same. A Northern population, with increasing wealth, will be sure to demand what the East can give—its silken fabrics, porcelain, jewels, and other native manufactures; its tea, spices, raw material, and so on.
The Canadian Pacific Railway, in the early days of its history, secured a large portion of the tea trade of China with America as the result of superior steamboat and railway organization. New lines across Canada will enter into free competition for the same expanding trade and other branches of commerce. The open door in China is of the deepest interest to Canadians. Friendly rivalry with Japan may prove the best of stimulants to Canadian energy.
Should the Chinese and Japanese people ever become a wheat-consuming instead of a rice-consuming people—and nothing is more likely with increasing prosperity—the prairies of Canada would have an Eastern market as important as that which Europe now offers.
But Canadian trade already touches many other points upon the Pacific. The timber and coal of British Columbia find their way along the whole coast of North, Central, and South America. A line of steamships is employed in the business that has grown up with Australia. Canada's exchange of agricultural implements and other manufactures for the sugar of Queensland and Fiji is sure to develop on many lines. An improved passenger service on this route, equal to that between Vancouver and Japan, would compete successfully with the Suez Canal lines for a large share of Australasian travel to or from Europe. Few objects are more to be desired from a national point of view than that the citizens of one great Colony should become familiar in the ordinary course of travel with those of another. There are very strong climatic objections to the voyage by the Red Sea at certain seasons of the year, and an adequate Pacific service from Dominion ports would secure for either the inward or outward voyage a large proportion of Australasian visitors to Europe.
These are only illustrations of the growing interests
