runs from the wheat plains.  It is a route destined for the present to be barren of local traffic, but that also is true of the stretches along Lake Superior, or across the desert of the Southwest.  Back from the ridge coal deposits have been found, and traces of copper, the mines of which have not yet been located.  I myself saw chunks of pure copper from the Churchill River region the size of one’s hand, but the veins from which the Indians brought it have not yet been located.  In time these great deposits may be worked as oil and coal and gold and silver have been taken from the American Desert, but for the near future the Hudson Bay Railroad will carry little traffic but that received at its terminals.

The western terminal connecting with the wheat railroads is the Pas, an old, very old fur post of the French wood-runner days, on the Saskatchewan west of Lake Winnipeg.  Here the railroad touches the Canada Northern and will doubtless later connect with the Canadian Pacific Railroad and Grand Trunk.  To any one who knows the region well it seems almost a pity that the western terminus could not have been Grand Rapids just northwest of Lake Winnipeg.  Here is a fine wooded high park country with the unlimited water power of nine miles of a continental river walled into a canyon half a mile wide.  But the country west of Lake Winnipeg is as yet untouched by a railroad, though one can hardly conceive of a city not some day springing up at this the head of Manitoba navigation.  Eastward from the Pas to Hudson Bay it is four hundred miles plus.  Construction presents no great difficulties except bridging, and that can hardly be compared to the difficulties of canyons in the Rockies and drouth in the desert.

For years there was sharp contest whether the terminus on the Bay should be Nelson or Churchill.  Churchill is one of the best harbors in the world, land locked, rock protected and fathomless; and Nelson is probably one of the worst—­shallow, with sand bars caused by the confluence of the two great rivers emptying here, exposed to open sea.  But the balance of favor on the Bay is how long can navigation be kept open.  Navigation is open a month earlier and a month later at Nelson than at Churchill; so the Dominion dredges have gone to work to make Nelson a fit harbor.

How long is navigation open on the Bay?  The Dominion government has sent three expeditions to ascertain this, though data might have been obtained from the Archives of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company covering the record of over two hundred years.  Both the Archives and the official expeditions record the same—­navigation opens between the middle of May and the first of June, and closes about the end of October.  Seasons have been known when navigation remained open till New Year’s, but this was unusual.  So as far as the opening and closing of navigation is considered, the Hudson Bay route is not far different from the Great Lakes.