Mr. Grant Allen, the eminent writer, who, although born here, was an Englishman by residence and education, having revisited Canada and the United States after an absence of eleven years, took occasion some years since to give utterance to some remarks on our country in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. His remarks should never have been allowed to pass unchallenged. I cannot go into the matter very fully for fear of too great length, but I must needs touch on the more salient points, and it will be necessary for me to inscribe Mr. Allen’s words here and there as a text for my remarks. He says: “Looking at America with a geological eye, I was impressed as I had never been before with the enormous extent to which the country has suffered from the ice-sheets of the glacial period.” And after making this remark he goes on to say that England has suffered less from this great cause. Now, this remark of his refers to Canada and the United States indiscriminately, and without a doubt it is true to the letter. While I accept the statement as true, I at the same time want very distinctly to qualify it so far as Ontario is concerned. Ontario has measurably suffered from the glacial action, but it has as a whole suffered far less than any one of the other provinces or any of the northern United States, taken as a whole. I am referring to old Ontario alone, and not the new portion lately acquired to the west. Take old Ontario: The moraines have been frequent enough to give us the most alluvial soil of any country of like extent on the habitable globe. This remark does not apply to the more northerly portion of our province, which is as yet but little occupied, for we cannot controvert the fact that this portion did suffer sadly.
Mr. Allen evidently did not know Ontario well enough, or he would have excepted from his general remark the garden of the world. In a former chapter I made the remark that if a line be drawn from Belleville to the Georgian Bay, all that part of Ontario west of that line contains the most alluvial land and the richest of any in the world, with the fewest breaks and the least waste land. My own observation, begot by travel and reading as well, gives me the courage to fearlessly make this remark unqualified.