Note 9 — Chapter IV · 1668-1670.

The proportions of this inland sea are such as to give it a prominent place among the geographical features of the world. One thousand three hundred miles in length, by six hundred miles in breadth, it extends over twelve degrees of latitude, and covers an area not less than half a million square miles. Of the five basins into which Canada is divided, that of Hudson's Bay is immeasurably the largest, the extent of country draining into it being estimated at three million square miles. To swell the mighty volume of its waters there come rivers which take their rise in the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Labrador wilderness on the east; while southward its river roots stretch far down below the forty-ninth parallel, reaching even to the same lake source whence flows a stream into the Gulf of Mexico. A passing breath of wind may determine whether the ultimate destiny of the rain drop falling into the little lake be the bosom of the Mexican Gulf or the chilly grasp of the Arctic ice-floe.