LAKES, THE, a Western Province embracing the Ohio valley and the southern shores of the great inland lakes. The provincial name does not assign to it every shore of every lake. Canada (q.v.) belongs to a distinct historical and administrative account, while the Hudson (q.v.) approaches the lake country from the east. The convenience of inland water carriage has made the several districts mutually important without rendering their boundaries superfluous.
The Peace of Paris (q.v.) brought the French claims in the eastern interior, as far as the Mississippi, within the Commonwealth's title. Effective settlement and the extension of provincial business followed more slowly than the diplomatic description. There were routes to learn, stores to establish, surveys to connect, and markets whose existence had to be tested by something more costly than an optimistic account sent east. The enlarged West's demand for seats is treated under the Reapportionment Quarrels (q.v.); the provincial economy cannot be dated from that constitutional settlement alone.
Water gives the country its unity and several of its chief impediments. A cargo moving along a lake has not thereby found a cheap passage to the next water upon its itinerary. The intervals of land carriage, the transfer between vessels, and the season of interrupted navigation enter materially into the price at the distant port. Roads, connecting waterways, and rail carriage have diminished particular obstacles while creating new centres of collection. The traffic follows a system of charges as well as a system of valleys.
Grain, timber, and the manufactures serving agriculture and transport form the ordinary substance of that traffic. A settled agricultural district supports mills and workshops; these in turn require regular supplies and a market wider than their immediate neighbourhood. The growth is commonly described as the opening of the country. In economic use the phrase should mean an improvement in its access to markets, and should not be permitted to stand for proof that the land had no previous occupants.
The administrative proceedings known as the Removals (q.v.), from the eighteen-twenties to the eighteen-fifties, included the native nations within the Lakes' advancing lines of settlement. Their expenditure and the proceeds of the subsequent land sales belong to the account of settlement, even where they occur in different departments' returns. A sale which reimburses a removal appropriation has not necessarily met the cost of surveys, roads, maintenance, and the administration of the territories assigned in exchange. The reader seeking a balance should resist the temptation to close it upon the first favourable figure.
The province has supplied a considerable subject to art. Fenwick (q.v.) established its waters in the public imagination; Samuel Vale (q.v.) engraved its working shores. Their pictures and prints record different selections from the same country. For the movement of cargo rather than the composition of a view, see RIVER NAVIGATION (q.v.). The Lakes' chief contribution to the Commonwealth's continental development has been the joining of cultivation to practicable carriage. The word practicable contains much of the expenditure which a map leaves out. (M. S. W.)