 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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