But what Canada lacks in hotels she more than makes up in roads.  Miles upon miles of well-made and well-kept gravel roads cross the province of Ontario in every direction.  The people seem to appreciate the economy of good hard highways over which teams can draw big loads without undue fatigue.

We left St. Catharines at nine o’clock Sunday morning, taking the old Dundas road; this was a mistake, the direct road to Hamilton being the better.  Off the main travelled roads we found a good deal of sand; but that was our fault, for it was needless to take these little travelled by-ways.  Again, out of Hamilton to London we did not follow the direct and better road; this was due to error in directions given us at the drug store where we stopped for gasoline.

Gasoline is not so easily obtained in Canada as in the States; it is not to be had at all in many of the small villages, and in the cities it is not generally kept in any quantity.  One drug store in Hamilton had half-a-dozen six-ounce bottles neatly put up and labelled “Gasoline:  Handle with Care;” another had two gallons, which we purchased.  The price was high, but the price of gasoline is the very least of the concerns of automobiling.

On the way to London a forward spring collapsed entirely.  Binding the broken leaves together with wire we managed to get in all right, but the next morning we were delayed an hour while a wheelwright made a more permanent repair.

Monday, the 22d, was one of the record days.  Leaving London at half-past nine we took the Old Sarnia Gravel for Sarnia, some seventy miles away.  With scarcely a pause, we flew over the superb road, hard gravel every inch of it, and into Sarnia at one o’clock for luncheon.

Over an hour was spent in lunching, ferrying across the river, and getting through the two custom-houses.

Canada is an anachronism.  Within the lifetime of men now living, the Dominion will become a part of the United States; this is fate not politics, evolution not revolution, destiny not design.  How it will come about no man can tell; that it will come about is as certain as fate.

With an area almost exactly that of the United States, Canada has a population of but five millions, or about one-fifteenth the population of this country.  Between 1891 and 1901 the population of the Dominion increased only five hundred thousand, or about ten per cent., as against an increase of fourteen millions, or twenty-one per cent., in this country.

For a new country in a new world Canada stagnates.  In the decade referred to Chicago alone gained more in population than the entire Dominion.  The fertile province of Ontario gained but fifty-four thousand in the ten years, while the States of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, which are near by, gained each nearly ten times as much; and the gain of New York, lying just across the St. Lawrence, was over twelve hundred thousand.  The total area of these four States is about four-fifths that of Ontario, and yet their increase of population in ten years more than equals the entire population of the province.