hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever
completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on
the Illinois River, it will be possible to proceed by lines of inland
navigation from Quebec to New Orleans. There is space within the regions
enjoying these advantages of water communication, and already peopled by
the Anglo-Saxon race, for four hundred millions of the human race, or
more than double the population of Europe at the present time.
Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised
on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi,
and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with
population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant
room for a population of a hundred million.

"In Montcalm's day all this territory belonged to France. It was that
soldier's dream, and he was no less a statesman than a soldier, to make
here a great nation. Toward that end a great chain of forts was to be
built along the line from Ontario to New Orleans. Sandusky, Mackinaw,
Detroit, Oswego, Du Quesne, were but a few links in the contemplated
chain that was to bind the continent forever to French interests. It was
for this he battled through all those bloody, brilliant campaigns of the
old French war. But the English were too strong for him. Montcalm
perished, and the power of France was at an end in the New World. But it
almost overwhelms me at the thought of what a mighty empire was lost
when the English huzza rose above the French clarion on the Plains of
Abraham."

"Better for the continent and the world that England won," said Vincent.

"Perhaps so," allowed Hugh. "Though we cannot tell what might have been.
But that does not concern this Ulysses and his crew. Onward, voyagers