210 CANADA

and a cold country for such results, though 
the people already there, and those going in, 
could live on such conditions and look forward 
to better ones, of which they, being on the 
ground, would reap the benefits. They have 
done this last to a greater extent and more 
rapidly than the most sanguine expected. Wheat 
now fetches in the North-West about the 
same price as it does in England, say 4s. a 
bushel. The reader will understand that this 
represents profit and prosperity. 
A great problem in the North-West is 
labour for harvesting. A farmer on the 
prairie can seed far more wheat than he can 
harvest, and nearly every settler is himself 
a farmer. The latter have to depend largely 
on the year's inrush of immigrants, and 
expensive temporary importations of harvesters 
from Eastern Canada, not herself well supplied
with labour. As the area increases with expand-
ing settlements, this supply will cease to 
be adequate. In future the North-Western
farmer will probably have to limit his wheat 
land by the prospect of what his household 
can harvest. This will not be altogether a 
bad thing, as it will hasten the movement 
towards more generally mixed farms. 
 As you draw near the Rockies, the rainfall 
hitherto, together with the moisture left in
the frozen, snow-soaked ground, sufficient 
for agriculture becomes precarious. So, great 
 

THE PRAIRIE PROVINCES 211

areas are placed under irrigation ditches fed 
by the numerous fresh streams rising in the 
mountains, and sold in smaller plots at much 
higher figures. Irrigation farming is in fact 
another business. It means heavy and sure 
crops on a small area, and has its own advan-
tages, which are paid for at the start. Cattle 
ranching is also carried on in the drier 
countries about the foot hills of the Rockies. 
The North-West has no history comparable in 
interest to the recent history of its settle-
ment and agriculture. These are almost 
everything. But the settlement as regards 
population is not greatly unlike that of 
old British Canada.   Communities of 
kindred folks may be found all over the 
country. There arc foreigners, such as 
Mennonites, Doukhobors, Galicians, and 
Italians. There arc Highland crofters, 
Lowland Scottish, Welsh-speaking Welsh, 
French-Canadians, Scandinavians and Swiss,
while many townships, though not so exclusive,
are associated in origin with particular 
districts of Ontario, the maritime provinces,
or England. Humanly speaking, the filling of
this vast country, millions of acres of which,
said to be fertile and habitable, are not yet
touched, will proceed at a rate calculated to
make it the centre of population in the 
Dominion of Canada. As the home of a northern
race it has the great essential of enormous 
areas, prolific in beef 

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