CHAPTER II. MONTREAL, NOT ONLY BEAUTIFUL AND WELL SITUATED FROM A MILITARY POINT OF VIEW, BUT ALSO NATURALLY COMMANDS THE TRADE OF THE NORTHERN PORTION OF THE CONTINENT-ONTARIO'S DESIRE TO POSSESS THE ISLAND OF MONTREAL-EARLIEST TRADE, THAT IN PELTRIES ITS INFLUENCE-FORMATION OF NORTH-WEST COMPANY RELATIONS BE - TWEEN COMMERCE AND RELIGION-CONNECTION OF THE ARMY WITH THE The view from Beautiful for situation is Montreal. the side of the mountain is a perpetual feast to the eyes of the inhabitants. It has not the rugged grandeur of Quebec, but there is a soft picturesqueness about it, which affords great delight to the casual visitor, and is a source of constant joy to the citizens. The striking feature of Montreal is the hill in the background, from which it derives its name. Visitors from rival cities sometimes affect to make light of the mountain, of which we are so proud, and talk of it as a mere mound; but though it is only 700 feet above the level of the St. Lawrence flowing near by, it is well entitled to the enthusiastic attachment of the citizens, as it of old excited the admiration of Jacques Cartier, and received from him the highest compliment which, as a courtier, he could bestow, when, in honour of his sovereign, he called it Mount Royal. It is to Montreal what Arthur Seat is to Edinburgh; as indeed the crest on its north-east corner which gives to the Allan Mansion its title "Ravenscrag" is a good miniature of Salisbury Crags, which adorn the brow of " Edina, Scotia's darling seat." The majestic river rolling swiftly by, with the solid Victoria Bridge overarching it—the green prairie lying beyond and stretching away to the south and east, with here and there a conical hill or low mountain range, or a village with its glittering spire, until vision is lost in the dim outlines of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks—while towards the south-west and west the eye rests on Lake St. Louis and the great Ottawa threading its way through hills and woods to join the greater St. Lawrence, it is an education in the beautiful to look from the top of the mountain on this scene. The view northwards consisting of varied plain and woodland and water, and bounded by the bold Laurentians, completes a picture once seen never to be forgotten. The landscape as seen from Mount Royal is different now, of course, from what it was in 1535, when "east, west and south, the forest was every where, while the broad blue line of the great St. Lawrence gleamed amidst it all." tial features have remained the same. enchanted with the beauty of the scene that, when he returned to France, he urged that an immediate settlement should be made at the foot of the mountain. Yet the essenCartier was so Yet the beauty of the situation, much as it might move the soul of a cultured and sentimental European, was not enough to secure prosperity to the town which was founded, on this site recommended by Cartier, a hundred years afterwards. It was in those days a question of the first importance, what facilities a place afforded for defence against the attacks of the savage Indians, who were then the only inhabitants of the country. And the next question was, would it conduce to the interests of commerce to build a town in the locality indicated. A favourable conclusion could not but be come to with regard to either of these considerations. For the purposes of both protection and trade, Montreal was well situated. It was long a military centre, although we have fallen on better times, when the Champ de Mars is given up to the games of youth and the noisy laughter of children, rather than to the tread of regiments and the music of fife and drum. But Montreal has pre-eminently developed into a commercial city. Nature designed for it this distinction. Notwithstanding all that railways have achieved, water carriage still furnishes the cheapest and easiest mode of transporting merchandise from place to place. As a rule, great cities have always grown up in the neighbourhood of good harbours on the sea coast, or on large navigable rivers and lakes. Mariners, military men and missionaries early perceived the advantages for trade possessed by Montreal. A glance at a map of the continent shows that from the head of the island, navigable water courses spread out like a fan over hundreds of thousands of miles in the interior, all of which get an outlet to the sea by the St. Lawrence. The trade of half North America must sooner or later obey the laws of nature and pass through this port. Montreal may geographically belong to the Province of Quebec, but its real interests are more bound up in the portion of the continent lying west of it. Sea-going vessels have to halt at the foot of the Lachine Rapids, and break bulk here, so that our merchants must have the handling and distributing of a large part of the wholesale trade of the continent. The intimate relation in which Montreal naturally stands to the country lying westwards has always been perceived, and has, at various times, caused an agitation to be got up for having it politically joined to Ontario, as commercially, it is largely dependent upon that Province. Had the island been included in Upper Canada, when the separation between the two provinces took place in 1791, as the British citizens of that day wished, no serious violence would have been done to natural geographical boundaries; although it is a branch of the Ottawa that sweeps around the island at St. Ann's, and the great Rivers Ottawa and St. Lawrence were regarded in a general way as the dividing lines between the two sections of the Canada of that period. A line drawn from Pointe Beaudette across to the Ottawa having been named as the westernmost boundary of Lower Canada, seeing that French families were residing that far up the country, thus disregarding the barriers which nature had laid down, because the French were then the most numerous, the people of Upper Canada, when they began to be strong enough to make their voice heard in the country, might well be excused, if they put forth efforts to recover territory that ought to have been included in their Province, the Counties of Vaudreuil and Soulanges—and the island of Montreal in addition. Accordingly, in 1832, a public meeting was held in Toronto (then York) to take into consideration a proposed petition to be presented to the Legislature of Upper Canada, asking that the Island of Montreal should be annexed to the Province, thereby providing a seaport for Upper Canada. This meeting took place on the 17th October, Hon. W. Allan in the Chair. The Hon. G. H. Markland, then Attorney-General, along with the Solicitor-General, Hon. C. A. Hagerman, were appointed to draft an address on the subject. The reasons adduced in favour of the proposed annexation were :— "The Lower Province had two seaports, while they had none. "The trade of Montreal was almost wholly dependent upon Upper Canada, from the fact that that Province was inhabited almost exclusively by British, who imported goods from the Mother Country, while three-fourths of the population of Lower Canada were French, and manufactured for themselves articles of domestic use. "Instead of receiving directly the duties levied on their own imports, they had to await the pleasure of the |