THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1893.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9185, 27 April 1893, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1893.

The readiness of her Government to promote a regular steam connection of the two chief groups of British colonies is quite characteristic of Canada. New as is the Canadian Dominion, it has already made a great figure in energy and enterprise, and it keeps vigorously pushing forward in fresh developments. The go-ahead spirit for which the United States used to be" famous seems to have passed across the frontier to the neighbouring confederacy. Little more than fifty years back, when the Canadas were in the leading-strings of the sleepy Colonial Office of that day, it was a common remark of intelligent visitors that if the country were included in the United States the wonderful opportunities for inland navigation

which nature there offered would be promptly turned to account. Very soon afterwards, when, with better counsels prevailing at Downing-street, the colonies were allowed to see to their own interests, that North American group shot ahead with a rapidity which now quite distances the contemporary progressof the great adjoining Republic. Some canal work, obviating insurmountable rocks and rapid-;, conn ected the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes in a mighty chain. Between the ocean and those inland waters fleets of merchantmen are constantly passing to and fro ; and from the crowd of vessels always where an occasional canal is a gateway, the traveller can observo how enormous is the traffic. Chicago is but one of the great seaports which have thus arisen on both the United States and Canadian lake sides ; and it is because of such phenomenon in the heart of the continent that Chicago has been chosen as the site of the Exhibition which commemorates the discovery of America. The wonderful inland waterway being made available, another grand achievement followed —the railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a work of peculiarly seasonable service for imperial objects as well as inter-colonial. And no sooner was it finished, than the Dominion Government subsidised lines of fast steamers from the Vancouver terminus across the North Pacific, to Chinese and Japanese ports. So flourish-

j ing a trade has been thus created, in that direction, that we are told it more than compensates for the heavy loss caused by the McKinley tariff to the Canadian trade with the United States, and the exports and imports of tho Dominion were never before so large as now. Following up that success, the Government at Ottawa are now prepared to subsidise a fast steam line to these colonies of the Far South, anticipating from it, besides other important consequences, as agreeable commercial results as they find attending the enterprise in the North Pacific. Representing the great Canadian Railway Company, to which also belong the above-mentioned steam lines in the North Pacific, Mr. D. E. Drown is now in these colonies ; and having already opened an agency in Auckland, he is doing the same thing in the chief Aus-tralian-cities. Ho has explained that the purpose of his tour is to spread a knowledge of the trade and travel advantages that would be obtained for Australasia by steam connection with Vancouver. As regards the trade openings, he has pointed out that they there want our frozen meats and fruits. For instance, in British Columbia—the Pacific coast province of the Dominion—we are told that there is no sheep-grazing, and the local supply of beef does not meet half the market demand. Nearly all the mutton has to be brought across the frontier from the bordering United States, and 8d or 9d per lb is paid for it, and the quality is very poor. So, when there are facilities of transport, a supply of New Zealand or Australian

meats would exclude the inferior article from Oregon or Washington States, Ho reminds us that the contrast between Canada, and Australasia in the time of year for summer and winter gives us opportunity to send them fruits, etc., when their own are not in season. He also believes that a much larger quantity of our wool would be taken by the Dominion, with the readier and cheaper means of forwarding it.

As soon as there is regular steam communication between these colonies and the Vancouver port, the route that way will formidably compete with the San Francisco route. We live, however, in a travelling age, when

the passenger traffic increases with | improved facilities for it. But the in- , terested parties in the United States would deserve to be well pinched by j the competition. Why do not those railway people, deriving so much benefit from the San Francisco packet service, get their Government to share with these colonies the subsidising of that line? They seem very well able to bring such pressure to bear for an object which they desire. For too many years back it cannot be said with exact veracity, that the great American Republic has progressed as it used to do. Endowed by nature with the widest expanse of rich virgin soil on the face of the globe—where GOO millions of people would be a scanty population, and where there are little more than sixty millions—there is so much difficulty in finding land for settlement that there is sometimes bloodshed in the struggle for selection. So there are overgrown towns exhibiting as much poverty as those in the most crowded countries in the old world. In the model Republic "rings" and coteries sway politically as well as commercially, and great public demands like that for the Nicaragua Canal to connect the two seaboards, can be trifled with for years. The United States now seem like dreamers sleeping over the memory of their former progress, and it is almost ludicrous that there should be some people there who still believe it to be the manifest destiny of the " American Union" to incorporate the hearty vigorous Canadian Dominion, which has sprung up and flourishes beyond its frontier.