Hunting scene on the Souris River, Manitoba
Just now people are rather exercised with the Indians, who have been placed in reserves where they cannot get a living, and who, besides, find their location an unhealthy swamp. One of the Winnipeg journals is very indignant, and says this is what may be expected from the Government. From all I can learn, the Indians are sturdy maintainers of their rights, and take care that the Government shall not easily overreach them; and perhaps, on the whole, the Indians are better off under Canadian than they would be under American government. Indeed, people say they are very good fellows when uncorrupted by Englishmen. The emigrant in these parts must not be surprised at the occasional appearance of an Indian; and perhaps it is well that the farmer takes care of his horses. I am sorry for the poor Indian, who is the original owner of the soil, and whom, perhaps,one day Mr. Henry George may see fit to visit with a view to the recovery of his rights and the redress of his wrongs. When that is the case, the emigrant will have to pack up and return to his native land. Till that is the case, however, he may safely cross the water, and avail himself of the advantages offered him by the Dominion Government; but to do that he must have at least £200, and then he can stock his farm and keep himself till the return for his labours comes in.
Souris Valley, Manitoba
‘The worst of all our books on emigration,’ said the editor of one of the dailies to me, ‘is that they give too glowing an estimate of the state of affairs. They say a farmer will do well with £100. This is not sufficient capital as a rule to start with. It is true there have been instances where settlers have succeeded on this sum, but with such a sum as £200, Manitoba offers the farmer advantages such as no other place offers him.’ Here, also, the regular farm-hand is sure of his living. I seean attempt is being made by a gentleman, now in Winnipeg, to plant out a couple of hundred boys—and I hear there is room for them. But there is little building going on in Winnipeg, and the mechanic need not trouble himself to come here. All in this part are loud in condemnation of emigration from the East-end of London. Those poor of the East-end—alas! neither the Old World nor the New seems to know what to do with them. Since this was written I see the Manitoba Mortgage and Investment Company have declared a dividend of eight per cent., an indication that at any rate in their part of the world money is being made.
LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE.
‘You will find Moose Jaw a very pretty place,’ said a gentleman to me as I left Winnipeg; and certainly it is a pretty place, though not exactly according to an Englishman’s idea of prettiness.
It consists of a railway-station and an assemblage of wooden huts and shops, which have all been called into existence within the last twelve months. It boasts a weekly organ (such as it is), two or three places of worship, one or two billiard-rooms, and a post-office—not a tent, as in some parts of the country in which I have been, but a real wooden-house. The shopkeepers seem to have nothing to do,and the pigs perambulate the streets, evidently enjoying the fine freedom allowed them in this part of the world. There are at this time about 700 or 800 settlers, some of the farmers who came out last year having moved further west.
I am writing in the railway-station, in the waiting-rooms of which are many farmers, all on their way to Calgary—for which place, also, I am bound, expecting to start at the very inconvenient hour of two p.m.
The scene, as I sit, is not cheering. Far as the eye can reach there is the prairie. It was the same all the way from Winnipeg. It will be the same all the way to Calgary, some 400 or 500 miles hence. It is intensely hot, and men and women sit in the open air, under such shade as the wooden houses afford. It is intensely cold in the winter. Not a tree is to be seen, or a hill, or a farmhouse; nothing to relieve the monotony of the sea of grass land on every side, excepthere and there a prairie fire—the first step to be taken before the farmer commences the cultivation of the soil; and I must own a prairie fire by night is rather a pretty sight.
I parted last night with a General and his wife, who have come to settle about forty miles off. At present he and his family have no fresh meat, and he has to make an arrangement with a Brandon butcher, about a hundred and fifty miles off, to supply him with a Sunday joint. Tinned meats his family have tried, and he has got with him a fresh joint of meat, which he purchased in Winnipeg; but there are prairie chickens always to be had, and in some places, as we came along, we saw an abundance of wild ducks on the Assiniboine River, and in swamps, over which we rushed in the Pullman car.
This luxury cannot be expected in Moose Jaw. Here there is no water at all. Last year the farmers had no rain, and they fear they will have none now. As it is, theprairie begins to look a little scorched. I should be loth to spend the remainder of my days here; but a farmer may make a living, and so may a farm-labourer. As to any other class of people here, there is no opening at all. The town is full of shopkeepers, barristers, auctioneers, and dealers. Mechanics who come out will starve. When the land around is taken up they will have a chance, but not till then.
As I sit, a dark figure beckons me to come to him. He has a Jim Crow hat, a blanket around his martial form, and a gayer one in front. He has rings in his ears, bracelets on his arms, and a string of some kind of beads around his neck. He offers me his hand, and I shake it. Then I commence a conversation. ‘What you called?’ I say. He makes an unintelligible reply. ‘You Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or Robinson?’ I ask; and again he gives an unintelligent grunt. I offer him a cigar, and he sits down on hishaunches in the shade. He is one of the Black Bull men, who have been chased from the States, in consequence of having made that part of the world too hot for them. They are not natives of this country, but have settled in the prairie two or three miles off. I tell him to be a good boy, and I dare say he will obey my injunction as literally as any other man in England or anywhere else.
Again I look, and two red-coated warriors greet me. They are on the look-out for contraband, and are as fine and clean and well-set fellows as any I have seen anywhere. They belong to the mounted police, and live chiefly in the saddle, as there are but five hundred of them to all this gigantic North-West. I had already made their acquaintance. At the first station we came to after leaving Manitoba, one of them came into the car, gave a searching glance all round, and then walked out. ‘What was that for?’ I asked the General. ‘Oh! he has come to see if wehave any whisky. They are very particular. I was coming this way once, when a fellow traveller took out his pocket flask and began drinking. The mounted policeman who saw him do it immediately took his flask from him, and emptied it there and then.’ This strict prohibition is the result, not of the prevalence of Temperance sentiment in the North-West, but rather of fear of the Indians, who are better shots than the mounted police, although not so well provided with fire-arms. The people seem to anticipate that the law will be relaxed when the whites are more numerous and the Indians fewer. The law has had good results, nevertheless. In obedience to it the German gives up his lager-beer. And next to the Scotch the Germans make the best emigrants.
The General tells me such is the fineness of the climate that he finds he can get on very well without his customary glass ofgrog. At Moose Jaw the inhabitants take to Hop Bitters instead, and one of the institutions of the place is the Hop Bitters Brewery.
I believe you may keep whisky if you get a permit, and a permit is not difficult, I understand, to get.
I am sorry to say the General, in spite of the mounted police, offered me a drop of whisky, and at a later period a friend, as we sat smoking, asked me if I was ready for a ‘smile.’ Of course, in my ignorance, I replied in the affirmative. Diving under his seat, he brought out a fine bottle of real Scotch, and, mixing it with water, offered me a ‘smile.’ You may be sure I indignantly refused. You cannot expect me to be a party to the violation of the law.
These Indians just now are creating a little apprehension, especially the tribe under the renowned Yellow Calf, who it was hoped had taken to farming, and who last year hada good crop, and bought a reaping machine; but the Indians are very restless, and Yellow Calf has sent a messenger to rouse the tribes, and a strong party of the mounted police are detached to watch his movements. They are dying off the face of the earth, and we may well suppose that they bear no love to the white man, who has taken possession of the lands which they once knew to be their own. Here the people evidently think that the sooner the Indians are exterminated the better. The men do not work; all that is done by the squaws—wretched women with long black hair, and little black eyes as round as beads, and who rejoice in blankets quite as unromantic, but quite as comfortable, as those of their lords and masters. Hitherto, I have not made way with the dusky beauties, but I may be more successful by-and-by.
I believe the Indians have a real grievance against the Canadian Government. It wasagreed that they should be settled in reserves, and that they should have a certain amount of food supplied. This compact was fairly observed by the Canadian Government; but in an evil hour they made this part of their duty over to contractors, and we know what contractors are, all the world over. The Indians say faith has not been kept with them, and it is to be feared that they have good reason for saying so. Just now they are starving, as this is the close season, and they are not permitted to hunt or fish. They say that there is no close season as far as the stomach is concerned, and from personal experience I may say I believe they are right.
It is now noon on the prairie, and I am dying of the heat. Oh, for the forest shade! Oh, for the crystal stream! Alas! the water here is not good for the stranger, and I fear to touch it. At Toronto I managed pretty well on Apollinaris water; but out herenothing of the kind is to be had. What am I to do? The beef here is so tough that you can’t cut it with a knife, and must have belonged to the oldest importation from my native land; and I have to pay a price for which I can have a luxurious repast in London. O Spiers and Pond! O Gordon and Co.! O respected Ring and Brymer, under whose juicy joints and sparkling wines the ancient Corporation of London renews its youth! How my soul longs for your flesh-pots in this dry and thirsty land, where no water is! I have been out on the prairie under the burning sun. It is cracked, and parched, and bare, and the flowers refuse to bloom, and only the gigantic grasshopper or the pretty but repulsive snake meets my eye. That dim line, protracted to the horizon east and west, is the railroad. That far-off collection of sheds is the rising town of Moose Jaw. That blue line on the horizon, which makes me pant for the sea, is a mirage. Far off aresome white tents glistening in the sun. They are the wigwams of the Indians.
Like the Wandering Jew, again I urge on my wild career, and here I am with noble savages—so hideous that words fail to tell their hideousness. No wonder the squaws are bashful. They have little to be proud of, though they have necklaces and rings and ornaments around their belts, and gay shawls, which have come from some far away factory. Some of them have put a streak of red paint where the black hair divides. Others are painted as much as any Dowager of Mayfair, and have ear ornaments that reach down to the middle. Not one is fairly passable.
Rousseau and the sentimentalists, who talk of the savage, greatly err in their estimate of that noble individual. He is lazy and filthy, gluttonous, and would be a wine-bibber had he the chance. I looked into his tent, and there he was sitting naked, whilst his squaw was cooking a bit of a horse with the hair onfor his dinner. He is unpleasant as a neighbour for many reasons, and is indifferent how he gets a dollar, or how his squaw earns it either. All along the prairie he seems to have nothing to do but to rush to the nearest railway station, and sit there all day in the hope that some passing traveller may give him tobacco or cash, the only two things on earth he seems to care for. Apparently, the mothers are fond of their young. The men are clever at stealing horses, and the traveller must look after his horses by night, or he may find them, as friends of my own did, gone in the morning. But to return to the prairie, it is an awful place to travel in alone; it is so easy to lose one’s way. I heard wonderful stories in this respect. Fancy being lost on the prairie; nothing but the grass to eat; nothing but the sky to look at; nothing in the shape of human speech to listen to. Out here by myself, I felt more than once how appropriate the language of the poet beloved by our grandmothers:
‘O Solitude, where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?Better dwell in the midst of alarms,Than reign in this horrible place.’
‘O Solitude, where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?Better dwell in the midst of alarms,Than reign in this horrible place.’
There is a good deal of hardship to be encountered by any who would penetrate to the dim and mysterious region we denominate the North-West. For instance, I left Moose Jaw at half-past two yesterday morning by a train timed to arrive there at a quarter-past one; at which unreasonable hour I had to leave my bed, just as I was getting into a sound sleep, and to catch the train, which was so crowded that I could scarcely get a seat, and the atmosphere of which was not redolent of the odours of Araby the Blest. There I had to sit till the time I mention, as the engine managed to get off the line. Deeply do I pity the poor emigrants tempted into this part of the world by the delusive utterances of sham emigration agents at home and local journals—which, when they are not abusing one another, seem to delight in giving representations ofthe country by no means literally to be depended on; the only thing to do is to go to the fountain head—the Government office. People who make up their minds to come into these parts must learn to put up with a good deal. Here is a sad case, a very exceptional one, I admit, but I am bound to tell the whole truth. I quote from a Winnipeg paper: ‘David Kirkpatrick, his wife, and nine children, the eldest a girl of twelve, arrived from Scotland on Wednesday. A part of the voyage was made on board theAlgoma. The cold was intense, and many of the passengers suffered severely. Among these was Mrs. Kirkpatrick. The exposure, in her case, brought on a kind of low fever, and the poor woman died yesterday morning. The husband’s case is deplorable. With nine children on his hands, what is he to do? He has a longing desire to get back to his friends in Scotland, but has not the means. Will the public come to his rescue? He and his helplesschildren are to be found in the immigrant sheds.’ I fear such cases are far from uncommon. Imagine a poor woman leaving her native land, crossing the restless Atlantic, perhaps feeble with poor living, and worried with the care of nine helpless children, perhaps scarce recovered from sea-sickness, put on board an emigrant train, snatching hasty meals, or such accommodation as is provided at the expense of Dominion Government (I do not blame them or the railway authorities, they do all they can), travelling at uncertain hours, and arriving at her destination utterly overcome by fatigue. What wonder is it that a poor woman now and then sacrifices her life in the attempt to build up a new home in this Promised Land? No wonder that now and then death comes to such just as they reach Jordan and think that they are to reap the fruit of all their weary toil.
Pioneer Store at Brandon in 1882
As I left Brandon on my way hither I saw by the side of one of the stations quite a littlevillage of tents. ‘What is that?’ said I to one of the mounted police. ‘The emigrants,’ was his reply. ‘They do say,’ said he slowly, ‘that there is some sickness amongst them.’ Whether the rumour was founded on fact I had no time to inquire, but certainly, when one thinks of the hardships of the emigrants’ lot, and the peculiar unfitness of many of them to stand hardships, I should not be surprised to learn that such was the case. The further I come out, the less demand I find for emigrants. It is only ploughmen who are wanted here. The man who will succeed is the farmer with a small capital. He has a splendid chance. When the country is settled the mechanic may have his turn.
But remember, after all has been said and done, this is the Great Lone Land. Emigration here is but a drop in the ocean as regards results. I am now some 850 miles to the north-west of Winnipeg. Thecountry is an unbroken level, and, with the exception of Brandon and Moose Jaw, you see hardly a farmhouse, hardly any ploughed land, no sheep grazing on the downs, no herds fattening in the prairie; not a single tree to hide one from the snows of winter or the suns of summer. By day you melt in the sun, by night you shiver with the cold. When we came to a swamp now and then we saw a few wild ducks. Once in the course of the weary ride we saw two or three deer. All the rest was a parched plain, with here and there some lovely flowers, and with buffalo bones bleaching wherever you turn your eye. In some parts the soil was strongly impregnated with alkali, so much so, indeed, that it made the ground white, and left a crust of what looked like ice on the lakes and ponds. Can that huge region ever grow wheat and fatten flocks? The experience of the experimental farms proves that it will. All I know is that ages must elapse before MooseJaw shall be a Manchester, or Brandon, in spite of its many advantages, the headquarters of the agricultural interest, with a corn market equalling that of Norwich or Ipswich. Yet there are parts of Manitoba which contain undoubtedly as fine corn-growing country as any in the world.
This is especially true of the new tract of country opened up by the Canadian Pacific in the south-west. As a rule, the further from the railway the land is, the better it is. At the same time, it is to be remembered that a farmer who has no railway access is at a great disadvantage, and that in the winter it is no joke sending a man with a team of oxen and a waggon-load of produce twenty or thirty miles across the prairie, where a snowstorm, or ‘a blorrard’ at any time, may occur.
This is the great drawback of Manitoba: it has no trees. In Ontario the farmer has his crops protected by a belt of trees fromthe inclemency of the weather. But, then, in Manitoba the farmer has this advantage, that he has not to devote the greater part of his time and money to the cutting down of his trees. He has only to plough the soil, and there is an abundant harvest. If Manitoba lacks trees, it is expected to yield a plentiful supply of coal. As I came along last night we saw a station supplied with gas. It appears that in boring for water they discovered gas, which they now utilize to light the station and to work a steam engine. This was not, however, in Manitoba, but in Alberta, just after we had left Medicine Hat, that pretty oasis in the desert, with the usual supply of hotels, billiard-rooms, and stores, and where I came into contact with the Cree Indians, a race even uglier than the Sioux Indian, whom I found at Moose Jaw. They have higher cheekbones, and don’t plait their hair, and some of the old men reminded me not a little in outline ofthe late Lord Beaconsfield, whom the Canadians consider Sir John Macdonald strongly resembles.
It is curious to note how the buffalo has vanished from the region which was formerly his happy hunting-ground. He has now forsaken the country; you see only his bones and his track. Some people say that the railway has done it, and others that the destruction is the work of the Americans, who say, ‘Kill the buffalo and you get rid of the Indians.’ These latter are to be met with everywhere, clad in flannel garments radiant with all the hues of the rainbow. Chiefly they affect blankets—red, blue, or green. At Calgary I came across more of them—this time of the Blackfoot tribe. There is very little difference in any of them. In one thing they all resemble each other, that is, they don’t seem to care much about work. As English does not happen to be one of their accomplishments, my intercourse withthem has been of a somewhat limited character.
For the sake of intending emigrants let me dispel a couple of popular errors. One that the heat is most enjoyable; another, that it is a cheap country to come to. Neither assertion is exactly the truth. As I write the heat is insufferable, and yet this is early spring. I saw snow yesterday in a hollow of the hills not yet melted, and last night, sleeping in a stuffy Pullman car full of people, I was awoke with the cold. The other fallacy which I would expose is that this is a cheap country. On the contrary, it is nothing of the kind. Paxton Hood, if I remember aright, once gave a lecture on America under the title of the ‘Land of the Big Dollar.’ If I were to lecture on Canada I should call it the ‘Land of the Little Dollar.’ A dollar here is of no account. This morning I went into a shop and had a bottle of ginger-beer, and the cost was oneshilling; and this, too, after I had been administering a little ‘soft sawder’ to the fair American damsel who waited on me (she was from Michigan, and was remarkably wide awake), in the mistaken hope that she would be a little reasonable in her charge. Everyone smokes cigars all day long, and yet Canadian cigars are as costly as they are atrocious. Fortunately one can’t spend money in drink, as that is prohibited, and the chemists at Calgary have recently got into a scrape for supplying customers with essence of lemon, by means of which they manage to fuddle themselves. The price of fruit is prohibitory; cucumbers, such as you in London would give three halfpence for, are here at Calgary as much as a shilling. Eggs are four shillings a dozen; meat and bacon and ham are as dear as in England, and not a quarter so good. I am appalled as I see how the money goes; I fear to be stranded at the foot of the Rockies.If I get back to the west I shall have to work my passage back to England as fireman or stoker, or in some such ignoble capacity. If I was younger I would turn gardener. I believe anyone who would come out here with sufficient capital to plant a nursery ground or to stock a good fruit garden would make a lot of money, as the farmers, of course, do not think of such things, and the supply is quite unequal to the demand. In Calgary they did not have three inches of frost all last winter. It is true they have even now a sharp nip of frost; but I hear of peas flourishing at a farmer’s close by, and the region abounds with wild strawberries and raspberries and cherries. If they grow wild, surely they will equally prosper under more careful culture.
A Special Committee of the Dominion House of Commons which was appointed last session to obtain evidence upon the agricultural industries of the country, examinedseveral witnesses as to the suitability of Canada, and especially of the Canadian North-West, for the growth of forest and fruit trees. The testimony given showed that there are many varieties of fruit which thrive in Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and other European countries, which would, if transplanted, be equally suited to the climate of the North-West, it being stated that excellent fruit is grown in great quantities in Europe at points where the temperature ranges considerably lower than it does in Canada. It is urged that the example of the Russian and German Governments should be followed in the establishment of plantations of fruit trees and experimental farms in different parts of the Dominion, to test the kind of trees and fruits best suited to the different localities.
Since my return the following paper has been put into my hands:—‘The following is a reliable estimate of this season’s wheat cropin Manitoba and the North-West Territories:—Estimated wheat acreage in Manitoba, 350,000; yield at 23 bushels per acre, 8,000,000; estimated wheat acreage in North-West Territories, 65,000; yield at 23 bushels per acre, or 1,500,000 bushels—a total of 415,000 acres and 9,500,000 bushels. Deducting 2,760,000 bushels for home consumption and seed, a surplus remains of 6,740,000 bushels. Everything now points to a larger yield per acre than that of 1883.
Harvesting on the Bell Farm, Indian Head, N.W.I.
‘Operations have been carried on very extensively this season at the Bell Farm, in the Canadian North-West, which is said to be the largest farm in the world. Though this is but the second year of cultivation, there are already 8,000 acres under crop, 5,000 to 6,000 of which are under wheat, and a portion of the remainder under flax. Last year 10,000 bushels were exported from the farm, and the excellence of the grain secured for it a good price in the market. The cropof this year is estimated to be 40 per cent. better. Experts from Montana who have recently visited this section of the Canadian North-West, state that they never saw any grain in the United States to equal that on and around the Bell Farm.’
AMONGST THE COW-BOYS.
I am writing from Calgary, a little but growing collection of huts and wooden houses planted on a lovely plain with hills all around, a river at my feet, on the banks of which some poplars flourish, and I can almost fancy I am in Derbyshire itself. It is a gay place, this rising town, at the foot, as it were, of the Rockies, and just now is unusually gay, as the Queen’s birthday is being celebrated with athletic sports and a ball; and, besides, a new clergyman has made his appearance, the Rev. Parks Smith, from a Bermondsey parish, who is to preach in the new Assembly Hall, which is to be set apart as a church onSundays. I am going to hear him, and already I feel somewhat of a Pharisee—I have on a clean collar, which I religiously preserved for the occasion, and have had my boots blackened. The sight is so novel that I have spent half an hour on the prairie contemplating the effect of that operation. Already I feel six inches higher.
I can’t say that I think quite so much of Calgary as do the people who live in it. In splendour, in wealth, in dignity, and importance, they evidently anticipate it will be a second Babylon. Well, a good deal has to be done first. The situation is pleasant, I admit. You incline to think well of Calgary after the dreary ride across the prairie, and you have quite a choice of hotels, and of shops, all well stocked; but then these shops are little better than huts, and the hotels certainly don’t throw the shops into the shade.
For instance, I am in the leading hotel. It is too far from the railway, but that is becausethe C.P.R. have moved their station a little further on, where the new town of Calgary is springing up. We have an open room, where I am writing—a dark dining-room on one side, and then, on the other, a little row of closets, which they dignify by the name of bedrooms. I am the proud possessor of one. It holds a bed, whereon, I own, I slept soundly; a row of pegs, on which to hang one’s clothes; and a little shelf, on which is placed a tiny wash-hand basin; while above that is a glass, in which it is impossible to get a good view of yourself—a matter of very small consequence, as the glass certainly reflects very poorly the looker’s personal charms, whatever they may be. I ought to have said there is a window; and as my bedroom is on the ground floor (upper rooms are rare in these wooden houses in the North-West), I am much exercised in my mind as to whether that window may not be opened in the course of the night, and the roll ofdollars I have hidden under my pillow carried off. Then, just as I am getting into bed, I discover somebody else’s boots. That is awkward—very. It is with a sigh of relief I discover that they are not feminine. Suppose the owner of those boots comes into my bedroom and claims to be the rightful owner? Suppose he resorts to physical force? Suppose, in such a case, I got the worst of it?
Fortunately, before I can answer these questions satisfactorily to myself, I am asleep, and yet they are not so irrelevant as you fancy.
Last night, for instance, as I was sitting in the cool air, smoking one of the peculiarly bad cigars in which the brave men of Canada greatly rejoice, and for which they pay as heavily as if they were of the finest brands, a half-drunken man came up, abusing me in every possible way, threatening to smash every bone in my body, and altogether behaving himself in a way the reverse of polite.Perhaps you say, Why did you not knock him down? In novels heroes always do, and come clear off; but I am not writing fiction, and in real life I have always found discretion to be the better part of valour. The fact is, the fellow was a strapping Hercules, and I could see in a moment, if the appeal were to force, what the issue might be. Yet I had not done anything intentionally to offend him. He had come galloping up to the hotel, as they all do here—the horses are not trained to trot—and his horse had bucked him off. I believe I did say something to a friend of a mildly critical nature, but I question whether the rider heard it. The fact was, he was angry at having been thrown, and seeing that I was a stranger, he evidently thought he could pour the vials of his wrath on me. I must admit that in a little while he came up and apologized, and there was an end of the matter. But the worst part of it was that his friend remarked to me that this drunkeninsulting ruffian was one of the best fellows in the place. If so, Calgary has to be thankful for very small mercies indeed.
You ask, How could the fellow be drunk, seeing that there is a prohibitory liquor-law in existence? I have every reason to believe that Calgary is a very drunken place, nevertheless. I have already referred to one case of drunkenness. I may add that, in the afternoon of the same day, I had seen another in the shape of an old gentleman who was going to head a revolt which would cut off the North-West from the Dominion, and which would make her a Crown colony. He was very drunk as he stood on the bar opposite me declaiming all this bunkum. I remarked his state to the landlord, who seemed to feel how unfair it was that men could get drunk on the sly, and that a decent landlord, like himself, should be deprived of the privilege of selling them decent liquor. I own it is very hard on the publicans. At MooseJaw one of them told me he would give five hundred pounds for a liquor license. ‘They call this a free country,’ said an indignant English settler to me, ‘and yet I can’t get a drop of good liquor. Pretty freedom, ain’t it?’ Unfortunately, the Government, while it prohibits the sale of liquor, does not exterminate the desire for it—perhaps only increases it—as we always cry for what we can’t get. Unfortunately, also, it is true that, as long as this demand exists, the supply will be found somehow.
In Montana there are a lot of blackguards and daredevils who will run the thing in somehow. Liquor is also brought in by the railway as coal-oil, oatmeal, flour, varnish, and then it is doctored up and sold at £1 the bottle to the thirsty souls. Now, what is the consequence? Why, that, as a local journal remarks, liquor is sold; the dealers are pests and outlaws; they sell their poison for ten times the price of what people who don’tbelong to the Blue Ribbon Army call good liquor, and then vanish with their ill-gotten money out of the country, excepting such as they may leave behind them in the shape of fines, when found out. I do think the hotel-keeper has much reason to complain of prohibition. It presses hardly on him, and does not put drunkenness down. I mentioned these facts to a Baptist minister from England, whom I met in Toronto. He would not believe them; I gave him cuttings from newspapers to support my view. His reply was that they were hoaxes. I have now been in Calgary a day, and already I find that these hoaxes, as my friend calls them, are veritable facts.
I believe that many of my travelling companions were a little fresh last night, from their soberness and dejection of manner this morning. They were away down town, and had not returned when I retired to rest; and this morning several of the householders complainof having had their doors knocked at at most unseasonable hours.
At meals I meet queer company. We have a Chinese cook. I have a faint idea that he has murderous designs on us all, his smile is so childlike and bland; yet I prefer his placid pleasant round face to those of his female helps, sour and ill-looking, who earn wages such as an English servant-girl never dreams of. His messes seem to be appreciated, and little is left after meal-time. It is enough for me to see the men eat. Every particle of food is conveyed into the mouth by means of the knife, which is also freely used if sugar or salt be required. Our dining-room is simply a shed, and a very dark one, having a canvas on one side and unpainted deal on the other. Few houses at Calgary are painted, though a painted house looks so much prettier than a deal one that I wonder painting is not more resorted to, especially when you remember how paintpreserves the wood. Many of the houses here are brought all the way from Ontario, and, perhaps, this accounts for their smallness. They chiefly consist of two rooms, one a shop, the other a sitting and night-room; and the larger number have been erected within the last few months. What we call in England a gentleman’s house, I should say does not exist in the whole district. A gentleman would find existence intolerable here, though the air is fine, and the extent of the prairie is unbounded. There are two newspapers in the town, and the professions are all well represented.
As to my companions, the less I say of them the better. They are young and vigorous, and use language not generally tolerated in polite society. Their talk is chiefly of horses and bets. They ride recklessly up and down the dusty path which forms the main street, and would not break their hearts if they knocked a fellow down; or they drive lightwaggons on four wheels, creating the most overwhelming clouds of dust as they rush by. As to their saddles, they are as unlike English ones as can well be imagined, rising at each end, so as to give the rider a very safe seat, while their stirrups are as long almost as the foot itself; but the saddles have this advantage, that they never give the horses sore backs. As to the horses, they are all branded, and turned loose on to the prairie when not required. Most of the men are prospectors—people who go round the country in search of mines; or cow-boys—that is, men employed in the cattle ranches in the district. The cowboy is a fearful sight. His hands and face are as brown as leather, he wears a straw hat—or one of felt—with a very wide brim. His coat or jacket is, perhaps, decorated with Indian work. Around his waist he wears a belt, which he makes useful in many ways. Then he has brown leather leggings, ornamented down the sides with leather fringes,and on his heels he puts a tremendous pair of spurs. The men on the mountains have much the same style of dress, and are fine specimens of muscular, rather than intellectual or moral, development. On the whole, I am not unduly enamoured of these pioneers of civilization; but, then, I was born in the old country, and learned Dr. Watts’s hymns, and was taught to—
‘Thank the goodness and the graceThat on my birth has smiled,And made me in these Christian daysA happy English child.’
‘Thank the goodness and the graceThat on my birth has smiled,And made me in these Christian daysA happy English child.’
I see a good deal more of Calgary than I wish to. I feel that I have been made a fool of by the station-master. I am, as you may be aware, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They are some 60 miles off, yet; already I have seen their far-off peaks, glistening with snow, rising into the summer sky. As I have got so far, I must see them. There are trees up there, and the sight of atree would be good for sore eyes; there are cooling shades out there, and here, though it is but early morning, it is too hot to stir. The scenery out there is the finest to be seen in all the Canadian continent, and I would carry away with me, to think of in after years, something of their beauty. I travelled all this way for that purpose, and hoped to have been off before, and now find I must wait, owing to a blunder on the part of the station-master. He promised he would let me know if he sent a freight-train to the Rocky Mountains. Well, he sent off a train at one o’clock this morning, and never let me know anything about it, and the consequence is I must stay two more days in this dreary spot, without conveniences such as I could find in the meanest cottage in England, and at a cost which would enable me to live in luxury and fare sumptuously at home. One lesson I have learned, which I repeat for the benefit of my readers. Neverdepend upon other people; hear all they say, and then act for yourself. Had I done so, I should have been now in the Rocky Mountains. I trusted in others, and I am, in consequence, the victim of misplaced confidence.
I gather a few items of interest to intending emigrants. Crops raised in the vicinity of Calgary during 1883 gave the following yields per acre:—Wheat, 33 bushels; barley, 40 bushels; oats, 60 bushels. The Government farm a few miles off, which I have visited, does well. The country round offers especial advantages to sheep and dairy farmers, cheese manufacturers, and hog raisers. My own impression is, and I have mentioned it to several persons who all think it excellent, that any man would easily make his fortune who set up a poultry farm. Eggs and fowls are almost entirely unknown, and if the producer did not find a market here, he could easily send his produce by the railway to where it was wanted. Eggs and fowlshelp one as well as anything to keep body and soul together.
I am glad I went to church yesterday. My presence there gave quite a tone to the place (said the head man to me this morning), and so far I may presume I did good service. The congregation consisted chiefly of men, and the collection amounted to nearly 16 dollars—pretty good, considering (said the above mentioned gentleman) there are two or three schism shops in the place. In the evening I went to the Wesleyan Methodist schism shop, as he called it, and heard a sermon, which touched me more than any sermon I have heard a long time. As I came out the effect was startling. The sun was sinking in crimson glory just behind the green hills by which Calgary is surrounded. Far off a dim splendour of pink testified to the existence of a prairie fire, while before me stood a gigantic Indian, with his big black head rising out of a pyramid of gorgeous robes,really dazzling to behold. There is an Indian Mission near here, but the Indians are not the only heathens out here.
I have just had a ride in a buck-cart, which is the kind of vehicle the colonists use. It is of boards on four wheels, on which is placed a seat for a couple of persons, while the luggage is piled up behind. Some of them have springs, as fortunately was the case with the one on which I rode, or I should have had a very uncomfortable ride indeed. Perhaps I ought not to be so angry with the station-master as I was when I interviewed him this morning. I have just seen a man who got on to the freight train, but he tells me it was so uncomfortable that he preferred to wait, and got off after he had taken his passage.
Money seems scarce. I have just been to the post-office to send a letter to England. The postmaster could give me no change, and I had to take post-cards instead. Isuppose all the money goes to the smugglers. In this small town 500 dollars are sent weekly to Winnipeg for liquor; so much for prohibition in Calgary.
As there is no bank here, people find it hard to get money. A young man waiting here to make up a mining party for the Rockies, tells me he had to telegraph to Toronto for 500 dollars, which were sent in the shape of a post-office order. The postmaster charged him five dollars for cashing the order. I have just heard of a loan of 300 dollars effected; the borrower has agreed to pay, in the shape of interest, the moderate sum of four dollars a month.
Calgary, according to some, can have no enduring prosperity; if so, the land-grabbers who have scattered themselves all over it will be deeply disappointed.
Edmonton, where they get gold out of the river sand, and where they have already a kind of dredging machine employed for thatpurpose, it is said, will shortly have a railway to itself, and the men from the mountains, who are the mainstay of Calgary, will go that way.
I fancy I hear some one exclaim: On those wide plains over which sweeps the ice-laden air of the Rockies, what pleasant walks you must have! My dear sir, you are quite mistaken. Perhaps, as you set out, there comes a herd of wild horses—and then I remember how poor George Moore was knocked down by one, and avoid the boundless prairie accordingly.
Then there are the dogs, ‘their name is Legion,’ and they are big, and as wild as they are big, and I am not partial to hydrophobia. No; it is better to sit at the door of my tent and watch the flight of the horses, the fights of the dogs, and the stream of dust a mile long which denotes that some Jehu is at hand, who will pull up at the door, deeply drink water, smoke a cigar, use a littlestrong language, and then mount again and ride off into boundless space.
Here and there a pedestrian may be seen making his way to his solitary hut or shop, where at no time do you see any sign of life; and how the people here make a living (with the exception of the hotel-keepers, who are always busy) puzzles me. I meet good fellows, I own. They are friendly in their way. As humour is a thing unknown in Canada and the North-West, they generally grin when I make a remark, which I do at very protracted intervals, fearing to be worn out before the long day is done. Nevertheless, I begin to doubt whether I am not relapsing into the wild life of those around me. Fortunately, I have not yet acquired the habit of speaking through my nose, nor do I make that fearful sound—a hawking in the throat—which is a signal that your neighbour is preparing to expectorate, and which renders travelling, even in a first-class car,almost insupportable; but my hands are tanned. I sit with my waistcoat open, and occasionally in my shirt-sleeves. I care little to make any effort to be polite; I am clean forgetting all my manners, and feel that in a little while I shall be as rough as a cow-boy, or as the wild wolf of the prairie. It is clear I must not tarry at Calgary too long.
IN THE ROCKIES—HOLT CITY—LIFE IN THE CAMP—A ROUGH RIDE—THE KICKING HORSE LAKE—BRITISH COLUMBIA.
I am writing from Holt City—so named after a famous contractor out here—in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Here the rail comes, but no further, as yet, though some 2,000 men are at work a few miles ahead, and making incredible speed in the construction of this gigantic intercolonial undertaking—an undertaking which would have been completed by this time had the late Sir Hugh Allan (the founder of the Allan line of steamers) and Sir John Macdonald had their way.
I left Calgary without shedding a tear—the train was only three hours late—after remarking to the manager of the leading hotel that, much as I had enjoyed myself under his humble but hospitable roof, I would give him leave to charge me twenty dollars a day if ever he caught me within his doors again.
When the train arrived, of course there was no room. This is the working season, and the C.P.R., as everyone calls it in Canada, is hurrying on men to the front as fast as they can be got.
However, I was permitted to get inside the mail van, in company with a contractor, his wife, and a baby, which behaved itself as well as could be expected under the circumstances; a lady who was going to visit her husband, one of the contractors on the line; and an invalid from Pennsylvania, who did not seem much to enjoy that rough mode of travelling. We reached Holt City abouteleven, when it was quite dark, and the only bed I could find was a shelf in the van, on which I was glad to lie down—but not, alas! to sleep. Had I got out, I should have been lost, or run over by an engine—that is positive, as there is no road, only divers rails, as, for instance, the Continental Hotel at Newhaven. I am now writing in the post-office, which seems the great social centre of the place, though the mail only leaves twice a week. It is a decent-sized tent, with a desk and counter in the middle for the sale of stamps and cigars and the delivery of letters. Behind it are a couple of beds on which men are reposing in a way that I envy, and covered with buffalo skins—the possession of which I envy them still more. In front is a table, fitted up with old papers and a couple of uncommonly uncomfortable benches, whereon are sitting various loafers, smoking and talking, and warming themselves as best they can at the big stove—one of which you nowsee in every Canadian house, and which but feebly keeps out the raw cold of the morning.
Mount Stephen in the Rocky Mountains on the Line of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Holt City is admirably located, to use an American phrase which I heartily detest. It is a clearance in the forest, bordered by the Bow River, which dashes foaming along. There is a shed, which does duty for a railway station; a collection of tents, in which theemployésof the company dwell, or which hold the large stores it collects here; a large shed for meals, a railway car, in which Mr. John Ross, the able administrator of the C.P.R. in these parts, resides with his accomplished wife; and further off are other tents, which do duty as hotels, billiard-rooms, and shops. Up here, I see little to remind me of the Old Country, except bottles of Stephens’ inks, of Aldersgate Street, London, which, says the head accountant, are the only inks on which they can rely.
We are in a valley—a valley high up among the mountains—as fair as that inwhich Rasselas studied to be a virtuous prince, but of a character common in the length and breadth of the Rockies. I have seen scores of valleys as fair; and yet I own the exquisite loveliness of the spot—at any rate, in summer time—is marvellous. Around me rise Alps on Alps, up into the cloudless blue. Firs, all larch and pine, in all the freshness of their new-found greenery, clothe their base; while the snow, in wreaths like marble, glistens on their dark sides or crowns their rugged peaks. It would seem as if there could be no world beyond. It is really wonderful what pleasant nooks of this kind one sees everywhere. I stopped at one such last night, a station called Canmore, which, however, seemed to be the fairest of them all—and so the fish think, as the station-master tells me he often catches speckled trout seven or eight pounds in weight. Very near are valuable sulphur and other springs, and when the railway shall be completed, I look forwardto the time when Pullman cars shall come here laden with health seekers from all parts of the world, who are fond of fishing and fine air.
I had a narrow escape from not coming here at all. When we stopped at Canmore for our evening meal, I found I was utterly unable to climb back into the mail van. I may be young in heart, but, alas! I have lost somewhat of the agility of early youth. I mentioned this to the station-master and guard, who both promised me repeatedly that they would have the train drawn up for me. Knowing this, I listened unconcernedly to the cry of ‘All on board!’ Judge, then, of my horror when I saw the train gradually gliding past.
‘Jump into the last car,’ cried the guard, as he saw me looking daggers at him.
Fortunately I succeeded in doing so: it is easier to get on to an American car when in motion than on an English one, on account ofits peculiar construction. This is fortunate, as the railway passenger in Canada has to trust entirely to himself. He is ignored by guards and porters and station-master altogether. Unfortunately, I jumped on to the car sacred to the person of Sir John McNeil, and I was requested by the black cook to move off, which I declined doing till we reached the next station, when I moved into another car, and created not a little laughter as I told my story. It is to be trusted that Sir John enjoyed himself all the more for having got rid of my vulgar presence. I hope Sir John may enlighten his friends on his return; but I fear he will gain little knowledge of the people or the country, travelling in such a way. Perhaps he will learn as much about it as the Marquis of Lorne, or the Earl of Carnarvon, who recommends the poor people of the East-end to come to Canada, where the chances are they will be worse off than they are at home. Canada requireshardy, muscular men—if with money in their pockets so much the better—not the refuse of our towns.
Again, I repeat, people in England ought to have fuller information about Canada ere they go thither. It is a fortune for the strong man, but even he has to run risks. Everywhere I hear of what is called mountain fever, or Red River fever, or fever with some other name which stands for typhoid disease. Grand and beautiful as is the country, fertile as is the soil, people forget to observe sanitary laws at times and suffer in consequence. But I must own that all the men I met in Holt City were pictures of health and strength. For one thing, the company feeds them well. I have just breakfasted in camp with the men. We had good coffee and fried ham and other good things for breakfast, and good tins of preserved fruits, to which everyone did justice. Everyone here has to rough it. I washed this morning in the open air, having myself ladledinto a tin basin the water out of a cask in which still floated the broken ice.
Holt City is, I suppose, the head-quarters of the C.P.R. Yet it is a place by itself. Nothing can be rougher than the rail from here to Calgary, or finer than the view. It is an advantage that the trains are so slow, as you have more time to enjoy the scenery, which has almost shaken my attachment to the Hebrides, though one misses the purple heather which lends such a charm to the grey hills of the North. But comparisons are odious, and the Rockies, in all their charms, must be seen to be appreciated. It was a wonderful view I had last night as I sat on the steps of the last car, drinking in all the strange beauties of the place. We were climbing hour by hour a wilderness of mountains. We were hemmed in by them from afternoon till night came down upon the face of the earth. Mostly they were black, with snowy variations; some were bare, othersclothed with verdure. Some raised their heads in the clear blue sky as fortresses, others were peaks, others ragged and uneven, shapeless masses of matter growing out of one another. Some seemed to like good company, others stood solitary and apart.
In the dells and shadows there are tales yet to be told. For instance, here are some remains of the ancient road to British Columbia. Here, a man tells me, last year there was a terrible tragedy. An English gentleman and his son were camping near the spot. There came a forest fire. Awful to relate, when the son had time to look around him, his father was burnt to death. Fearful are some of the solitudes through which the passenger plunges. The bear and the eagle have them entirely to themselves. Few have explored them; fewer still have scaled the mountain heights by which they are girdled. But nowadays one is in search of silver or gold or coal, and has no time to think ofmountain grandeur. Cities rise and fall very quickly here. Silver City, for instance, where we stopped last night, was all the rage a year or two ago. It is now deserted. Yet people say silver is still to be found there, and at Calgary, as an illustration of the fact, a ‘prospector’ showed me a fine specimen of silver, at the same time asking me to come and see the shaft. I replied I was as fond of silver as he was, but I sought it in another way.
But to return to the Rockies. I wonder not that in times past the Indians saw in them the home of the gods, or that there the scientist discovers in them the source of the whirlwind or the storm.
I am again train-bound. No one knows when we may have a train from the east, and till we have one it is impossible for me to get away. Physically, perhaps, this is a good thing for me, as it enables me to recuperate. Here I am, 5,000 or 6,000 feet above the level of thesea, breathing mountain air, and luxuriating in mountain scenery. Last night I slept in a caboose, and it was the best night’s rest I have had for a long time. I went to bed at nine and was up again at five. Do my readers know what a caboose is? It is a railway luggage-car on wheels. Mine is rather a superior one, and has an upper and a lower chamber, and has in the upper chamber a row of shelves, which do service as beds. I had one of these to myself, and, as I was well provided with blankets, did not much grieve at the absence of linen sheets.
My dear old friend, Mrs. Moodie, wrote a capital book, called ‘Roughing It in the Bush.’ Assuredly I may, one of these days, write one on roughing it in the Rockies, though the keeper of the caboose, out of respect for my age and infirmities, does all he can to make me comfortable. Already I feel the better for the air. For the first time since I have been in Canada I have felt hungry; for thefirst time, also, since I have been in Canada I have not had to physic myself with chlorodyne. A month up here in the Rockies would make a young man of me or of anyone else. I must be off before I become as gay as a horse fed on beans. This is, I take it, the real and sufficient reason of the peculiar spirits of the mountaineers, who rather alarmed me with their liveliness at Calgary. Their exuberance is due to air, and air alone. As I sit, a long row of mules files past; a man is riding at the head, the others follow with their burdens packed on their backs. He is a ‘prospector,’ and is on his way to the other side. Already as many as a thousand such have gone the same road this summer.
The mountains are full of wealth—in the shape of gold or silver, or coal or slate, or other precious commodities. Hitherto the cost of conveyance has kept people away. The opening of the C.P.R. will remove that inconvenience. They will have a chance nowof getting rid of their minerals, when discovered, and of fetching up their stores from the East at less expense. As it is, things are dear enough in Holt City. For instance, if I send or receive a letter, I have to pay the postmaster a few cents in addition to the usual postage-stamp. Calgary I thought bad enough, but up here prices may be quoted as much higher. Yesterday I had a ride over the mountains. It will be long before I take such a ride again. No English coachman would drive such a road for five hundred a year. No English carriage could stand it, nor English horses either. I expected the buggy, as it was called, to be shattered into atoms every minute—it looked so light and frail, and the horses—a handsome pair, the property of Mr. Ross—to be ruined for life; yet we got safely to the front—where the men are hard at work cutting down trees, removing earth, tunnelling, and pushing on the work with all their might; and there, I must say, there areopenings for any number of men who like to come out. Last year little was done in the winter, because the contractors believed the climate would be against them. No one before then had wintered in the Rockies, and everyone believed the climate to be much worse than it really is.
But to return to the ride. I yet feel it in every bone in my body, as all the time I had to hold on to my seat like grim death. Sometimes the coachman was high above me; sometimes I was at the top and he at the bottom; now we were deep in the mud, the next moment high and dry on a formidable boulder, bigger than a hogshead, and came down with a bang, which sent me quivering all over. Here we were with the water up to the floor; and then we came on a mudbank quite as deep. Not an inch of the ground was level. It was all collar work or the reverse. Fortunately we were shaded by the firs which climb all the mountains outhere, or the heat would have been unbearable. As to conversation, that was quite out of the question, though the ‘boy’ who drove me came when a child from Devonshire, and had a strong wish to see the old country again, of whose lanes, yellow with primroses, and cottages bright with roses and honeysuckles, and farmhouses green with ivy, he had a very vivid recollection. He made a lot of money, he said. Indeed, he had more than he knew what to do with. Last winter, for instance, he stopped a month in Winnipeg, and spent there four hundred dollars. ‘How did it all go?’ ‘Oh! in treating the boys!’ was his answer. I rather intimated that was a poor way of using his money. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘they all do it. That is the way of the boys in this country!’ I was glad to hear him say that he thought of taking a farm soon, and was putting by the money for that purpose. The Rocky Mountains cannot be a bad place for a ‘boy.’ One of them yesterdaytold me how he had vainly written to his father to come out, who was now in the old country breaking stones on the road. Here, at any rate, he would have been better off. It is a long journey, I know, for the British emigrant. We are more than 1,000 miles from Winnipeg, and the ride is a dreary one till you reach the Rockies. The run to Winnipeg from Toronto by Port Arthur and Owen Sound is a real enjoyment. It took us two days and two nights to reach Port Arthur from Toronto, and the trip from Port Arthur to Winnipeg is accomplished easily in twenty hours.
‘Any bears about here?’ said I to the ‘boy,’ in one of the few minutes allowed for conversation in the course of our rough ride yesterday.
‘Not many. I seed one near where we are passing. He was a black bear, and stood up and looked at me, and then I looked at him. I wished I’d had a gun, and then I would have shot him.’
Fortunately I saw no bear, black or brown, in the woods as we drove amongst them; scarcely a bird—only one, an owl I think, on the top of a tree, which never moved, though we were close upon it. ‘Do you make any difference in work on Sunday?’ I asked of one of the men. ‘Oh no; Sunday ain’t of much account here.’ This is to be regretted, if only for physical considerations. Everyone can work all the better for a day of rest. Again, I think the C.P.R. injures itself in this way, that it may lose the services of useful men who like to keep the Sabbath, either from physical or religious considerations. As a matter of fact, I found many did take a rest on Sunday, and it was amusing to see how the morning was devoted to haircutting and shaving and mending clothes in the open air. A man, I know, can spend his Sunday at honest work better than in drinking. But when we think of the wild life of the miners and navvies in theends of the earth—a life so wild that the C.P.R. has got a law passed to forbid the sale of intoxicating drink, and people are appalled when they read, in spite of the law, whisky is supplied to men who have a large number of revolvers at their side—it seems that a little provision might be made for the religious wants of the community. The philosopher will laugh, I admit. My reply is: Men were lifted out of degradation by the Christian religion in some form or other, and as we root that out we may expect society to retrograde. These men to the front will pay for looking after. They are fine fellows mostly. At any rate, they are the pioneers of modern civilization, and should be reverenced as such. They are to be honoured for their work’s sake. They plant, we gather the fruit. They sow the seed, we reap the harvest, and their work remains a monument of perseverance, of the benefits of the Union, of enterprise, and capital and skill. ThatCanada has thus carried the railway and the telegraph across the Rockies shows that England and America will have to look to their industrial laurels.