 208 CANADA of brick or stone, with large outbuildings, sheltered by plantations, all within easy sight of one another and representing farms of from a hundred and sixty to six hundred and forty acres. Though wheat is the great cash crop, mixed farming is widely practised, oats, hay, and stock of all kinds being everywhere prominent. The fields out here are large, and being fenced with wire, the country retains its wide open aspect, utterly different from Old Canada, with its small railed-in fields and abundance of wood. Most of the vegetables and small fruits known in England flourish here, as in Ontario. Apples, however, do not succeed well, and the orchard is the one familiar object of country life lacking. To the original province of Manitoba two western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, filling up the interval to the Rocky Mountains, have been formally united to the Dominion Confederation. In the three prairie provinces there are now 1,800,000 people out of seven and odd million in the whole Dominion. Ten years ago there were 400,000.In the history of British colonization there is no counterpart to the rapidity with which the North-West has grown in a dozen years. The old troubles have been largely overcome. In the newer districts, generally pressing in a northerly direction, the pioneer has, of course, to face the ordinary hardships. But a multi- |  THE PRAIRIE PROVINCES 209 plication of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and elevators (great storehouses on railroads where the farmers sell and deposit their wheat, and many other modern inventions have made the life of even the most extended settlements less formidable. Moreover, there has been a great tendency to settle new districts collectively. A knowledge of the country, too, what seeds to sow, and all that belongs to agricultural science, has reduced the danger of early frosts, and even the climate, which is generally the case when a wilderness is reclaimed, has softened a little. One great factor in the progress of the country remains to be told. Though the price of wheat in the world has never recovered its old figures, yet the North-Western farmer, owing to the widely recognized top quality of his grain and to improvements in transporta- tion, gets about double the price he used to. Formerly, from the cost of getting it to Europe, the North-Western grower only received about half of even the low-marked price in England. Growing wheat on the virgin soil of the prairie is far cheaper than in Great Britain or in Old Canada, where manure and expensive preparation are necessary. But at the old North-West prices, even with a successful crop there was not much profit left at 2s. or 2s. 6d. a bushel. It is not surprising that the world did not rush in to face a new |
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