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CHAPTER XXIV

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST

1870, 1888, 1889

The North-West-Winnipeg-Skye Crofters-Immigration Annexation - The Canadian Pacific Railway-The Rocky Mountains-British Columbia.

I PAID two visits to that land of miraculous promise, the North-West. Very impressive was the view of that unbounded plain, its expanse stretching out like a sea purpled by the twilight and set off by an electric light upon some tower in the distance. Very lovely no doubt is the prairie in the season of flowers. But it must be trying to the spirits to live in a country without a hill or a tree, especially on a lonely farm. Fortunately the pioneer is not afflicted with morbid sensibilities. The fruitfulness of the soil is extraordinary, and apparently it is inexhaustible. I found no falling off in the vegetables of a garden which had been worked for thirty years. But the fertility of the soil is balanced by the severity of the climate. In harvest time everybody is trembling for fear of an early frost.

[1 In 1870 he went to Winnipeg; in 1880 to the Pacific coast. A third journey was made in 1889, but to what point, I do not know.]

The intensity of the cold is no doubt mitigated by the dryness of the air. But it is in vain that the people conspire as they do to make you believe that forty below zero is pleasant. The inconvenience, if not the suffering, must be great. You will not persuade me that you are in bliss when your breath freezes on your sheets, or when, after keeping several stoves burning in your house all night, your bread is frozen till twelve o'clock next day. Most of the settlers are young, and their blood is warm.

I had been curious to see the North-West, partly because I thought that farm-life there would be likely to change its character. The prairie is specially adapted to machine farming. It seemed probable that large farms would pay, while in the long winter and the great solitudes there would be social cheerfulness in the staff. The system was tried, and at the Bell farm, where I was most kindly received, I saw 1400 acres of wheat in a single field. But the experiment failed, principally, I believe, owing to the cost of keeping the staff during the winter.

Young Englishmen of the upper class seemed as a rule to fail as farmers in the North-West, though they did better in the ranches. It was said that their harvests were remittances. Many of them had drifted into the Mounted Police; many of them afterwards drifted into the [South African] Contingent. A farmer in Canada must work hard, live hard, and bargain hard. A young English gentleman may do the first at

a pinch; the second he does less easily; the third he cannot do at all.

When I first saw Winnipeg it was in its pioneer phase, and at the same time in its fit of sickness after the "boom." In the boom of course sharks had thriven. One of them played a cunning trick to pass off a lot upon a greenhorn for many times its value. The greenhorn at first was shy and went away. But he was followed by a confederate who contrived to speak, not to him, but in his hearing, of the immense value of the lot, pretending that he was himself trying to raise the money to buy it. The dupe slipped away in a hurry and closed the bargain. Speculation without capital is a walk of industry which many take in booms and which leads to ruin and disgrace. On the other hand, there was not the slightest symptom of anything rowdy or lawless.

I attended the opening of the new-born Legislature at Winnipeg. The approach of the Lieutenant-Governor1 was announced by a series of explosions intended to represent the firing of cannon, but made, I understood, by the letting off of gunpowder with a hot poker. There being one or two French Members, I am not sure which, the Lieutenant-Governor read his speech from the throne in French as well as in English. I suspect the

The pro

[The Hon. Adams George Archibald, of Nova Scotia. clamation for the admission of the new Province of Manitoba into the Dominion of Canada was issued on the 23d of June, 1870; Mr. Archibald arrived at Winnepeg and assumed the functions of Lieutenant-Governor on September the 3d of the same year.]

effect upon the French ears was like that of the Irish Major's address upon Prince Napoleon, who in reply deplored his ignorance of "la belle langue Irelandaise."

As an offset to the French of the Irish Major, I may say that the Prince de Canino1 at a dinner of the British Association, having to propose the toast of 'Science,' said, "I shall give you one to-ast: May de tree of science flourish for ever and shower down peas upon the nations."

I visited the settlement of Skye Crofters. Evidently it was a miserable failure. The home of these people had been in a climate mild though moist, and they had not been farmers but herdsmen, boatmen, fishermen, tilling a plot of oats or potatoes with the spade. Probably they had never handled a plough; a binder they had never seen. A benevolent lady had sent them out, as she fondly thought, to the happy land. The Icelanders, by all accounts, did well. The Mennonites, as farmers, better still; but in their habits of living they were rather troglodytic, and since they have got the franchise their votes are said to come to market in the lump. As I write 2 settlers from the United States are pouring into the North-Western Territories, which they were sure to do when in Minnesota and Dakota land became dear. The North-West will be American.

[ Louis Lucien Bonaparte, the fourth son of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino. A French philologist. After 1870 he lived chiefly in England. Born 1813; died 1891.]

[2 This was written in 1903.]

Fear of the vast influx of an alien population is expressed. Fear of a vast alien population will speedily subside when it is proved that the inflowing population is not alien, but is identical, to say the least, with the Canadian, as the population of Scotland has proved to be with that of England. "Annexation," so much dreaded and denounced, what is it, I ask once more, but the reunion of two great sections of the English-speaking race?

In the grounds of the Winnipeg Penitentiary were to be seen some of the few survivors of the mighty race of buffalo, the sudden disappearance of which seems to be one of the most curious things in natural history. About fifteen years before, Mr. Cornell had invited me to go with him on a tour through the West, which I was prevented from doing; and when he returned he said he was sorry I had not been with him, for he had seen ten square miles of buffalo. Suddenly the race became extinct, and the true reason of its extinction I failed to learn. It could hardly have been

Railroads or a new obstacle

all shot in so short a time. of some kind must have interfered with its necessary migrations. Its surviving representatives at Winnipeg were huge antediluvian monsters. One of them came up to my buggy and looked at it so seriously that the occupant thought it best to move on.

From Winnipeg to Calgary by the Canadian Pacific Railway was in those days a weary journey, the dulness of the lonely expanse being broken only by the

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