Kootenay and the Okanagan, are the chief rivers of the Province. The numerous ridges of the Coast Range extend inland from the coast for about 100 miles. They are extremely rugged and, as they receive on their western slopes abundant moisture from the sea, they have a rich vegetation. The main mass of Vancouver Island and of the Queen Charlotte Islands to the north-west, may be regarded as another partially submerged range, rising in Mount Arrowsmith, in Vancouver Island, to a height of 6,000 feet, and continued southward in the Olympian Mountains in the United States and northward in the islands and peninsular portion of Alaska.

Of the resources of British Columbia it may be said that its wealth of timber has not been appreciably touched. The forests are magnificent, and more than half the Province is covered with the Douglas or Oregon pine (which frequently grows to a height of over 300 feet, with a diameter of 8 or 9 feet), the white and red cedar, hemlock, maple, spruce, birch, and other valuable trees. 1 In the rich valley of the Lower Fraser or New Westminster district, and on the south and east coasts of Vancouver Island, the soil is exceedingly fertile, and the climate is favourable to agriculture and fruit-growing. In the interior, also, the soil is, over very considerable areas (far exceeding in the aggregate the arable areas of the coast region), as fertile as the best on the coast, but the climate is so dry in summer that irrigation is necessary, except in a few favoured localities. As regards pasture, the interior as a whole is probably unequalled for horse and cattle ranches. About 5,000 or 6,000 square miles of the Peace River district of British Columbia is also of considerable agricultural value. The fisheries are as rich as those of Eastern Canada, but they have yet to be developed. The whole of the seas, gulfs, bays, rivers, and lakes of the Province swarms with fine food fishes. The salmon2 of British Columbia is famous the world over. Millions of them make their way up the rivers, and the

1. Cedars sometimes attain a diameter of 17 feet, and it is from the wood of this tree that the Indians make their celebrated canoes.

2. In 1900, the output of the canneries, most of

thein at the mouth of the Fraser, amounted to the enormous total of 1,000,000 cases, each case containing 4 dozen 1 lb. cans.

annual take from the Fraser River alone is over 10 million lbs. Sturgeon, some times exceeding 1,000 lbs. in weight, are numerous; halibut abound, especiali off the west coast of Queen Charlotte Island; cod and seals are caught on the north coast; while the delicious oolachan1 or candle fish enters the Fraser and the Nasse rivers and other streams by the million, for several weeks. The lakes and rivers in the interior are full of salmon, trout, perch, and other fish. The whale, seal, and sea otter fisheries are important, and the coast abounds with oysters, a very large and excellent crayfish, crabs, &c. Next to the salmon, the most valuable sea-product is the fur-seal, which yields over 350,000 dollars a year.

MINERALS, however, form the chief wealth of the Province. As for gold, there is scarcely a stream in which the colour of gold cannot be found, and paying mines extend through a region of some 600 miles in length. The largest mines are in the Cariboo, Kootenay, and Atiin districts, whence 14 millions sterling have been obtained since 1858. Coal mines are worked at Nanaimo, Wellington and Comox on the east coast of Vancouver Island, and there are inexhaustible deposits of iron ore on Texada Island and elsewhere. Copper, silver, and other metals are widely distributed, but more labour and capital are wanted to develop the rich mineral, timber, ranching, and fruit-farming resources of this immense country, which, until 1887, had no railway commu nication with the outside world. In that year, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which enters the Province at STEPHEN in the Kicking Horse Pass, and, crossing the Columbia River, runs along the valleys of the Thompson and the Fraser Rivers to the seaboard, was completed.

The principal towns are VICTORIA, the provincial capital, which is pic turesquely situated on a lovely harbour on the south-east coast of Vancouver Island, and has about 24,000 inhabitants; VANCOUVER (26), on the southern side of Burrard Inlet, the terminal port of the Canadian Pacific Railway, connected by a magnificent line of steamers with Yokohama and Hong-Kong: and New Westminster (8), a growing river-port, very pleasantly situated on the Fraser River about 8 miles above its mouth and 12 miles from Vancouver. Yale is a small town at the head of navigation on the Fraser, and Lytton stands at the confluence of the Thompson and the Fraser. There are several other small places on the mainland, such as Kamloops on the Thompson, at the head of Kamloops Lake, Lillooet, Hope, Alexandria, Quesnellemouth, and Fort George on the Fraser. Rossland (8), is the chief mining centre in the Kootenay gold-fields. In Vancouver Island, the Island Railway runs from Esquimault, which has a magnificent harbour and graving dock, and is the headquarters of the British Fleet, through Victoria and the forest country beyond to Nanaimo (8), a thriving coal-mining town, and on to Wellington, another coal-mining centre, 7 miles north of Nanaimo. Coal mines are also worked at Comox, 60 miles by steamer north of Nanaimo.

... Vancouver Island was discovered in 1792 by Captain Vancouver, who gave a glow. ing description of "the serenity of the climate, the innumerable and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth." It was secured to England by treaty in 1846, and 20 years later was united to British Columbia, which, until 1858, had formed part of the Hudson Bay Company's Territory, when the rush of goldseekers forced the British Government to proclaim and govern it as a Crown Colony. In 1870, the united colony joined the Dominion, and in 1887 the bond was completed by the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Since then, the establishment of a line of steamships to China and Japan has still further increased the importance of British Columbia as a connecting link between Europe and Asia.

1. This remarkable fish is smaller than a herring and is so oily that, when dried, it will burn like a Its oil is considered superior to cod-liver

candle.

oil or any other fish oil known, and it is a star * article of food and barter among the li un tribes who catch them in immense numbers.

THE UNITED STATES.

THE UNITED STATES embrace the middle portion of North America, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande del Norte, together with the detached Territory of Alaska, which forms the north-western portion of the continent, and the territory of Hawaii.

BOUNDARIES: This vast country is bounded on the north by the Dominion of Canada, on the south by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Pacific. Alaska is surrounded by the sea, except on the east, where it adjoins the Dominion of Canada. Hawaii is an island group in the Pacific Ocean.

The International Boundary between the United States and Canada is partly natural and partly artificial. The Great Lakes and the Upper St. Lawrence divide the United States from Eastern Canada, but from the Lake of the Woods to the shores of the Gulf of Georgia, the boundary between Central and Western Canada and the United States is entirely artificial, being formed by the 49th parallel of North latitude.

Alaska, with the exception perhaps of the narrow strip along the Pacific Coast, is virtually a part of, and has therefore been described under, "Arctic America." The following description is therefore confined to the States and Territories to the south of the Dominion of Canada.

EXTENT: The total area of the United States, including Alaska, is nearly 3,000,000 square miles, which is almost as large as that of Europe and 60 times the size of England.

The average length of this great Republic is 2,500 miles, and its average breadth is 1,300 miles. Its greatest length, from Cape Cod to the shores of the Pacific, is about 2,800 miles, or 7 times the distance from Berwick to Land's End. Its greatest breadth, from the southern extremity of Texas to the borders of Canada, is about 1,600 miles, or rather more than 5 times the distance from Lowestoft Ness to St. David's Head.

COASTS: The eastern coast is, on the whole, irregular; the western coast is, on the contrary, regular and unbroken by any considerable inlets. The total length amounts to 12,000 miles, equal to an average of 1 mile of coast to every 240 miles of area.

Of this extent, much the larger proportion-about five-sixths-belongs to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, while the coast-line on the Pacific is only about one-sixth of the whole. If we include the shore-line of the Great Lakes, then the total coast-line of the United States amounts to 16,000 square miles, of which 6,860 miles belong to the Atlantic, 3,400 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, 3,400 to the Great Lakes, and only 2,280 miles to the Pacific.

"The Atlantic Coast is, as a whole, very broken, with many fine harbours which have contributed not a little to the high position which the country holds with regard to commerce. The coast of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, as far as Cape Cod, is an exceedingly broken one, being made up of long, rocky points, alternating with deep bays and arms of the sea, and fringed with numbers of islands. Good harbours are numerous. In the neighbourhood of Cape Cod, on the Massachusetts coast, the character of the sea shore changes. Thence southward it is, in the main, low and sandy, but it is

still somewhat broken, and affords many fine harbours, easy of access, such as those of New York, New Bedford, and Newport. With the shores of New Jersey commences the reef feature, which extends, with occasional breaks, to the end of Florida, and even reappears at many points on the Gulf Coast.

"The Gulf Coast is low and sandy everywhere, and occasionally marshy, especially in Louisiana. The whole coast of this State is a marsh, extending a long distance inland. On the coast of Texas the reef and lagoon feature reappears, but without coast swamps. "The Pacific Coast is extremely simple. It is almost everywhere bluff and high, with deep water immediately off shore. The Bays of San Diego and San Francisco, with Puget Sound on the northern boundary, are the only good harbours."1

CAPES: The chief capes are Cod, May, Charles, Hatteras, and Lookout on the east; Sable on the south; Flattery, Blanco, Mendocino, and Conception on the west.

INLETS: The principal openings are Delaware and Chesapeake Bays on the east; the Gulf of Mexico with Tampa, Pensacola, Mobile, and Galveston Bays on the south; and the Bay of San Francisco and Puget Sound on the west.

CHANNELS and STRAITS: Long Island Sound, between Long Island and the mainland; Pamlico Sound, on the coast of North Carolina; the Strait of Florida, between Florida and the Bahamas; Juan de Fuca Strait, between Vancouver Island and the State of Washington; and the Golden Gate, as the entrance into the Bay of San Francisco is called.

ISLANDS: There are several islands off both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, but only one-Long Island-is of any size or importance. Long Island is 120 miles long and about 10 to 12 miles broad. On it stands BROOKLYN,

the southern suburb of NEW YORK, from which it is divided by a narrow channel called the East River. The entrance to New York Bay and the Hudsonknown as The Narrows-lies between Long Island and Staten Island. Key West is a small island off the southern extremity of Florida. San Juan and

other islands in the Gulf of Georgia also belong to the United States.

2

RELIEF: The four great natural features of the United States are (1) a great elevated plateau, traversed by lofty mountain ranges and occupying the western half of the country; (2) a vast lowland,* lying east of this plateau and bounded on the west by (3) a system of minor elevations which slope into (4) a low and narrow plain, extending along the eastern coast.

The first is known as the Cordilleran Plateau or the Pacific Highlands; the second includes the Great Plains and the Mississippi Valley; the third forms the Appalachian Mountain System or the Atlantic Highlands; and the fourth is the Atlantic Coast Plain, which merges into the Gulf Coast Plain and the Valley of the Mississippi.

The principal natural features of the country from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic, are, first, the Coast Ranges, which skirt the shores of the Pacific from Cape Flattery southwards, and are divided by a long and narrow depression through which the Sacramento and its tributary the San Joaquin flow from the much loftier Sierra Nevada,

1. Appleton's Physical Geography of the United | and Soda Lake on the Colorado Plateau, which are States, p. 126.

2. It is an interesting fact that the highest elevation and the greatest depression in the United States are in the same State-California-and close ly adjoin each other. The culminating point, Mount Whitney, in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada (14,878 feet), is not far from Death Valley

from 100 to 200 feet below the level of the sea.

3. One-third of the country has an elevation of less than 1,000 feet, about one-fifth has an elevati of over 5,000 feet, while less than one per cent, over 10,000 feet above the sea. The average ele vation of the United States is about 2,600 feet, and that of the whole of North America 1.954 feet.