CHAPTER VITORONTO AND ITS EXHIBITION

MARKET DAY IN MONTREAL: SCENE IN JACQUES CARTIER SQUARE

Montreal, like Quebec, is rich in historic associations, fine old buildings, and French-Canadians. To stand on Mount Royal—a precipitous park rising to a height of seven hundred and forty feet—and look down over the magnificent, ruddy city of domes and spires, with the St. Lawrence sweeping away into a lilac haze of Canadian geography, is a thrilling experience one never forgets. When I last saw that scene, little birds were singing in overhanging trees, and I heard the peaceful music of bells ringing in the old convents far below.

In point of population, and because it is the headquarters of commerce, shipping and railways, Montreal holds the title of the metropolis of Canada. Its shops and theatres are superb, and greatly have I enjoyed my sojourns in that city. It makes a wide appeal to one’s sympathies. It belongs not only to the present, but to the past. It represents old Canada and new Canada. It contains both Protestants and Catholics. And because of its manifold merits and ineffable charms, Montreal misses the quality that makes Toronto so fascinating.

Not that the two cities admit of comparison. As well might one weigh the attractions of Bruges against those of New York, or set the useful qualities of chalk against the nutritive value of cheese. Montreal is a cityof to-day and yesterday. Toronto is a city of to-day and to-morrow. The history of Montreal would make an interesting fat volume; Toronto’s two-pennyworth of history would go into a paragraph.

I admire Montreal. But I simply fell head over heels in love with Toronto. It has a population of 350,000 progressive optimists. The whole city is full of bustle, but of bustle without hustle. It is a hive of healthy and vivacious industry. Toronto lives at the brisk pace that keeps the blood in a healthy glow. The people have discovered the happy mean between the hurry that wrecks nerves and the sloth that impairs digestion. Everybody in Toronto seems to be busy for the sheer joy of the thing. Tread on a man’s foot in that city and, instead of swearing, he smiles—then goes bustling off on whatever matter of business may happen to engage his enthusiasm. Nobody in Toronto gave me the impression of working under a sense of mere necessity. Everybody seemed to find his or her daily occupation an absorbing hobby.

In a word, the spirit of Toronto is the newest spirit of the New World, undiluted. The life of Toronto is the life of modern Canada as developed amid the amenities of a city; and the life of modern Canada is the life of modern England—with the care and worry left out. The mechanic commands his £5 a week; a living wage, with some margin for luxuries, is accessible to everyone. The loss of a berth in London is apt to be a catastrophe. The loss of a berth in Toronto doesn’t matter—you can easily get another. Hence the prevailing optimism. And optimism is a condition of progress. When a man is not living in daily dread of what the morrow may bring forth he dares to do things.

Toronto is a dashing, go-ahead, clean, handsome, well-governed city. It is not run in the interests of ground landlords and private monopolies. The inhabitants, when they pay their five cents for a ride by electric tramcar (and you go as far as you like for that), are putting money into their own pockets. Indeed, the municipal revenue from the tramway traffic since 1891 has totalled about £1,000,000, the annual instalments having appreciably assisted to keep down the rates. The tramway system is not a haphazard growth—it is not, as in some English cities, a tangle of unrelated parts. It is a scientific unity supplying means of quick transit over the twenty-eight square miles on which the city stands. No one dreams of walking any distance in Toronto. Its electric cars annually carry a number of passengers equal to the population of the United States.

Toronto, I say, breathes the spirit of progress and of the opening era—of the good new times controlled by a concern for the many, instead of for the few. Still in its early youth, Toronto is already one of the notable cities of the world. It is growing vigorously. Measure its future greatness if you can.

There is no need to preach Garden City principles in Toronto. Its administrators will never be under the necessity of seizing upon half-rood burial grounds, and clearing off the gravestones, in order to provide a gasping population with a little live air. In addition to broad, tree-planted thoroughfares, Toronto has fifty parks and gardens, covering an area of over fifteen hundred acres. Not that the city is in any danger of running short of unpolluted atmosphere, since it is situated beside a lake that is wider than many parts of the English Channel and nearly two hundred mileslonger. Moreover, electric power from Niagara obviates the nuisance of smoky chimneys.

Another source of substantial civic revenue is the water supply—that advantage being accompanied by the boon of low charges to the consumer. For a four-roomed house the annual water rate is 8s. 4d., subject to an increase of 2s. 1d. for every additional room, and to a like charge for a bath; while by meter the tariff is a trifle over 3d. per 1,000 gallons for ordinary manufacturers and nearly 8½d. for brewers. The local exchequer also derives considerable assistance from a system of licensing the vocations that derive profit from the organisation of a populous city. Thus the bill-poster, the milkman, the fish pedlar, the plumber, and the rag collector are among those who pay toll to the tune of 4s. 2d. per annum; the cab-driver being let off lightly with a fee of 1s. 0½d. The proprietor of an ice-cream parlour or of a wax-work show has to disburse £1 0s. 10d.; the auctioneer’s yearly tax is £10 8s. 4d.; while the owner of each of Toronto’s one hundred and ten taverns has to pay £340 for his annual licence. With regard to the last item, I may mention that, Canada being a free country, there are places in Toronto where a man may consume alcoholic refreshment, either in moderation or to excess, according to his individual bent; but neither in Toronto nor elsewhere in Canada do you find liquor shops at almost every corner, and dotted along the principal streets, as in England.

But, as I have already hinted, what particularly took my fancy in the Ontario capital was its population. When the people of Toronto do a thing, they do it heartily, and therefore well. Let me give an instance of their thoroughness.

Some thirty-and-odd years ago the authorities of the province decided to institute an annual Provincial Exhibition, and the people of Toronto assisted the project on the understanding that their city was to be the scene of the event for two succeeding years. This concession, if it were ever made, was withdrawn; whereupon Toronto felt spurred to institute a more important annual exhibition (on national, instead of provincial, lines) that should perpetually recur within its boundaries.

For this purpose it set apart an area of 260 acres in the heart of the city and having a frontage to Lake Ontario extending for a mile and a half. On that area it erected exhibition buildings—not temporary edifices of wood and plaster, but huge, handsome structures of brick, stone, concrete and steel. Then it beautified the surroundings with terraces, promenades and flower gardens.

Control was vested in a board of twenty-five directors, eight being elected by the City Council, eight by the manufacturing interests of Canada, and eight by agricultural associations, the remaining seat being allotted to the Minister of Agriculture. The first exhibition, held in 1879, was a success, the number of visitors being 101,794, and the receipts reaching a total of £11,400, while £3,400 was given away in prizes. Year by year the scope of the Exhibition has been enlarged, and year by year the success of the Exhibition has increased. Last year (1910) the visitors numbered 837,200, the receipts were £58,000, and the value of prizes £10,260. And note these two remarkable facts: the Exhibition is open for only a fortnight every year, and it always shows a handsome margin of profit. The amount in 1909 was £13,000. This surplus ishanded over to the City Council, to be used in extending the buildings and improving the grounds. When not in use for the Exhibition the place is available as a public park.

Thus the Toronto Exhibition is popular, prosperous, and permanent. Special excursions are run to it from all settled regions of Canada, the railway and steamboat companies granting reduced rates for the occasion. Also the event always attracts a host of Americans.

It is said—and I believe with justice—that so successful an institution of this character is to be found in no other country. What is the explanation, the reader will ask, of this remarkable achievement of a Canadian city? The only answer I can suggest is—enthusiastic thoroughness.

Let us glance at the scope of the Exhibition. From each section of the Dominion the Provincial Government sends a representative collection of local products. Distinct buildings are allotted to agriculture, manufactures, industries, art, transportation, dairying and machinery. In addition, there are an “Applied Art Building,” a “Women’s Building,” an “Administration Building,” a “Press Building,” a “Dog Building,” and a “Poultry Building.” Stabling is provided for 1,500 horses, 1,200 head of cattle, and 600 swine. A livestock arena was recently constructed at a cost of £22,000. There is a grand stand (having a length of 725 feet and seating accommodation for 16,800 persons), which cost £46,000, and is built of brick, steel and concrete. Including police and fire stations, telegraph and telephone offices, a bank, restaurants, rest rooms, etc., the Exhibition buildings represent a value of nearly half a million pounds sterling. Apart from visitors,there is a permanent population of ten thousand persons on the grounds during the annual fortnight.

THE PERMANENT EXHIBITION AT TORONTO: ONE OF THE BUILDINGS

To each day belongs a special interest. Thus, last year’s diary was as follows: Saturday (August 27th), Preparation Day; Monday, Opening Day; Tuesday, Inauguration Day; Wednesday, School Children’s Day; Thursday, Manufacturers’ Day; Friday, Press Day; Saturday, Commercial Travellers’ Day; Monday, Labour Day; Tuesday, Stock Breeders’ and Fruit Growers’ Day; Wednesday, Farmers’ Day; Thursday, Americans’ Day; Friday, Fraternal Society and Review Day; Saturday, Citizens’ Day; and Monday (September 12th), Break-up Day.

Everything that Canada makes and that other countries sell to Canada is found at the Exhibition. In 1909 that represented a mammoth collection of goods which filled the four large buildings devoted to manufactures, transportation, industries and machinery, besides overflowing into a Manufacturers’ Annexe, and into a vast area beneath the grand stand. Even so, the collection was cramped, so last year, to relieve the pressure, a special building was provided for British exhibits. Goods in process of manufacture are a feature of the Manufacturers’ department, and dense crowds gather daily to witness the making of silks, cotton, shoes, and a hundred and one other articles.

The Exhibition attracts the finest collection of horses and cattle to be seen in Canada, the number of animals totalling about ten thousand, and including many herds specially imported to compete against those bred in the Dominion.

The Art Loan Exhibit, selected by a resident agent in England, affords Canadians an opportunity to see examples of the great European Masters. Prominenceis given to work done in the public schools of Canada, the co-operation of manual training colleges of the United States giving an international interest to this department. New inventions are another strong feature of the Exhibition. The first electric railway to be seen on the Continent was operated there, and that may also be said of the important developments in telegraphy, telephony, and other branches of applied science that recent years have witnessed. Nor does the energetic Board fail to provide high quality in music, military tournaments, and such frivolities as fireworks and variety-concert performances.

I cannot forbear in conclusion to quote the words used by the public-spirited directors to describe their achievement. “The Canadian National Exhibition,” they say, “is the one place to see Canada at a glance. It shows all that Canada makes, mines, and grows. It gathers the products of her homes, her farms, her forests, her waters, her mines and her industries, within the limits of the finest Exhibition Park on the North American Continent. It is recognised from coast to coast, and from the frozen north to the Gulf of Mexico, as the greatest of all annual Exhibitions, distinctly Canadian in its characteristics, and educational in its tendencies, and yet including so many high-class amusements and attractions as to make it the annual holiday centre for three-quarters of a million people drawn from all parts of North America. And the number is increasing every year.”

Bravo, Toronto!

CHAPTER VIIMANITOBA: CLUES TO PRAIRIE FARMING

Standing on high ground in Manitoba—and also, for the matter of that, in Saskatchewan and Alberta—you may gaze upon a vast encircling panorama of grey grass and gentle undulations, visible in the dry atmosphere and bright sunshine to a remote purple distance. That is one sort of prairie, the open sort, so suggestive of the sea. Also there is bush prairie, with trees and heavy undergrowth. A third kind is scrub—the resurrected bush after forest fires have swept it.

But, whether you be on moor or woodland, you will see flowers and birds and bees. For Canada is a land of sunshine, blue sky, and beautiful perfumed blossoms.

Only by hearsay do I know of the North-West when the ground is jewelled with violets, blue anemones, ladies’ slipper, and the bird’s-eye primrose. I know it well, and like it best, in the season of the prairie rose—surely the fairest flower anywhere to be found on the world’s circumference. It is petalled like our own wild rose, but of a sweet fragrance; the plant dwarfed and dainty, and nestling against the earth, with its upturned blossoms ruddy and conspicuous or of palest pink. I’m sure the fairies pluck buds of the prairie rose when they go to gather their posies. Indeed, I am sorry that the maple leaf—eloquentlythough it advertises the flaming glories of the autumn foliage—should have been chosen for the national emblem. Canada will always be to me the Land of the Prairie Rose.

The queen reigns not in lonely majesty. Prominent in her court is a royal relative (the three-flowered geum), an orange-red lily (Philadelphicum), a scarlet columbine that dances in the breeze, and the evening primrose, with fringed gentian and a campanula among the purples, not to forget the wild bergamot and flax and a mauve convolvulus. In autumn, Manitoba and her sister provinces are aglow with nodding sunflowers, gaillardias, golden rod, Michaelmas daisies, and three kinds of rudbeckia. Thus the wild nosegay of Canada has much in common with the garden bouquet of old England.

Manitoba is the smallest and (because it contains Winnipeg) the greatest of the prairie provinces. “It looks like a postage stamp on the map,” I happened to remark to its Prime Minister. “Well, sir,” replied the Hon. R. P. Roblin, with twinkling eyes, “there are half a million people on your postage stamp, and that is but a fraction of the population it is able and destined to maintain. You might report to the English and Scotch farmers that we have over twenty million acres of good agricultural land waiting for them here.”

It is, of course, the curious fact that, even in the smallest and most settled of the prairie provinces, oceans of superb land are still going a-begging. The area each year surveyed, and thereby rendered available for occupation, is as large as the area annually appropriated by the arriving stream of settlers. That stream is steadily increasing in volume, and to-day thousands of English and Scotch tenant-farmers, and tens ofthousands of their agricultural labourers, are cogitating the question: “Shall we go to Canada?” Some persons counsel that course. Others attempt to dissuade them. But what those hesitating farmers and labourers are conscious of needing is, not advice, but information—and information in the form of definite facts rather than of general statements.

It was with this thought in my mind that I had approached Mr. Roblin, who is not merely Premier of Manitoba and its Minister of Agriculture, but one of the foremost living authorities on Canadian farming, his knowledge being based on practical experience in cultivating a large holding in the province.

I told Mr. Roblin that I desired an authoritative account of the process known as “breaking the prairie,” and he very kindly supplied me with the following particulars:

“Where the original prairie is thick and tough, it is customary to break and back-set. The former is best accomplished with a hand breaking-plough that has a rolling coulter, but, if the land be very smooth and level, fairly good work can be done with a sulky plough. In the case of such smooth land, the breaking should be shallow, and it is desirable to have the work completed by the end of June. The sod will be rotted a few weeks, after breaking, and the land should then be back-set. This is done by ploughing in the same direction as before, but to an additional depth of about two inches, so that fresh soil is brought up to form a seed bed. Afterwards the land must be made as fine as possible with a disk-harrow, or similar implement. Then only a light harrowing will be necessary in the following spring, when the seed is put in.

“Where the land is rough instead of level, thinbreaking, of course, will not be practicable. Here the plough must go to an additional depth of from four to five inches, and the work should be done as early as possible in the year. Back-setting is unnecessary, but there should be a good harrowing to produce a level surface, as well as a further harrowing before seeding.

“So much for the two sorts of open grass land—the smooth and the rough. Now we come to the land that is covered with light trees and scrub. It will be found so very fertile as amply to repay the work involved in clearing it—work which, of course, bears no analogy to the task of dealing with the heavily timbered land to be found in other parts of the continent. The larger poplars and willows are chopped out, this being usually done in the winter. Then a fire is run over the land to burn off the remaining trees and the scrub. Afterwards the ground may easily be broken with a strong brush plough, and, when levelling has been done with a harrow, the seed can go in. Large returns are yielded by that class of land, of which immense areas are still obtainable, principally in Northern Manitoba, either as free homesteads or at a nominal price.”

To practical farmers, as well as to other persons having a grasp of farming principles (and this chapter is designed to serve the interests only of those two classes), the foregoing clear and exact statement by Mr. Roblin will convey a definite knowledge of the easy agricultural preliminaries that have to be faced, not only in Manitoba, but also in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

From the expert and obliging Premier I sought and obtained other useful facts about prairie farming.

THE FIRST STEP IN FARMING: “BREAKING THE PRAIRIE”

THE OAT HARVEST: EIGHTY BUSHELS TO THE ACRE

As to the wheat most suitable for Manitoba, Ilearnt that many kinds have been grown on the homesteads, while the search for new knowledge is never slackened at the Government experimental farms; but accumulated experience may be summed up in seven words—there is nothing to beat Red Fyfe. The plant is healthy and vigorous and very productive, the hard and white berry having unequalled milling qualities, with thin bran and high gluten contents.

Concerning oats, I derived the following information from the Premier:

With proper care, this grain does very well in Manitoba, and there is a yearly increase in the demand (both for feeding purposes and oatmeal), and consequently an increase in the price obtainable. In some districts the soil is more favourable for oats than for wheat. Careful selection of seed and thorough cultivation result in immense yields, many farmers reporting an average of eighty bushels per acre on large holdings. For a number of years the Banner oat has been most favoured by growers, this being a thin, hulled sort, very productive, and of excellent quality. The white varieties, known as Abundance, Ligowa, and Newmarket, also receive attention and sell at good prices for milling purposes. What can be done by good cultivation on the rich soils of Manitoba is illustrated by this fact: At the Brandon experimental farm, over a period of five years, the average yield of Banner oats, on summer fallowed land, and without the use of a fertiliser, was one hundred and sixteen bushels and four pounds per acre. In the rotation of crops the place occupied by oats is usually after wheat and before either a barley crop or summer fallow.

I learnt that the Chevalier varieties of two-rowed barley have not given satisfaction. Two-rowedDuckbills, such as Canadian Thorpe, are stiffer in the straw, and, as a rule, the heads fill well. The six-rowed varieties—notably Mensury and Odessa—have been found best adapted for general cultivation. They can be sown later than any other grain, and mature so early as to escape danger from autumn frosts. It nearly always happens that the straw is stiff and bright and that the ears fill well.

With regard to fodder crops, I learnt that farmers in newly-settled districts have no need for them, abundance of excellent hay being obtainable from the natural prairie grass on the lower lands and water meadows. When, with the growth of a district, those areas are drained and utilised as grain fields, the farmers have no difficulty in raising fine crops of timothy, western rye, millet, broom, and other grasses. Lucerne and the clovers also thrive well under proper treatment, while Indian corn grows to a height of from eight to ten feet, and, yielding about twenty tons to the acre, is excellent as green fodder or as ensilage.

Having thus gleaned the salient facts as to preliminary operations and the crops that do well in Manitoba, I obtained the following particulars as to methods of farming practised in the province:

“Most of the wheat crop is grown on land that has produced a grain crop of some kind during the previous year. After the stubble land has been ploughed as early in the autumn as possible, it is furrowed and left ready for sowing in the following spring. In the case of new land, this inexpensive method of cultivation usually results in large profits. Sooner or later, of course, a regular system of rotation has to be adopted. The common practice is to include a summer fallow in the rotation, the grain stubble being usually ploughedin June, when the weed seeds have begun to germinate. Then the soil is compacted with a sub-surface packer, or similar implement, this operation being followed, during the summer, by thorough surface tillage, to kill weeds and prevent evaporation.

“Some of the largest and best crops of wheat are associated with summer fallowing, which greatly improves the condition of the soil. The more advanced farmers include grass in their rotation, timothy or western rye being usually sown with a nurse crop of grain, and the land being used for pasture after two season’s hay crops have been cut. Where clover is grown, a nurse crop is not recommended, although in favourable seasons there may be a light seeding of hay to be cut early as a green feed. Excellent results have been obtained by ploughing grain stubble in spring, harrowing once, then sowing about twelve pounds of red clover to the acre, harrowing again, and rolling. When weeds of the ‘volunteer’ grain crop are about a foot high, a mower should be run over the land, the cuttings being left to form a mulch. The clover plants become large and well rooted before the autumn, and there is no danger that they will be killed by the winter. In the following year two cuttings of clover can be taken.”

My attention was drawn to the fact that, the areas under cultivation being large, farm operations have to be carried through as expeditiously as possible. Hence the most improved machinery is in use on the homesteads. Immediately upon the ripening of the grain, large binders are set to work, and are kept in operation from dawn to sunset. At times a score of these machines, each drawn by four horses, are to be seen moving in close succession around an immense field,with the result that, in a few days, the crop from hundreds of acres is safely stooked. In a few more days the standing grain is cured; then the farm is visited by one of the threshing outfits, which consist of powerful steam traction engines and separators. The threshing is done direct from the stook, and is carried out so quickly that only a few days intervene between the ripening of the grain and its delivery on the market.

I went into the question of live stock, beginning with the animal of chief importance in agriculture—the horse. The application of mechanical power in farming has gone much farther on the North American continent than in this country. In England or Scotland a man has to be content with tilling a farm; in Canada and the United States the ambitious grain-grower will often till a landscape, waxing exceedingly rich in the process. For the man who measures his land by square miles the seasons are no longer than for the man who measures his land by acres. He is, of course, in a position to multiply teams of horses to any extent, but—human labour being as scanty and high-priced on one side of the Atlantic as it is cheap and superabundant on the other—he can never be sure of securing enough men to drive the teams. So he turns eagerly to the machines, driven by petrol or steam, which are being placed on the market in forms of increasing efficiency.

But the average Canadian farmer, with his one hundred and sixty or three hundred and twenty acres, is dependent upon animal power for ploughing, harrowing, and reaping; and, therefore, possible emigrants among our Scotch and English agriculturists will desire to learn something as to the quantity and, moreimportant still, the quality of the animal power available on the prairie.

The history of the horse in Manitoba, I learnt, is divisible into three chapters. In the early days of settlement, stock-raising was the mainstay of agriculture, and the pioneer farmers introduced into the province some fine horses and cattle, the imported stock thriving wonderfully on nutritious prairie grasses which had long sustained vast herds of buffalo. To this day, indeed, one hears of the magnificent steers that fed on the sweet upland pastures and revelled belly-deep in vetches and wild pea-vines. So much for the first chapter—concerned with the laying of a good foundation, whereof the influence is felt in some of the best studs and herds of to-day. Afterwards, Manitoba discovered how splendidly its soil and climate were adapted for grain-growing; and everybody turned his back on stock-raising and went in for wheat. Thus the second chapter represents a period in which the raising of horses was neglected. And so we come to the third chapter; and here I cannot do better than quote Mr. Roblin:

“Many a traveller has marvelled at the myriad beacon fires illuminating the autumn sky from the far-reaching stubble fields, where the straw piles are burned as soon as the threshers have completed their task. This improvident waste, coupled with careless methods encouraging the introduction and spread of weeds, is causing the pendulum to swing slowly back again. In order to improve the mechanical condition of the soil, to restore exhausted fertility and to control noxious weeds, the wiser farmers are now cultivating grasses and clovers, fencing their holdings, and giving serious attention to the raising of live stock.”

There are about a quarter of a million horses in Manitoba to-day, and the supply does not keep pace with the demand. Until a few years ago the farmers were dependent upon supplies from east and west and from the United States; nowadays numerous animals bred in the province appear in the Winnipeg market, and command good prices.

In my part of the Old Country there is a saying that when it comes to buying a horse a man cannot trust his own brother; and I learnt from Mr. Roblin that, even in honest Canada, equine dealings have not always been above reproach. “Importers from the United States,” I was advised, “not only brought with them American-bred stallions, but also introduced American methods of disposing of them. One of these methods was commonly known as ‘syndicating.’ Ten or a dozen farmers were induced to take shares in a stallion, and to sign notes of joint ownership. In many of these cases the stallion so disposed of was stated to be worth from £400 to £800, which was generally three or four times its actual value. The notes were discounted before maturity, and the salesmen decamped. Such practices have done much injury to the horse-breeding industry, but, happily, they are now almost a thing of the past.”

Legislation, I learnt, has been introduced in the western provinces to foster horse-breeding. The objects of that legislation are to encourage the use of sound, pure-bred stallions and to eliminate others. Owners are compelled, under risk of a penalty, to register stallions with the departments of agriculture of the several provincial governments, certificates being issued that state, in the case of each animal, whether it be pure-bred or graded, and whether it be sound or unsound.A copy of this certificate must be printed on advertisements and route-bills and be conspicuously displayed on the door of every stable occupied by the horse during the breeding season.

Draft breeds are the most popular with prairie farmers, Clydesdales predominating. There are also many Percherons and Shires. As numerous registered Clydesdale mares are stationed throughout the country, and as a good Clydesdale stallion is to be found on nearly every section, this breed is likely to maintain its position. Of horses bred on the average farm, few would scale up to the draft class, the majority having to be registered as agricultural horses because they weigh less than 1,600 lbs., while there are many horses bred from small nondescript mares that could only be styled “farm chunks.” Although lacking in weight, these are useful horses on a farm, being hardy, and having good wearing qualities.

Concerning the lighter breeds, I learnt that there are many American trotting stallions in the country, and that excellent road horses are produced. Thoroughbreds, hackneys, and some of the coach breeds have been introduced into Manitoba, and among the resulting crosses are a good many saddle and heavy leather horses. These are useful animals for light farm work and for certain kinds of road work, but they do not command high prices.

Mr. Roblin certified that on the whole the country is good for horse-breeding, though, against the healthy climate and the abundance of good feed, one has to set a rather high mortality among foals from the disease known as “joint ill.”

I now come to the matter of cattle. And here let me say that the English or Scotch farmer will gain anexcellent idea of Canadian conditions if, taking his balance sheet for a year, he will remodel it on the supposition that he has no rent, interest, or tithe to pay, and only a merely nominal taxation, in respect to a holding of one hundred and sixty acres or more, and on the further supposition that he has the free use of excellent and unlimited grazing outside that holding. To do this is to translate farming profits secured in one part of the British Empire into farming profits obtainable in another part of the British Empire. Indeed, the difference between the United Kingdom and Canada, from the agriculturist’s point of view, is this: in the former country he is allowed to use the air, sunshine, and rain for his private profit free of charge; while in the latter country he finds another natural element also given away, and he no more has to reckon with a landlord than with an airlord or a rainlord.

Having owned and tended a cow or two in my time, and having a fondness for those beasts, I found myself regarding the prairie herds with a keen interest, and an interest not wholly free from jealousy. Grain-growing with up-to-date machinery on ample new acres that harbour few weeds and need no manure, was a sufficiently tantalising contrast to the elaborate methods necessary in an old country where land is precious and in need of costly fertilisers. But it was hard for an Essex small-holder to keep his temper on noting the simple, not to say automatic, lines on which kine may be kept in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. At least one cow will generally be retained on the homestead, and be duly milked, so that the farmer’s wife may make puddings, and her children grow sturdy on an unstinted supply of cream and butter; but often enough the herd is permitted to look after itself and roam atlarge on any unappropriated and unfenced land, drinking from rivers and growing fat on the nutritious prairie grass. I spoke to some farmers who confessed that, during the greater part of the year, they never see their cattle and have no definite knowledge of their whereabouts. Every farmer has his distinctive registered brand, and, before permitting his animals to depart on their wanderings, he sees to it that each bears the mark that will establish and safeguard his ownership. Where calving takes place in a herd out on free range, the unbranded youngsters will run with their mothers, and so remain within the pale of proprietorship.

“What a waste of milk!” was my comment. “Oh,” the prairie farmer has replied, “I can’t be everlasting rounding up the bunch to milk ’em. Then look at the daily bother of sending the stuff into town. No, sir, wheat is my line, and it pays me best to look after the land. Of course, the beef end of it is different. I don’t mind driving a score or so of fat beasts to market now and again, and it’s a few hundred dollars easily earned.”

But I will no further pursue the thread of my personal experiences, since I have designed that this chapter shall contain comprehensive data, bearing the stamp of high authority, concerning farming on the prairie.

With regard to cattle, then, Mr. Roblin furnished me with these particulars:

“The little Red River cow of early days—rugged, short-legged, crumple-horned, and brindled—has almost entirely disappeared. The foundations of several herds of shorthorns were laid in the early ’eighties, and the progeny of these, and of many similar herds subsequently established, have beenwidely distributed throughout the country. Indeed, the blood of this cosmopolitan breed now flows in the veins of most of our cattle.

“Of the special beef breeds, the Hereford and the Aberdeen Angus are fairly well represented. Where the calves run with their dams, and beef production only is desired, both these breeds, as well as Galloways, are found to answer well. They are good grazers, and mature heavy, compact carcases of the best quality. The cows, however, are not such good milkers nor so docile as shorthorns.

“Of special dairy breeds, the Holsteins are steadily gaining in favour. They are robust and large-framed, have great capacity for assimilating ‘roughage,’ and produce immense quantities of fairly good milk. Ayrshires and Jerseys have been introduced, but while the former are numerously represented in the dairying districts, the latter make no headway.

“In localities that have been longest settled, wheat has tended to displace cattle from the sweet grazing of the uplands and drive them to the lower-lying and flatter lands, where the grass is coarser and less nutritious. Consequently there has been some deterioration in the quality of the herds. But, with the adoption of more ‘intensive’ methods, including the growing of corn, clover, and lucerne, and with greater care bestowed on stabling, better results are accruing. Already there are indications that cattle-feeding is receiving due attention in Manitoba, and that cattle-raising promises to become in this province one of the most important branches of agriculture. The straw and screenings of the wheat-field, instead of being burnt, are destined to be ‘marketed on the hoof,’ the manure serving to fertilise and mechanically improvethe soil, thereby causing the grain crops to give a greater yield and to mature more quickly.”

From Mr. Roblin’s statement it will be seen that already, following the natural evolution of a country’s agricultural development, the more settled parts of Manitoba have entered upon the stage of mixed farming. The factors that make grain-growing so remunerative have the same influence on dairying. Manitoba, like Ontario and Quebec, is alive to the importance of co-operation in this industry, and the machinery of cream-collection and of butter- and cheese-making in factories is working on a large and increasing scale.

With regard to sheep, Mr. Roblin supplied discouraging information. So far as climate and soil are concerned, the prairie provinces are admirably suited for sheep-raising. Moreover, prices for lamb and mutton rule high. But the coyote, or prairie-wolf, while harmless to other stock, preys on sheep. It is the farmer’s one enemy in the animal kingdom of Canada. Governments and municipalities offer bonuses for coyote scalps, and ultimately, no doubt,canis latranowill be exterminated. Meanwhile those prairie farmers who have flocks of Shropshires, Oxfords, and Leicesters are put to the expense of close fences.

“But,” said Mr. Roblin, “although I speak in this disconsolate tone about sheep-raising, it has, I believe, a great future; in this way. The prolific yield of the earth has caused farmers to become careless and to allow noxious weeds to grow rampant. Now sheep thrive and produce excellent mutton on these very weeds, which means that the sheep-owner is achieving a double purpose: he is cleaning his land very thoroughly—the sheep absolutely exterminate the weeds—and he issecuring a handsome return from his fine fat sheep in doing so.” As for the outlet, Mr. Roblin declared that Winnipeg, “with half the population of Montreal, has double the demand for mutton.” Indeed, he considers that the sheep-raiser finds a better local market in Manitoba than anywhere else in Canada.

With the advance of dairying, hog-raising is assuming importance. But, as Mr. Roblin pointed out, every farmer can, if he chooses, cheaply rear without milk a few swine on by-products that would otherwise be wasted. Not enough pork is produced in Central Canada to supply the local demand, but market conditions do not greatly encourage the industry. As the people of Manitoba want light, mild-cured bacon and hams, Yorkshires and Berkshires stand in chief favour.

Finally, I gathered these further facts of interest to anyone who contemplates tilling the prairie soil:

Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries have long been cultivated profitably in Manitoba; and of late years some hardy apples have proved successful on the Siberian crab. All garden vegetables, save a few that require a long season, are grown to a high state of perfection in the prairie provinces. Eggs and poultry command a good market and receive increasing attention. Following upon the widespread cultivation of clover, bee-keeping has become easy and profitable.

WHEAT GROWING IN THE EASTERN TOWNSHIPS: LENDING A HAND AT STOOKING

CHAPTER VIIIAMONG THE DUKHOBORS

To watch the development of North America is to see Nature performing an endless conjuring trick with the human race. At New York, Quebec, and the other ocean ports there is that interminable procession of arriving liners, crowded in the steerage with persons who, in face, speech, clothes, ideas, and demeanour, are foreigners—foreigners obviously, and, as would seem, unalterably—yet when you travel about the country you make the bewildering discovery that they are not there. A family of newly landed foreigners, it is true, you may chance to fall in with, but the accumulated mass, the avalanche of emigrants who have been arriving in daily thousands for tens of years past—they have mysteriously vanished. And in their place you see millions of Yankees and Canadians who have dropped, apparently, from the skies.

The process of absorption, of adaptation, of transmogrification, is rapid, as two personal incidents may serve to show. Crossing the Atlantic recently, I happened to be standing in the between-decks promenade of the steerage, with my attention engaged by a group of inert Scandinavians, who—because of their strange attire and talk, their clumsy movements, and their wondering eyes looking out helplessly from flabby countenances—seemed creatures from another planet.By way of contrast, there stood at my side a dapper little elderly man in a cowboy hat, and having alert and penetrating eyes and a neatly trimmed tuft of hair on his otherwise clean-shaven face—in a word, the typical smart Yankee as one sees him on the stage.

“I suppose,” said I, a trifle dubiously, “those people will somehow settle into shape out in the West?”

“I guess they will,” murmured the calm little Yankee.

“They certainly look a most unpromising lot,” I blundered on.

“Perhaps they might improve,” drawled my companion in the same even tone, and still looking straight ahead of him.

“They appear to be so uncouth,” my evil genius prompted me to add, “so dull, so lacking in brains and breeding. In fact, they almost seem like——”

“Look here,” said the little Yankee, as he turned to confront me, not indeed with any show of resentment, yet with a suggestion of mild protest in his keen gaze. “Some o’ your ideas on this subject might not be just exactly what I should think. I’m Scandinavian born myself, having come over—a boy of fourteen—in a party as like as two peas to that one.”

There remained for me, of course, nothing but a hurried confession that I should not have thought it, since, to my eyes, he looked the walking incarnation of everything that was bright, quick and admirable in the American character: which did something to patch up our relationship; but I am not likely to forget the lesson that, in talking to a Yankee or a Canadian, one is very likely confronting a dual nationality, with half of it hidden from view.

My other experience concerns a little girl namedDolly. As I knew her before she and her people went to Canada, Dolly was a timid, clinging, winsome mite who, as the saying goes, could not say boo to a goose. Before the family had been a year in the new country I had the pleasure of visiting them in their home on the prairie. All were the same as I had known them before, and yet all, in some subtle way, were different. They had become infected by a spirit I can only describe as Canadian—by something that showed itself in a sort of hearty self-reliance—by something that Dolly illustrated for me in a very definite and memorable manner. Entering the parlour one afternoon, I found her a-perch the music stool, industriously playing the piano. “That doesn’t sound much like a piece, Dolly,” I happened to remark; “it’s an exercise, isn’t it?” “You bet your life it is,” replied the complacent child, without turning her head or desisting from her performance.

A rapid assimilation of peoples is, in fact, a law of social development in North America. But the working of that law has, in the case of the Dukhobors, been suspended; and I have been laying emphasis on the rule only that my readers may be able more clearly to appreciate the exception.

I went to Verigin, the headquarters of the Quaker-like Russian vegetarians—the strange sect who were assisted to Canada by Count Tolstoy and a committee of European well-wishers, and who have since given some trouble to the Dominion authorities by declining to take the oath of citizenship and by perambulating the country naked in search of a Messiah.

I found a few Dukhobors living in ordinary Canadian houses at Verigin proper, where the community has a range of offices, a warehouse, a brick-yard, awheat elevator, and a flour-mill fitted with up-to-date machinery. Also there I found a handful of other nationalities (notably a Scotch family and a Roumanian family, who have both become Canadian), and they testified with two voices concerning the peculiar people in the midst of whom they dwell. But before referring to lines of cleavage in local opinion, I will briefly give my own superficial impressions of a community whose main principles have always engaged my sympathy.

They decline, on grounds of conscience, to serve as soldiers, and I happen to regard warfare between civilised nations as a hateful folly, admitting the peaceful and rational alternative of arbitration. They also object to slay animals for food, or for any other purpose, and, being myself inclined to a non-flesh diet, I was not likely to quarrel with that item of their humanitarian creed, even though I personally am unable to rise to the ethical height of sparing the lives of vermin. Thus such things as I shall say about these non-Canadians will at least issue from a mind unpolluted by prejudice.

The local section of the community (for other sections exist elsewhere in Canada) is distributed among several villages established within a short radius of Verigin. To one of those villages—Varnoe—I went on foot—or, rather, I went part of the way on foot; for a wagon overtook me on the road, and, addressing its two occupants (men who, by reason of their unanimated expressions and a Russian suggestion in the cut of their clothes, were easy to recognise as Dukhobors), I asked if they would kindly give me a lift. That my English was, however, thrown away upon them their expressionless faces clearly showed, so bypantomime I indicated the way by which I desired to profit by their indulgence. They vouchsafed no smile of acquiescence and no frown of refusal; so, without more ado, I scrambled into the vehicle, which promptly resumed its journey.

Now, had those two Dukhobors been possessed of even a moderate sense of humour, not to mention the gift of human sympathy, they must, I think, have betrayed some passing appreciation of the predicament in which I had all unwittingly involved myself. For the wagon had no springs, and I was having the time of my life in the matter of jolting and jarring, with stirring sensations as of the dislocation of one’s bones and the loosening of one’s teeth, as that awful conveyance went blundering along the rough road. Nor did occasion arise for any compassionate concern on behalf of my companions, since the seat they occupied was fixed to pliable steel supports that must have ensured for them a reasonable measure of physical comfort. And when—having had about enough of it—I called a halt and dismounted from that unsympathetic vehicle, there was still no sign of fraternity from either of those two self-centred and apparently depressed Dukhobors.

The village—when I presently arrived at it—proved a surprising place, with strange, foreign-looking and picturesque houses having walls plastered with mud, but with a note of distinction in the disposition of the timbering, in the shaping of the windows, and in the gable ends of the heavy vegetating roofs. Moreover, the eye was grateful for variations of detail in the several structures, no two being exactly alike, though all were affected by common principles of structure and design—all, at least, save a central meeting-place inprim brickwork, which was a civilised eyesore in that setting of primitive architecture.

But if the aspect of those Dukhobor dwellings could not fail to please an artist, their contiguity was calculated to horrify a social reformer. Here on the Canadian prairie, where one human habitation to 160 acres is the rule, there seemed something grotesquely gratuitous in a street of crowded houses, each with a little backyard that scarce afforded latitude for a pig, a wash-tub, and three gooseberry-bushes.

The men were either afield or indoors. But I saw a number of women. Some were applying mud to the walls, using their hands as trowels, and being copiously bemired from head to foot; others appeared and disappeared in their little gardens as they went sluggishly about their household affairs. Indeed, a sense of the sluggishness of those fat-faced, broad-bodied, heavily-clothed and big-booted women is the main impression they left on my mind. There were some children about, and they also seemed overburdened with clothes and deficient in vitality.

The stranger excited no curiosity, and prompted no spontaneous greetings. My friendly overtures to the adults were rewarded with dull nods and a muttered syllable or two. Those people were all quite happy, I suppose, but they were living their lives in a minor key. If one of the boys (not readily to be distinguished, by the by, from the girls) had only called out or whistled, or even set up a hullabaloo of blubbering, it would, I felt, have relieved the tension.

After walking twice from end to end of the village, I determined to see if it were not possible, by hook or by crook, to make a Dukhobor smile. Squatting on a seat in front of one of the houses, I laid myselfout to secure the companionship of a little child who stood a few feet away, eyeing me with solemn misgiving. Not until I had produced my watch, fountain pen, bunch of keys and penknife, and spread them out before her, could the dubious youngster be coaxed forward. Yet her interest in these glittering valuables proved still-born; all my laborious attempts to show off their jingling and snappy parts being looked upon with a coldness bordering on boredom. However, that stumpy little Dukhobor toddler did at last manifest a spark of personality by earnestly pointing towards the grass at my feet; whereupon I plucked a bunch and held it out to her. The offering was accepted with alacrity and in a spirit of appreciation; hers being apparently the well-balanced type of mind which, content with things familiar and of established worth, is proof against the glamour of mere novelty. I gathered another handful of herbage and made a show of also surrendering that; but this time the chubby little fist stretched forth only to find the gift denied. Ten minutes later we were still doing that—attempts at surreptitious seizure sometimes prevailing against treacherous withdrawal, and the proceedings being frankly accepted by my tiny opponent as a legitimate and sporting way of passing the time. But all this time she did not smile. Nay, I had already begun to regard my aspiration as hopeless when, chancing to look round, I perceived that a Dukhobor woman—presumably the child’s mother—was overlooking our contest with much the air of a referee; and when I caught the eye of that Dukhobor woman she gave me a most gracious and unmistakable smile.

Soon afterwards, I retraced my steps along the road, and, calling at headquarters, sought an audience ofthe Dukhobor leader. But Peter M. Verigin, “Representative of the Dukhobor Society in Canada” (to give him the modest title which, on his visiting card, he gives himself), happened to be away on a journey. However, I was received by Mr. M. W. Cazakoff, the manager, who, in answer to my inquiries, made the following statement:—

“This is the Dukhobor Society’s trading store, where we have wholesale and retail departments for the sale of dry goods, hardware, leather, boots and shoes, groceries, crockery, farm implements, etc. We have seven grist mills, including one of 400 horse-power; three brickyards, where over seven million bricks have been made; about 800 horses; 800 head of cattle; twenty-five threshing machines; a number of barns and stables, and a fine assortment of ploughs, harrows, and other agricultural machinery. We have 13,000 acres in Saskatchewan, it being worth at least thirty dollars an acre, and the Society has now bought 15,000 acres in British Columbia—at Castlegar, about thirty miles south of Nelson—where a beginning has been made with fruit-farming. So you will see that our community, which numbers between seven and eight thousand persons, has become rich. The people who have made trouble for us are not many—not quite a hundred—and they do not belong to us, and we do not like what they do. Their Russian name would be called in English: The Men Without Any Clothes. We hope they will not make any more bother.”

Said the jovial Scotch miller, when I afterwards sat chatting with him in his cosy parlour: “I have a lot to do with the Dukhobors, and you may take it from me they are very nice people. As for the wild, fanatical set that sometimes go about with no clothes on, well,they are just the eccentric ones, and they don’t belong to the regular Society. One day I found a long-haired individual in the mill among those that work for me, a-whispering and talking away at ’em fit to beat the band. I saw what his game was—getting up one of those naked-crusade outfits to make a lot more bother. So I took and ran him out of the mill. They are normally as quiet, harmless, and industrious a people as you could meet anywhere. And such simple tastes they’ve got, too! Did you see that little patch of sunflowers along the road? Well, they grow them for their own food, and they munch away at the ripe seed as contentedly as possible. I tried those seeds once—but never again. A cut from the joint with some nice gravy is more in my line. All the same, you can’t help respecting them for their principles, especially when they are always so nicely behaved. And as for Mr. Verigin and the other heads of the Society, you couldn’t want to do business with nicer and more straightforward gentlemen.”

Said the highly intelligent and much travelled Roumanian storekeeper: “Nobody finds any fault with the Dukhobors themselves; but the system under which they live doesn’t give them a fair chance. They oughtn’t to be kept in their present uneducated state, and allowed to live in a superstitious belief that Peter Verigin is their heavenly ruler. The Society make a boast of the property they have amassed; but what an infinitely greater amount so many thousand families would have produced by this time if each man had been allowed to take up his quarter-section and been a free and independent citizen, bringing up his children to be properly educated and to speak the language of the country, instead of carrying on traditions ofignorance and superstition. As for their objection to bloodshed, and their preference for a non-meat diet—well, obviously those ideals can be preserved just as well by people who are mentally emancipated as by people living in a state of mediæval darkness. I am happy to say that, in spite of the measures taken to preserve thestatus quo, a little light is beginning to enter the community from without, and already many of the men have struck for independence, and withdrawn from the community. Some are living hereabouts on their own homesteads, and very fine and prosperous settlers they are proving.”

And with what my Roumanian friend said I found myself in hearty agreement. Having escaped from the yoke of autocracy to the political freedom of Canada, the least the Dukhobors can do, it seems to me, is to shed the mental fetters of an ignorant Russian peasantry and become enlightened Canadian citizens.

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