of brains.  Frugal, simple, reposeful living—­the kind of living that takes time to think—­has sent out from the maritime provinces more leaders of thought than any other area of Canada.  It is a land that leaves a dreamy memory with you of sunset lying gold on the Bras d’ Or Lakes, of cattle belly-deep in pasture, of apple farms where fragrance of fruit and blossoms seem to scent the very atmosphere, of fishermen rocking in their smacks, of great ships plowing up and down to sea.  You know there are great coal mines to the east and great timber limits to the north; you may even smell the imprisoned fragrance of the yellowing lumber being loaded for export, but it is as the land of winter ports and of seamen for the navy that you will remember the maritime provinces as factors in Canada’s destiny.

When gold was discovered in the Yukon and a hundred million dollars in gold came out in ten years, the world went mad.  Yet Canada yearly mines from the silver quarries of the sea a harvest of thirty-four million dollars, and of that amount, fifteen million dollars comes from the maritime provinces.[7] Conservationists have sung their song in vain if the world does not know that the fisheries of the United States have been ruthlessly depleted, but here is a land the area of England whose fisheries have increased in value one hundred per cent. in ten years.  It is not, however, as the great resource of fisheries that the maritime provinces must play their part in Canada’s destiny.  It is as the nursery of seamen for a marine power.  No southern nation, with the exception of Carthage, has ever dominated the sea; partly for the simple reason that the best fisheries are always located in temperate zones, where the glacial silt of the icebergs feeds the finny hordes with minute infusoria; and the fisherman’s smack—­the dory that rocks to the waves like a cockleshell, with meal of pork and beans cooking above a chip fire on stones in the bottom of the boat, and rough grimed fellows singing chanties to the rhythm of the sea—­the fisherman’s smack is the nursery of the world’s proudest merchant marines and most powerful navies.  Japan knows this, and encourages her fishermen by bounties and passage money to spread all over the world, and Japanese to-day operate practically all the fisheries of the Pacific.  England knows this and in the North Sea and off Newfoundland protects her fishermen and draws from their ranks her seamen.

Japan dominates seventy-two per cent. of the commerce of the Pacific, not through chance, but through her merchant marine built up from rough grimed fellows who quarry the silver mines of the sea.  England dominates the Seven Seas of the world, not through her superiority man to man against other races, but through her merchant marine, carrying the commerce of the world, built up from simple fisher folk hauling in the net or paying out the line through icy salty spray above tempestuous seas.  No power yet dominates