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LONDON DIGBY, LONG, & CO., Publishers i8 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. 285U9 n I 1 I *©e^tcafeb To Colonel Sir JAMHS JOHNSTONE, K.C.S.I., WHOSE ZEAL L\ PROMOTING EDUCATION AND PKACLFL'L PROSPERITY IN REMOTE DISTRICTS OF HER majesty's EASTERN EMPIRE MUST LEAD HIM TO TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE SETTLERS AND NATIVES OF THE FURTHEST QUARTERS OF HER majesty's WESTERN DOMINION. •V i f c o X r i: N T s. iNTROincTION CHAin'Ek I. The Canadian Pacific Railway— Winnipeg Station — QirAppcllu — St.John'sCoUef^e— Brotherhood — Colk'j^'cand School— Bishop Anson — Deserted Farms — Indians, ...... CHAPTER II. Young I'armers in the Qu'Appelle Valley — Fashion- able Arrivals from London — Abernethy— Some Experiences of (lentlemen Settlers in Manitoba and the North-west — Icelanders — Want of Clergy — Church Statistics — English Church Workers — A Prairie l-ire, ..... CHAPTER III. Canadian Hospitality— Storm — Winter Casualties — Amusements — Newspapers — Vegetation — Statistics of Cold— Archbishop Tache's Opinion — Real Progress— The Census — Booming, CHAPTER IV. Prince Albert -Regina— Saskatoon— Duck Lake— A Winter's Drive- The Bush Hotel— Carlton-— Snake Plain — The Indian Reserves — Indian Agency— Prince Albert -Projected Railway to Hudson Bay, PACiR xiii 19 43 59 vin CONTKNTS. CHAPTHK V. The Iroquois — Squatters — li mi grants — Yankee Settlers — Hard limes — Winter — ICxtraordi- naryMarriaj^es— Early Iiiimij^rants— I'nsuitable Oecupations— Successes, CHAI'TKK VI. Indians and Halt-breeds — Theories concerninj; the Orif^in of the Indian Tribes— Ivarly Discoverers of America before Columbus - Red Ki\er Settlement — Iroquois Colonists in the Rockies — Discovery and Colonisation of Rupertsland — Jacques Cartier, and Eastern Canada or New France — Wars — Indians in British Columbia — Indian Honesty — St. John's College, I'ACiB 80 97 CHAPTER VII. Further Experiences of English Settlers — Mr. Andrew Mackay's Advice — Autumn — The Harvest Festival — French Exaggeration of the Cold in Russia — -Real Cold in Canada — Okanayan District in British Columbia, .... 124 I CHAPTER VHI. Mission Work in the Colonies — Bishop Anson's Address to the Clergy— Advantages of the North- west — The Tariff — Lord Brassey's Settlement — Marriage — Ups and Downs — Winter — Algoma, 143 CHAPTER IX. Funerals — English Orphans --Children of the North- west—The Curried Chicken— Hired Helps — Bishop Anson's last Visitation Tour, . . 161 I ■A 'I m I'A(;B 80 97 124 143 I CONTEiNTS. CHAPTER X. ^'ankccs in Canada— North Dakc.a— I.oyalty in the North-west — Alaska — Ciradual Ascent towards the Rockies — Tavin^ Vancouver - - Retina — Canadian North-west Schools — Patriotic Societies, .... CHAl'THR XI. Leaving; the North-West for Manitoba-Minnedosa —Typhoid Fever— Winnipej;— The Memnonites —Ottawa— Red River District— (Irand I-orks- St. Paul and Minneapolis— Niagara— Throuj^h the Lakes, ix FA(.K '74 196 161 If ■ ''^ i'( 'I" 1 I ILLUSTRATIONS. St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, Qu'Appelle Station- Chapter I., The Self-binder— Chapter IV., Winnipeg in 1871— Chapter v., A Manitoba Farm— Chapter VII., . Junction of St. Lawrence and Ottawa— Chapter viii., In the Rockies— Chapter X., PAGE II 81 128 179 ■I 'U' INTRODUCTION. "Of all gainful possessions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better be- comes a well-bred man, than agriculture." — CiciiRO. I HAVE been assured tliat the British public do not care much about Canada, except as a refuge for the superfluous population. It is quite satisfied, say my informants, with the pamphlets on the subject distributed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Com- pany and other emigration agents. This is doubtless true of a large class. The pamphlets in question record only the successes of the British settlers in Canada. It is no business of theirs to give the many heavy losses, their cause, and how to avoid them. A boy is backward at school — he cannot pass an examination for a profession ; why trouble, says a sanguine friend, to work up for a second attempt? Why don't you go and make your fortune in Canada? How this fortune is to be made, or even how the small capital which the boy perhaps takes out with him is to be safely invested and kept from melting away, does not seem to occur to his adviser. So an inexperienced sanguine '/ XIV INTRODUCTION. If if Jifjl youth sets forth from his home — credulous because he has lived among honest people, unacquainted with any species of labour except cricket and football, but confident in his own judgment — to fall an easy prey to those unscrupulous gentry who in every colony are prepared to welcome the novice and dispose of unprofitable land, unsaleable machinery, worn-out cattle, and anything else they want to get rid of — at his expense. This is the commonest way in which fortunes are made and lost in Canada. But the boy who goes out with little but a strong pair of hands and a knowledge of agricultural work attracts no sharpers and readily finds employment. He may not make a fortune ; but in time he may acquire a competence and live a happy life amid educated people in an exhilarating climate, and even aspire to become a member of the Canadian Parliament, or a provincial governor. It is certainly most extraordinary, if the British people who trouble themselves a good deal about the social and political affairs of foreign countries in Europe, do care nothing about the colony to which so many of their sons and brothers annually migrate, and which will probably become our most valuable ally. We can hardly believe it, so we venture to offer the following experiences of a residence in the north-west. These experiences are not only those of summer tourists, but of a ¥ ^ INTRODUCTION. XV s because cquainted icket and [ment — to LIS gentry Icome the unsaleable ; else they 'his is the made and out with knowledge nd readily a fortune ; :e and live hilarating nember of governor. le British eal about countries colony to annually our most it, so we nces of a cperiences but of a visitor and participator in the work of an establish- ment on the prairie during the dreary winter months, when even the sparrows had fled to warmer regions, and the wolf and the snowbird seemed to be the only wild creatures left. The bear is not found except where there is plenty of cover ; but he had also betaken himself to some snug hiding- place, probably selected during his summer rambles, and with his paws covering the tip of his nose he was indulging in his long annual snooze. All nature shrinks from the icy blasts which periodically sweep over the north-west, and from the blizzards of snow which have buried many a fine young fellow, rash in his inexperience, long before the expected fortune or even competence has begun to be made. Yet we have heard men, who have started a son with ;{^500 or ;^iooo, speak as con- fidently of a certain interest on that sum within a year or two, as if it had been invested in British consols. If farming is hazardous and slow to bring a profit in England, it is far more hazardous and experimental in the most uncertain climate of the north-west ; but then many of us cannot afford to indulge in farming at all in England, and it can be enjoyed by every one for a comparative trifle in Canada, if a man farms on Canadian soil in the Canadian way. This may .seem paradoxical, but the following pages are intended to explain it. ( H f; !• i I.' \ c ti tl 1( p si tl v\ n tl a ir tir iif EXCURSIONS IN CANADA CHAPTER I. The Canadian Pacific Railway— The Winnipeg Station— QuAppe/le—St. Johns College— The Brotherhood Colhge and School -Bishop Anson— Deserted Farms — Indians. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was first completed from Quebec and Montreal to Vancouver, there were fatigues and inconveniences attending the journey across the Dominion which have lessened and are lessening every year. The com- petition is keen with the Yankee lines ; and con- sidering the large numbers conveyed across during the season, and the wild desolate country through which a great part of the Canadian Pacific Railway runs, the officials of the company certainly deserve the greatest credit for their civility and efficiency and the general good management for which it is indeed noted. Passengers must not expect to find much in the .r EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. fV II (il lif i| I way of refreshments outside the train after leaving Quebec and Montreal. Here and there biscuits, stale cakes, and tea of a very inferior description could be had at a station, which was little but a wooden shed, during the 1424 miles between Quebec and Winnipeg ; but a quite disproportionate price was charged for even a piece of bread, and, as there are not refreshment cars attached to every train (and the provisions are apt to fall short even in them), persons who, as emigrants generally do, go straight through from the port of landing to the railway station, would do wisely to supply themselves with comforts for the land journey before they leave England, otherwise they are likely to suffer from real starvation. There are plenty of provisions sold at the Quebec station ; but, when 1300 passengers pounce upon them, those at the back of the crowd come badly off'. The first and second class passengers, only touring in Canada, who go on to Montreal in the Allan and Dominion steamers, and there take the regular express with its Pullman's sleeping and refreshment cars, are in a better position in this respect than the emigrant, loaded with luggage, and the steerage passenger who is conveyed no farther by steamer than to Quebec, and there mounts the " excursion train from the old country for the north-west," as the railway employes call m TIIK WINNIPlXi STATION. " leaving biscuits, scription le but a n Quebec ate price , and, as to every lort even crally do, nding to 3 supply journey are likely plenty of ut, when se at the ers, only ntreal in lere take oing and n in this luggage, eyed no id there 1 country oyds call the special boat train from that port. Fir trees, splendid waterfalls, gigantic lakes, wood-cutters' huts, a region of granite, and the towers of Ottawa, vary the landscape till we reach Winnipeg, the Oucen of the Prairie, and a hundred miles from the lake. If Canada remains united for many more years this youngest of her chief cities will probably become her offif^ial capital. It grows like a London suburb ; and as old Montreal with all its claims was rejected because it was too French, and upstart self-sufficient Toronto because it was too Yankee, Winnipeg is certain sooner or later to put in a claim for the dignity. In the fine hall which serves as a general waiting-room at the Winnipeg station something like an old-world statute fair was going on. Hotel-keepers and Government agents, householders and clergy, had come to inspect the new arrivals and to engage the likely ones for various occupations. Of course, the unattached of both sexes had the first chance. It was amusing to see a tall handsome girl, dressed in the last Englisli fashion, which had not been seen before in Winnipeg, peering down through her eye- glasses on a tall elderly clergyman, who was, rather -shyly it appeared, questioning her as to her qualifications for some educational post he had to offer her. She, like many others of different social grades, had come out in the first ship of the season I' H I 4 KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. under the charge of a well-known clerical einij^ra- tion agent, who seemed to have his hands full with the boys of eleven years old and over, whom he was scttlin<_' with farmers or citizens as hired helps all the way wc went along. Rather unwarily, he had given them the whole of the food which was to last for five days on leaving Quebec, and it was of course all eaten, if only to pass away the time, long before they reached their destination. A bread riot ensued, which was happily appeased by the appearance of a baker, who sold twopenny loaves at tenpence each, a short distance before we arrived at this chief or only resting-place on our way. At one end of the waiting-room forty-five China- men were standing or sitting over their baggage, — refugees from the United States, waiting for the express to convey them to Vancouver. I afterwards saw several more, standing, as if in an ecstasy, round a barrel of apples in front of a fruiterer's shop in Main Street, Winnipeg. Their costume, which was exactly alike, was a Yankee modification of the Chinese labourer's dress ; and they seemed well supplied with dollars. Canada will not have them, except in British Columbia, where they are admitted on a payment of about ;^50 a head, so they are passed on, in bond as it were, from the United States, whence they have been expelled, simply :-«S: 'ni- m ()U'apim:llk 5 il cmij^ra- s full with whom he ircd helps warily, he ich was to .nd it was the time, Ltion. A pcased by twopenny before we ce on our ive China- (^ for the fterwards isy, round s shop in ivhich was Dn of the med well ave them, admitted they are e United d, simply because they arc Asiatics. There are many reasons given for the law which prevents them from settling in the north-west of Canada : one, that the)- would mix with the Indians and soon fill up the country with an inferior race, probably hostile to luiropcan settlers or their descendants. It seems that they arc flockii^i,^ into Siberia to an extent which ^dves the ICuropeans some alarm. But they would un- doubtedly tend to lower the |3rice of labour and manufactures, if they were allowed freely to settle in Canada ; and as so much of the revenue is raised by duties on manufactured goods from the United States and ICurope in the present rudimentary con- dition of mechanical arts in the ]3ominion, this probably has something to do with the prohibition. English labourers also cease to emigrate to those colonies where they are under-sold by Chinese. The train runs through the streets in Winnipeg much as it does in some towns in the United States. " All aboard ! " cry the conductors ; and we are again i'/i route, with only the prairie and a series of villages before us, for another looo miles. Qu'Appelle .station, our immediate destination, lies nearly 400 miles beyond Winnipeg, and the run was made in fourteen hours, the approach being rather pretty for this district, among bushes and groups of trees. We had seen ice thickly covering Lake Superior on our road, and here again we saw it when at 6 A.M. (i Hi i! h! '■% 6 KXCUkS ION'S IN CANADA. we dismounted from a niucli over-heated carriage into the ehilly moniin^^ air. Ik'iti^^ Sunday, there were absolutely no spectators. Generally sj)eaking» Canadians collect to see the one train in the day pass through, as they do all the world over where the railway is still rather a novelty. The principal hotel seemed to be open, and we stepped into it with our handba however simple, before the regular breakfast hour. But a little before eight the church bell began to- ring ; and how pleasant was the sound after so much tossing about and shaking up, on ship and train. It proclaimed that we had arrived in a civilised and law-abiding community, where our national faith had not been left behind. In a town of wooden houses, and with wooden side walks, i.e., pavement^ the church and its internal decorations did great credit to the inhabitants, or perhaps more to their (^U'AI'I'KLLK. :d carriage d.'i)', there ' speaking* in the day »vcr where 2 principal cd into it ■ baggage was quite k'ere found y morning th seemed )sequently lar in that icing the y, having middle of )f a meal* :fast hour. began to- r so much md train, ilised and )nal faith f wooden lavement, did great e to their friends and sympathisers in Kngland.* The chancel was a gift of a sister as a memorial of her brother, and the h uidsoine cover to the font was also be- stowed by an Knglish friend. The two large stoves and broad stove i)ipe all the length of the nave, not yet removed for the summer, showed the intense cold for which we must be prepared, and we did have a heavy snow-storm before the day was out. There are two hotels close to the railway at Qu'Appclle station, where people can board and lodge at a dollar and a half and two dollars a day. As in the United States, there is no distinction between plain breakfasts and breakfasts with meat or eggs, or dinners of two courses and more ; for the meals are all on the ta/?/e d'hdte system, only that each guest has his separate arrangement of little dishes, with porridge, potatoes, ham or bacon* butter, etc., before him ; and I am told that it is not usual to ask for a second cup of coffee or tea. However, they give it, if wanted. At second-class hotels in the north-west the beds are only supplied with one sheet ; and as washing is very expensive, travellers would do wisely to take their own sheets and blankets. The diocese of Qu'Appelle is coterminous with ' The diocese of Qu'Appelle lost two warm friends in January, 1894, — the Dean of Lincoln, and the Duchess of Argyll, sister-in-law to the first bishop. ►•,1 h in. 8 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. the province of Assiniboia, and is in the arch- bishopric of Rupertsland. Its settlement was due to the Canadian Pacific Railway being marked out ; but after it had been boomed^ as the Canadians call it, by land speculators, rather above its merits perhaps, the colony stagnated for a length of time, though some brick buildings put up in Qu'Appelle station this summer look as if another tide of pros- perity were setting in. St. John's College, which contains the diocesan library and the residence of the bishop, within two miles of Qu'Appelle station, is a great feature of the district. The trail, as they call roads here, winds across the prairie among bushes, and past ponds, through an open space dotted with Indian tents, and among the horses and cattle of the natives feeding on the long thick grass. Then we come in sight of a white gate and the college grounds with the three houses which comprise the establishment standing on a slight elevation, the chapel in the rear of the middle house inhabited by the bishop. There is a bell on the top of the largest building, which can be heard miles away. The prairie seems to stretch interminably on all sides ; and in very clear weather, Fort Qu'Appelle, twenty miles distant, has been seen. The little town of QuAppelle station is a pretty object, with its metallic church spire, from the college front. "'% i :* -:-,(, .1 ^ the arch- t was due rked out ; dians call ts merits h of time, u'Appelle - of pros- ^e, which ;idence of e station, 1, as they e among en space le horses )ng thick gate and s which a slight middle fis a bell can be stretch y clear distant, Appelle : church ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 9 That Qu'Appcllc was most fortunate in its first bishop ^ goes without saying, when we look at the churches and the vicarages which were built during the eight years of his ministry, and- the high respect in which he is universally regarded there, both as a theologian, an organiser, and a kind and wise adviser and friend. His writings in various Canadian Church publications, and his sermons delivered in many parts of Canada, have, I am assured, done much to keep up a high standard among the clergy of the Episcopal Church through- out the Dominion. The large sums he has expended in different schemes for the good of the diocese in connection with St. John's College should also be recorded. It has been and is still a theological school, to train young men, free of expense to themselves, to take holy orders in the diocese. It is an agricultural college, where young Englishmen who wish to settle in the north-west learn the kind of farming best suited to the country more efficiently than they can in England ; and the ^ The Hon. and Right Rev. A. J. R. Anson, youngest son of the first Earl of Lichfield, was consecrated in Lambeth Palace at the same time with the late Bishop Hannington in 1884. He retired in 1892, cind his successor, the Right Rev. W. J. Burn, formerly\'icar of Conniscliff, diocese Durham, was con- secrated P.t Westminster Abbey on Lady Day, 1893. We understand that the new bishop, like his predecessor, is extremely popular among the Church people of Qu'Appelle. i\ ill I h lO EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. payment, £60 a year, cannot leave much room for profit, as they enjoy in return a comfortable colonial home. Besides this, the building, now standing empty, was once occupied by a school, where the sons of colonists able to pay £^$ a year (if boarders, much less if day scholars) received a classical and commercial education on a foundation of Church principles. But though this sum, when it includes washing and every extra, sounds little enough to pay in England, it is a good deal in the north-west. Boys are useful at home, and their parents have to hire others to replace them if they go away to school. Then there are Government free schools giving a purely secular education all over the country, and children in remote places are boarded with friends in the towns, that they may attend them. To plant a Church school on the system of our public ones in the north-west, and to give the boys cricket and football in their leisure hours, instead of the useful occupations to which many of them are accustomed, to keep hired people to wait upon them, is introducing an old- world institution into a new colony hardly yet ripe for it. At least, so it appeared ; for the numbers were never large enough to make it self-supporting, and after having, it is said, provoked much jealousy in other centres, it was closed subsequent to the departure of Bishop Anson, who used to make up 1 'k i li THE BROTHERHOOD. II room for I colonial standing ^here the year (if ceived a •undation jm, when nds little sal in the md their Ti if they v^ernment cation all )laces are :hey may 1 on the vest, and in their ations to ep hired an old- yet ripe numbers sporting, jealousy t to the make up the deficit. The Rev. VV. Nicolls and the Rev. Thos. Greene, successively head-masters, will long be affectionately remembered by their pupils for their kindness and efficiency. The boys, a high- spirited set of young fellows, used to form a choir for the church of St. Peter at Qu'Appelle ; and the school was certainly a great advantage to the St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, Qu'Appelle Station. neighbourhood, where it formed a very lively element. When Bishop Anson first went out, this district could not have been much more advanced than the part of Scotland in the days of St. Columba where the Celtic apostle first settled with his brotherhood, who acted as mih.sionaries, and maintained them- I I I ,^l '^ :| m ■f t ;' !-' f I 12 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. selves by their labour at the same time. Perhaps this was a precedent which suggested itself to the late Bishop of Qu'Appelle, when he established the Brotherhood of Labour at St. John's College. It was intended to work harmoniously — the brothers being fed and clothed gratis— with the young Eng- lish agricultural students ; and for a time did so, although several who offered themselves did not seem to understand the labour part of the contract, and their work was hardly an equivalent for their maintenance. It was also hardly possible to keep up such an establishment with the simplicity and economy which might be maintained in a purely savage district. The accompaniments of civilisation follow fast in the wake of the colonists in Canada. Stores or shops are set up, where groceries, tinned provisions, jams, pickles, and fruits are sold, but at a very high price. This is one cause of the expense of farm pupils in Canada. They expect to have the luxuries they were accustomed to have in Eng- land, when they can be had ; no matter if a three- pound pot of marmalade costs six .shillings and fourpence ; and a fourpenny-halfpenny bottle of sauce costs two and a penny. The brothers also preferred to give the agricultural pupils the dis- agreeable jobs to do about a farm, and keep the pleasant ones for themselves, — at least, so some of the pupils thought. Anyway, it was a complicated I I u ' ! BISHOP ANSON. 13 Perhaps If to the shed the lege. It brothers ng Eng- : did so, did not contract, for their I to keep icity and a purely v'ilisation Canada. 5, tinned d, but at expense to have in Eng- a three- ngs and ottle of lers also the dis- :eep the some of plicated establishment to work in union, being also a home for the clergy requiring a holiday or to consult the bishop, as well as when preparing for holy orders ; and as the brothers dispersed one by one to take up lay missionary work, a Government school, or to seek ordination in the Qu'Appelle, and other dioceses, the gaps were not filled up ; but they have done good work, elsewhere, for they were all young men, and certainly prepared for their useful careers in St. John's College. The brother superior, the last who remained, is now acting as lay missioner in the lonely settlement at Fort Felly. He was organist in the college chapel as well as in St. Peter's Church, Qu'Appelle station ; and manager of the work on the college farm. In an appendix to his recently published pamphlet on the need of brotherhoods for the mission work of the Church, Bishop Anson points out that his colonial experi- ment made clear that the primary want is " a home in England for the testing and training of men . . . before they are sent forth on an uncertainty to dis- tant countries ". Also, as the bishop explains in another place, to receive them when they have ceased to be really fit for their work, or are incapa- citated through illness. The bishop's wooden residence at St. John's College is in appearance and size like one of the lodges which generally stand at the entrance of an li^ \ II r, t< I' i!» H EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. . *:■ English park, the buildings on each side of it being of larger dimensions. The founder, Bishop Anson, visited Canada very soon after this district was first settled. He was then Rector of Woolwich ; and, perceiving the scarcity, if not entire absence, of clergy and churches among the new townships, which were being marked out along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he offered himself as a missionary priest, temporarily, to fill a pressing need, and was, we believe, earnestly requested by the Arch- bishop of Canterbury to allow himself to be conse- crated its first bishop. He was able to take the office without a stipend, which, during his episcopate, he succeeded in raising for his successor, and he spent his private income on the diocese ; for an English curdte of five-and-twenty could not have lived with less ostentation or with less of the comforts of life. His friends and relations have also been very liberal in their donations to St. John's College and to the churches, so that this diocese seemed to be looked upon with a good deal of envy by English church- men in some other parts of Canada. The chapel bell rings for prayers twice a day at St. John's College, whether the bishop is at home or not. He necessarily spends much time away from his residence, visiting the different parts of his diocese, which is nearly as large as Great Britain. Bishop Burn, like his predecessor, is a good pedes- BISHOP ANSON. 15 it being Anson, •ict was )olwich ; absence, vnships, e of the self as a ng need, he Arch- ie conse- the office Dpate, he he spent English ved with s of life, y liberal d to the le looked church - |a day at it home le away Ks of his Britain. pedes- trian, and goes about in no comfortable carriage. The episcopal conveyance is what we should call a gig, with the high wheels necessary to prevent it from being overturned where there are no roads, and which just holds the bishop and his driver, usually a student, with a place for a bag behind. The steed is a spirited horse or pony, bred on the place. The diocese is not entirely divided into parishes ; but the scattered churches are served by the bishop and the sixteen priests in the diocese, with the assistance of three deacons and two or three lay readers. A thirty-mile drive on a Sun- day is not thought too much. In winter they have had many hazardous escapes, wandering about in blinding snow-storms throughout a night, unable to regain the track, or to find a habitation. The accommodation in the settlers' shanties, hospi- tably as it is offered, is often extremely rough from the English point of view ; and, indeed, can hardly be otherwise. Sometimes they have camped out on long journeys, being unable to find any night shelter at all. It stands to reason that when the bishops and clergy in the north-west territory have no longer the vigour of youth, the)" have no course left but to retire, for certainly the bishop cannot rest himself out there. Neither are comforts to be found for invalids in the north-west or on the long land journey home to the old country, as Great i6 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. m i-h \ Britain is affectionately called throughout the new world. The full use of his limbs and faculties is, we should imagine, one of the most necessary qualifications for a successful emigrant ; yet, to judge from those often sent out, it seems to be a common belief in England that young fellows dis- qualified from entering a profession at home, by want of sight, or health, or some accidental injury, are just the very men likely to make their fortunes in Canada. If they are supplied with a small income these may live comfortably; but hardly without. The Canadians, like Thackeray's Lord Magnus Charters, can afford to be liberal in a non-political sense ; for there are few of the oldest or noblest families in England and France who are not represented more or less in the Dominion. Quebec boasts that her cemeteries contain the bones of more Waterloo heroes than perhaps any other out of the neighbourhood of the battlefield. St. John's College at Qu'Appelle has sent out many brave young fellows educated at English public schools, and some of them from Oxford and Cambridge, who have taken up land, and are doing their best to prove if this country is capable of supporting a prosperous branch of the English race. A sad fact was elicited from a Government official in 1891, that he had passed between thirty and forty deserted settlers' huts within a space of about thirty-five DESERTED FARMS. 17 miles, and about the same distance to the north- west of Qu'Appelle. Most of the owners are supposed to have migrated to British Columbia, hoping to gain a fortune rather more speedily in some other line of life.^ Two years of drought drove them away. As in ancient Egypt, years of rain and plenty succeeded those dry summers, and the ponds and lakes are returning to the same condition in which they were found by the first settlers from Eastern Canada and Europe.^ The ruinous drought suggested to a few of the most conscientious of the settlers that the English were being punished for taking possession of the birthright of the Indian. This idea seems a very unnecessary source of disquiet ; and how well the Government fulfils its treaty with the Indians will be shown later on. The Indian in his savage state and without the protection of English law suffered frequently from famine, and from the unprovoked * In the Marquis of Lome's Canadian Pictures, he gives the opinion that there is abundant scope for gentle- men's sons having modest fortunes, as ;f200 to ;^50o a year, for leading a life of comfort and enjoyment, riding, shooting, etc. Also, that ** a settler who has ;^500 on his arrival in Manitoba is an independent man, and cannot fail to succeed with ordinary care and energy. Many settlers on arrival have not a tenth part of that sum, and yet they succeed." 2 For "North-west Canadian Schools," see chap. x. Manitoba possesses a diocesan school at St. John's College, Winnipeg. '■,^; 1 ;( V' 1'. I8 KXCUkSIONS IN CANADA. attacks of hostile or starving tribes. He sometimes wandered hundreds of miles in one year in search of subsistence. Now he can obtain a sale for his wares, wages for his labour, medicine in sickness, and as he is gradually imbued with faith in a Heavenly Protector, he is relinquishing the fear of unseen horrors, evil eyes, witchcraft, and the like, which have been always the bane of un- civilised and heathen people. Hunters from the United States and from Eastern Canada are chiefly responsible for driving away the buffalo and larger game ; and it really appears as if the European settlers had been sent to the north-west for his preservation. The clothing forwarded by charit- able societies is most acceptable, in place of the buffalo hide which he can no longf^r afford ; but the useful rabbit is still left to him ; and its close i;hick fur, when arrayed in its winter coat, keeps out the cold as well as anything. The only good industrial boarding schools in Canada seem to be those for the Indians. The illustrations in Frank- lin's Voya£-e to the Arctic Sea in i82jy representing the Indians round Carlton, are a great contrast to the civilised hard-working natives and half-breeds whom we see at the present day in that part of Saskatchewan. They now meet with high-minded Europeans, who set them a good example, instead of the outlaws and declasse individuals, who were formerly a great proportion of the white residents. CHAPTER II. Voioi^i^ Farmers in the Qii'Appelk Valley — Fashionable Arrivals from London — Abernethy — Some Experi- ences of Gentlemen Settlers in Manitoba and the North-ivesi — Icelanders — Want of Clergy — Church Statistics — English Chirch Workers — A Prairie Fire. The earliest pioneers in Assiniboia knew how to choose their land ; and Pheasant Plains in the Valley of the Qu'Appelle River contains successful farmers who arrived there from England, with little but stout hearts and active hands. Of course, they have had their vicissitudes ; but one of them, having been recouped by his harvests for all he had laid out, was able in three years to pay a visit to Eng- land, and has now let his farm, of which he still retains the freehold. All his life he had wished to be a clergyman ; so, enabled by this success, he came to study for holy orders at St. John's College, Qu'Appelle, and was ordained by Bishop Anson not long before the bishop left the diocese. An- other settler owns a farm three and a half miles from Chickney post-office, and three from Christ II tl II HI lij 20 KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. Church, Abcrnethy. This young man was born in India, being the son of an Anglo-Indian official. When only eighteen, he left London in the spring of 1883, as soon as he had finished his school career^ knowing nothing whatever of farming and not a soul in the new world. He soon found work with a farmer on the Red River, and ten months of hard labour gave him sufficient experience and enough money in hand to take up a free grant of land, and begin to farm on his own account. He chose the Qu'Appelle Valley for this purpose, and, like most prudent people who do not start with much capital, he continued for three months to work for a neigh- bouring farmer, and in the meantime sent for a younger brother from England. In June, 1884, the iwo brothers pitched their tent on the open prairie, having borrowed a yoke of oxen and a waggon ta bring their possessions to this spot ; and they began to farm with a yoke of oxen, waggon, and breaking plough. The first summer they broke five acres, and built a log house and stables, and stacked a considerable amount of hay. In 1885, the year of the French half-breed and Indian rebellion, the younger brother took the yoke of oxen to serve with the transport, which is always a profitable occupation in time of war ; and having no other team, the elder brother spent that time as a hired labourer. This year they had thirteen acres under V YOUNC; KAKMKKS IN THE QU'AI'I'KLLK VALLKY. 21 crop. In 1886 they broke only twenty-four acres more, for they could not afford hired labour, but occasionally exchanged it ; and by this means they Avere enabled to build a larj^er house and another stable. This autumn their parents and five sisters came out to stay with them ; but a year and a half later the new-comers moved into the town of Qu'- Appelle. The place began now to look more like a farm, and received the addition of a blacksmith's shop. The elder brother married soon after his parents and sisters had left; but the year 1888 was disastrous throughout the north-west, and the brothers had a bad crop, as seventy-five acres of their wheat were frozen. In 1889 they broke 100 acres, and had about thirty head of cattle. In 1890 the total yield of grain was over 3000 bushels. In the autumn they sold almost all their cattle, and invested the money in heavy draught horses. In 1891 they broke another seventy-five acres, and the total grain yield was nearly 6000 bushels, for they now possessed 640 acres, having taken up a second homestead. The farm is all of log buildings, and the house lined inside with wood, which adds to the warmth. The farm is supplied with modern implements, three teams of draught horses, cows sufficient to supply the family, and thirty pigs. There is a large pasture field fenced with barbed wire. The acreage under cultivation is over 300 lii 4 h ii V if 1 22 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. \\\ w tl }>!! iM acres ; and the proprietor with the proceeds of his labour, having bought a house nearer the railway, is now offering this for sale at a very moderate price* When the parents and sisters of the young settlers just described joined them, they knew little of the inner life of a Canadian settlement. Their sons had written home that they were getting on, and had refrained from troubling their relatives with details of their difficulties ; but they did suggest that there would be no room for a governess. The party of seven arrived unexpectedly ; for they did not know that telegrams and letters waited at post- offices till they were called for, at intervals of two or three weeks ; and at that time the young set- tlers had no post-office nearer than Indian Head, twenty miles away. The family arrived in what they imagined would have been genial weather, but it was really freezing hard as well as blowing and snowing. Seeing no hotel (there is one now) at Indian Head, and little but treeless prairie, they hired an open waggon to take them to Abernethy ;. and, each provided with an umbrella and an indi i- rubber foot-warmer, set off for their long drive. The wind soon disposed of their umbrellas, and by the time they reached Abernethy the foot-warmers were lumps of ice. They expected that the door of their son's house would be opened by a neat servant, and that they should find dinner awaiting 1 FASHIONABLE ARRIVALS FROM LONDON. 23 1 i them, laid English fashion on a white cloth. But as they approached the wooden house, with four rooms and a little watch-tower at the top from which to look after the cattle and sheep, the younger brother came out of the stable with a lantern, in his working clothes ; for they found no announcement of their departure from their home in London had yet reached the young men. Then how to find provisions ? There was pork, and pv't iloes, and tea, and porridge, but no tablecloth to lay it on ; and the brothers turned out and slept in the granary, to give up all the house for bedrooms. In time the new-comers shook down into place, and the young ladies were the life of the little settle- ment, even giving a dance in this farm-house, till their father bought a residence at Qu'Appelle station, thirty miles away, and they removed there. But after ten years' experience they all allow that they never enjoyed better health than they do in Canada, although the frosts in winter, and the fierce sun and mosquitoes during the short summers, are a serious drawback. Those who wish to take up free homesteads at the present moment cannot expect to be near a station, unless it is in a very remote place. Land companies soon monopolise all they can along a new line ; and the price paid by young Englishmen is often much above the real value, as shown by Ipi'; i'^. 'i 24 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. J what they have subsequently obtained for the same when improved by years of hard labour. The pioneers of Pheasant Plains took up their free lands about twenty miles north of Indian Head, hardly realising that the growth of population by immigra- tion would be less rapid than nearer the railway line. No human beings but Indians lived in that valley till 1 88 1. Now, a mail cart runs twice a week from Wolseley station on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Chickney post-office on the plain ; and the pretty little church at Abernethy vvas built by these settlers with their own hands, assisted with money from the English friends of the diocese. It was consecrated by Bishop Anson in the autumn of 1886. It has now even got a surpliced choir. On the north the plain is bounded by the Pheasant Hills, and on the south by the Qu'Appelle River, whence the Pheasant Creek, lined with poplars, meanders, rather lazily it mu.^t be owned, and in the very dry summer of 1883 presented little but a dry bed with holes of deep water. The valley through which the creek runs is about 300 feet deep and half a mile wide ; and fossil shells are found on the banks, .showing that it was once a much more powerful stream. Here the settlers grow beautiful English vegetables, and have raised good-sized gooseberries and currants from culti- vating the wild fruits of the prairie. . EXPERIENCES IN MANITOBA AND NORTH-WEST. 2$ :i- ^ It is a common cause of failure in Canada that Englishmen have been in too great a hurry to make a fortune. They have staked their all at once on mnd recommended to them by some one interested in settling that part, and borrowed money at a very high interest to go on with till they could sell their first crops ; and then when they had grown corn, the price of wheat fell so low that they were not repaid the heavy cost of hired labour, or the hire of the harvesting machinery. Money is lent at eleven and even twent}' and twenty-four per cent. No one can live a year and three-quarters in the north-west territory, or in Manitoba, without seeing and hearing of many failures ; one man came out with ;^2000, and at the end of two years when he sold everything there was hardly enough to pay his debts. Another in the same period contrived to lose ;^500.^ In both cases they were perhaps ^ The author of a book describing several years' residence in Australia assures rr ; that, except as regards the climate, all I have said can be paralleled in that colony. The following, from the Daily Telegraph, gives the opinion of one of our consuls in the United States: — " The roving young English gentleman's notion of Cali- fornia as a delightful country where a little pleasant work in fruit-farming may be supplemented with a good deal of lawn tennis, shooting, and fishing is, we are assured by Consul Donohoe, purely imaginary. The business of fruit- farming is highly speculative, hired labour is expensive, and ■I •Ir I > 26 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. tempted to speculate, for it is nothing else, by having well-to-do parents who could receive them when they returned to England penniless. One young man, of gentle birth and education, now the owner of a large quantity of cattle and horses and several miles of grazing land, came out with only ten of the small capitalists those only are successful who do their own work, and work unremittingly. Speaking generally, this gentleman affirms that the American farmer has infinitely less comfort than the tenant farmer in Eng- land. The very foiiJness of young Englishmen for an out-door life militates, we are told, against their success. Mr. Donohoe cites the case of two English lads, well educated and well connected in London, who came to his district recently because they did not like office life. They are now employed as dock labourers, and, as the employ- ment is not steady, do not make sufficient for their bare support, and rely on remittances from home. This, we are assured, is no isolated instance. Englishmen who intend to send their sons to the colonies or to the United States should, Mr. Donohoe thinks, send them at twelve or thirteen years of age, so that they may finish their education in the country in which they are to live. " Looking to the fact that last winter there were large numbers of unemployed persons in San Francisco, Consul Donohoe strongly dissuades any skilled artisan or labouring man from coming to San Francisco, or, in fact, the Pacific Coast, in the hope of finding employment. There are more men there now than can obtain steady work ; and the only good opening is for competent female domestic servants, who would have no difficulty in obtaining places at from £^ to £6 per month. They are expected to perform more work, however, than in similar places at home." EXPERIENCES IN MANITOBA AND NORTH-WEST. 27 pounds, and with orders not to return to England for seven years. He began by working as a navvy on the Canadian Pacific Railway line, then in course of construction ; living on the rough food provided by the contractors, and at one point being without water for three days. By this work he saved about twelve pounds, and started with it. A farmer born in Toronto, now farming six miles from Qu'Appelle station, assured me that a hard- working sensible young fellow could make his fortune there in ten years ; and his own red brick house, rich sheaves, and splendid cattle, corrobo- rated his statement that this year he should clear 2000 dollars, and be able to take his wife into a town for a holiday during the winter months. The railways offer cheap return tickets to Toronto and Montreal in the winter for this purpose. A gentle- man's son from Worcestershire, in the same neigh- bourhood, was, I was assured, in process of making his fortune. He was a fine athletic young fellow not twenty, but had taken up a free homestead (for which a two-pound registration fee is required) ; he had got in hay for other farmers on the agreement that a certain proportion was kept for himself as payment ; built his house with assistance, paid back by his own work ; and collected quite a herd of cows. Last winter he was joined by a younger brother and his sister who learned cooking (a very 'I i I 28 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. necessary art) and baking before she left England ; and she has probably made a great difference to the comfort of this bachelor establishment. But that in many cases the successful farmer has increased his income by usurious money lending, and has risen on the wreck of the unsuccessful English youth, is an established fact ; and that the Manitoba and north-west papers have filled large sheets with the list of farms advertised for sale for the arrears of taxes and payments is only one of many proofs of it. That Canada is a heavily taxed country, accumulating for its resources a large national debt, with paper money of as low a value as 25 cents, and with a territory as huge, and reaching further south than any part of Russia in Europe, has under five millions of population, while Russia in Europe has over ninety millions, — does not seem to be generally known. I compare the two States because Russia is the only country with which Canada has any analogy, and both of them are continents rather than States. To have a popu- lation in comparison with her extent is the great ambition of the Canadians ; yet, if they had, she would undoubtedly be subject to the same vicissi- tudes of famine as Russia. Their emigrant agents traverse the United States, Australia, and Europe ; one has been expelled from Roumania, two have been imprisoned in Austrian Galicia ; they have ICELANDKKS. 29 been ordered out of Russia and Germany. The poor peasantry whom they allure by describing an El Dorado in comparison to what they are leaving behind, sell up everything to go, and many of them strand in London on the way. Those who do arrive are almost invariably discontented and dis- appointed at first; but after a time settle down, and their children perhaps find an advantage in the change. At any rate, there is no conscripti-^^n in Canada, although every man capable of bearing arms, and not exempted by clerical, medical, or the higher legal duties, is liable to be called upon to serve in the army if the country requires it. Oddly enough, the Russians and Poles, either Jews or Christians, seem the most dissatisfied of the emi- grants. The Icelanders form, an exception to the general rule of disappointment. They have a Lutheran church of their own in Winnipeg, and are settling about the lakes in Manitoba. I was told they found themselves so much better off than in their own volcanic island that they are trying to induce the 22,000 inhabitants left there to follow them to the new world.^ The United States ^ re ^ I find the winter of 1892-3 has been too much for even the Icelanders. The above statement, given positively by a Government official, is the subject of some jibes recently on the part of a Canadian Icelandic literary organ, which asks how much the Canadian Government has paid to its 30 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. ! If.' Government wanted to attract them to settle in Alaska ; but being a well-informed literary people, who knew all about that district by report, they wisely declined the ofifer with thanks. The Canadians divide the English gentlemen settlers into " farmers who work, remittance ^ far- mers, and buckboard farmers," buckboard being the north-west term for a vehicle called a waggon in East Canada, holding two people and baggage behind. The buckboard farmer either employs hired labour entirely, or does nothing but drive about either to see his friends or to the nearest town. This sort of man is a great hindrance to industrious people. No one in Canada ever grudges a meal to an acquaintance ; but he sits and smokes in the agent in Iceland for the stories circulated about his immense success there. ^ People who send money to their sons to buy land would be wise to take the title-deed into their own custody. The deed is not handed over to the purchaser till he has paid off all arrears with the accumulated six per cent, interest; and the Canadian lender requires the title-deed as a security, owing to the difficulties of suing a man for debt. Last year a third of the land taken up on deferred payments by the first settlers in a Manitoban town was still unregistered, because the payments had never been completed. Some young men have put up at the first hotel they came to, and lived on their capital as far as it would go. They have then gone back to England, and amused their relatives with truly "traveller's stories," as to the impossibility of making a living in the north-west. ICKLANDERS. 31 little kitchen much in the way of cooking operations, and encouraging others about the place to come and smoke with him and be idle too. The remit- tance farmer never troubles himself to make his farm self-supporting, but can afford to speculate and gamble a little, and lives on an allowance from home. Why should he work ? For as soon as he sent a good report of his crops, and represented himself to be in flourishing circumstances, the allow- ance would probably stop ! Butter and eggs are generally cheap ; but though wheat was ruinously low in 1 89 1, bread sold by weight was dearer at Ou'Appelle and in Minnedosa, than in London, on account of the expense of the miller and baker's wages. Frozen wheat is often sold mixed up with good flour, and the result is heavy sodden bread ; but as a rule the Canadian bread is as light as the Italian or Viennese. The millers seem to hold the smaller farmers quite at their mercy. Young muni- cipalities are often extravagant ; and in many places they tax themselves to subsidise a miller to make it worth his while to settle in their vicinity. The ratepayers of those places ought decidedly to have a prior right over outsiders to nave their wheat ground, but I could not find that this stipulation was in force anywhere ; and the millers, if they have quarrelled with their immediate neighbour, will decline to grind his wheat altogether, and in many ■ 1. 1 I i 1/ 32 KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. " \ r cases will only buy wheat to sell again as flour, and will not grind wheat for the farmers themseWes. So as wheat is bought up very cheaply and flour is sold dear, a Canadian miller's trade is a very paying one. It is this mill tax, as well as the school rate, and sending people to hospitals, asylums,, prison, or even back to England, which runs up the municipal rates, in addition to expensive town halls, and borough improvements — an old-country griev- ance imported by Canada. One very touching sight are the pretty little churches built byyoungsettlers,who give their labour^ or what they could afford, in the full expectation that as soon as they had got a church some clergyman would be found to serve it ; and none has come. Then years go by, the church having an occasional service, or even perhaps as much as once a fortnight in the afternoon ; but the fear is, that when the settlers, growing into middle-aged men, have got out of the habit of dressing themselves on Sunday^ and setting aside their work for the sake of going to church, they will no longer care about it. It will stand there for marriages, baptisms, and funerals ; and that is enough. Now and then, there is an educated layman who reads the Church service, and several lay readers have been nomi- nated in the diocese of Qu'Appelle, chiefly for churches on the Indian reserves. Some of the WANT OF CLEKCiY. 33 ome. iona) night the got day, going It and there urch omi- ' for ■ the clergy eke out their income by taking a Govern- ment school. The number taught must not be less than six, and the lowest salary given is £40. There is a dearth of schoolmasters ; so their place is often filled by women. An English certificate is of no use, but any educated English youth could pass third class in Canada, and it is sufficient to take the country schools, which close part of the year. Many who have lost their money in farming turn to that, and add to their income in harvest time by manual labour ; others go into the north- west police, a fine mounted force of about a thousand men who maintain order in the territories, and are drilled and dressed like English soldiers. More than one young man who had wished from childhood to be ordained, but was unable to afford the expensive education of a theological student in England, has come out to Canada to farm or make his living in some other way ; and finding that he could obtain admission at St. John's College, Qu'Appelle, has read for holy orders, and passed a good examination, for Bishop Anson tried to keep up the standard of the clergy. This was so well known among his episcopal brethren in Canada and the States that several he ordained, who became ambitious of larger con- gregations, were warmly welcomed both in America and other parts of Canada, where they obtained 3 «(1 :i' 34 KXCUkSlONS IN CANADA. preferment. The very nature of cattle-farming and horse-ranching, which is perhaps the most remunerative to settlers, obhgcs many to live far away from villages, with very rare opportunities at the best of times of entering a church ; and for these *' sheep without a shepherd " a prayer is daily offered up in St. John's College Chapel, " that they may continue holy in their lives," and that pastors may be found to minister to them. Every anxious parent sending out a boy to Canada probably thinks a little of the religious atmosphere among which he is or is not likely to be thrown. The statistics given by Bishop Anson in his speech at the Lichfield Diocesan Conference show that the Anglican Church numbers 644,000 members out of the nearly five millions of people in Canada, and that in Manitoba there are only 31,000 Church people in a population of 152,000. The Canadian Almanack for 1891 puts down no Sunday schools for Anglicans ; but this we know to be a mistake, though they are far from numerous. The Romanists number two millions, including Indians, throughout the Dominion, and the Presby- terians stand next ; the Methodists come third, and the Church of England fourth ; we have heard even a leading Swedenborgian in the United States assert that if the Church of England would but call herself the Catholic Church, or by some 1 ^ ENCilJSIl CllUKClI WOkKKRS. 35 ling fby. ird, lard ted uld me name that meant cosmopolitan, not national and local, many more Americans would be found to rally round her standard. Yet, even with this national and local name, she is extremely well represented in the United States; and the American statistics show that throughout the ICnglish-speak- ing communities of the globe (they say about 118,300,000) she stands first among Christian forms of belief in the number of her adherents. The Canadians send missionaries to Japan and India ; but when we look at the spiritual needs of the north-west it seems strange that few Eastern Canadians can be found to serve in that territory, so that it is mainly dependent on men from Eng- land. Taking it altOL;ether, Canada is a moral and religious country, with laws to regulate the ob- servance of Sunday, when shooting is forbidden, and no train starts from a terminus. As the trains which otherwise would have left Montreal and Vancouver on Sundi:y must have respectively reached Qu'Appelle station on Thursday, no train ran through on that day, so that there was only the local post. We have seen herd-boys come seven miles on foot, with only a chance of a lift part of the way back, to an afternoon or evening service ; a young man walk thirty miles through the snow to church on Easter Sunday ; a couple bring a baby to be ti 1^ ^ .1 i' I H ll n them like that sometimes seen on tame pheasants reared round an English house. The wild saskatoon is a very luscious fruit, like a black currant and bilberry combined, and some years is most plentiful. Straw- berries and raspberries, wild hops and wild goose- berries, are also found in great quantities in many places ; but real apple trees will not grow in Assiniboia or Manitoba, not even the Siberian crab. In summer, the prairie is carpeted with wild flowers of beautiful colours, many of them the uncultivated original of common English garden plants. But in the prairie country there are no earthworms, slugs, or toads. The frog makes its voice heard very loudly in the ponds, or " sleughs," as they are called out here ; and there is a repulsive- looking fleshy green snake very commonly found. I measured one which was two feet eight and a half inches. It is quite harmless, and possibly performs 48 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. <» / ( I t the duty of rcfertilising the land, as the earthworm does elsewhere. As summer tourists to the north-west are very apt to go away with the impression that the fierce heat they feel in July can only be followed by a mild winter, and the land companies' agents are willing to foster that delusion, I append some observations made in 1893 by the Manitoba Free Press, and supported by every newspaper through- out the north-west. " llie coldest in ten years. "Elkhorn, Feb. 8. — During the past fortnight the temperature has ranged from 49° to 60° below zero. The weather has now moderated. " Little Pat Gordon was found dead in bed this morning from cold. He had been unwell on the previous day. " The coal supply ran short last week ; but a quantity arrived for the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was distributed around. ^^ Napinka snow-boimd. " Napinka, Feb. 7. — Every person here is snow- bound. The longest and most severe storm ever known by the oldest settlers is still raging, though it is moderating this evening. For a full week the temperature has registered daily from 40° to 53° STATISTICS OK COLU 49 below zero, with the wind west and south. The first train for a week passed from here over the Glcnboro road. The regular train for Estcvan has been a full week getting to Oxbow, about sixty miles. Two trains are west fighting snow. To-day Supt. Murray, with a gang of about fifty men, left Napinka for the west. After working all day on about three miles of road they returned to Napinka. They hope to go as far as Melita, eight miles, to- morrow. The snow is from two to twelve feet deep in the cuts. There has been no mail from Estevan for ten days. W. Scott, who keeps a first- class house, is very busily engaged in looking after the comfort of the many travellers storm-bound here. The town is alive with men, but farmers cannot get out from their homes. Business men are in the dumps, business being at a stand-still. " Moosomin, Feb. 8. — On Saturday last, Robert Thompson, who lives about sixteen miles north of here, brought into town a young man very badly frozen in the face, ears, hands, and feet. Thomp- son took him in and cared for him as best he could, and on Saturday brought him into town. On arrival here, comfortable clothing was provided for the sufferer, and he wa£: carefully attended to at the Lake house until Sunday, when the Town Council, having taken the matter up, sent him in charge of A. Bell, town constable, to the Brandon .1 I ' *l I ri 50 KXCUkSIONS iN CANADA. hospital for treatment. The young man is appar- ently about twenty years of age, and claims to be a native of the West Indies. " T/te cold at Port Arthur. " Port Arthur, Feb. 8. — The weather has moderated considerably. Since ist February the average minimum temperature has been twenty-five and a fraction below zero. For the month of January the average was thirteen and a fraction below zero. From 2nd January to the 7th the average was thirtec below; from the 24th to the 31st fifteen and a half below. Six weeks of such incessant cold with wind storms and snow were never known here before. Thirty-five below zero is the lowest point that the thermometer has fallen. The pro- spects for an early opening of navigation are poor, as the ice on tlie Thunder Bay is fully three feet thick. *• IVard's terrible fate. " A correspondent of the Free Press forwards a report of the death of Ward near Swift Current : * A most heartrending and fearful case of death from exposure occurred here early this morning. W. G. Ward, an employe of the Canadian Pacific Railway, whose duty it was to act as signalman, I STATISTICS OF COLD. SI Is a knt: ath :ific fan, while engaged with a gang of men, who with an engine and snow plough were clearing the track at Leven, some eight miles west of this place, returned east towards Swift Current at about haif-past one this morning, to protect the gang from the Pacific express then overdue. The temperature was be- tween thirty and forty below zero, and a heavy wind storm and snow drifts came on. His body was found about half a mile west of the railway station.' " Last night's mail from the west brought letters and papers several days old, extracts from which show that Manitoba was not the only province that experienced bitterly cold weather last week. " The Golden New Era says : * This week, as appears to be the case everywhere in the mountains, severe weather has prevailed, and up to date of writing (Thursday) is still prevailing. Wind has been accompanied by sleet at times, and when these two evils subside the thermometer is found to regulate very low. Thirty-six degrees below zero has been the record to date. Frost bites have been at a premium, but with the average man it is once bitten twice shy, and consequently those who can remain at home do so.' " The Calgary Herald gives the thermometer for the week ending Thursday, all below zeru Fahr. : — 52 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. Friday, Jan. 27 . . . MAX. — 2 MIN. —22 Saturday, Jan. 28 . —19 — 26 Sunday, Jan. 29 ... . —24 —30 Monday, Jan. 30 . . —41 —45 Tuesday, Jan. 31 . . -38 -48 Wednesday, Feb. i —26 —43 Thursday, Feb. 2 . • —34 —42 Barometer, 26'66c }. "One day's temperature, reading at points in British Columbia, was as follows : — Victoria Vancouver . Westminster Nanaimo . Mount Pleasant Clinton Ashcroft Bridge Creek 134 Mile House 150 Mile House Soda Creek Quenelle Barkerville . 9 above zero. 5 ♦> II 5 below zero. 4 M >» 15 l> II 32 »» II 16 ,. »» 35 II »» 39 II II 38 • 1 n 32 II >» 32 II »> 41 » II " Sixty-one at Battleford, and sixty-five at Henri- etta, sixty miles further east, yesterday mornings says the Edmonton Bulletin of Thursday. " A painter named George Griffin, who went hunting from Deep Bay, has been found near Comox, British Columbia, paralysed and half frozen. He is supposed to have had a stroke^ STATISTICS OF COLD. S3 fallen, and afterwards become half frozen, the stroke itself being possibly due to cold and ex- posure. He lies in a precarious state. " Monday, the 30th inst., was the coldest day ever recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, up to then. The official thermometer at Esquimalt showed a minimum of one and a half degrees below zero, and in the city itself it is stated that five degrees below zero was registered. The next severest cold snaps known to Victoria were on 20th December, 1879, when zero was recorded; and 5th February, 1887, when the minimum register of temperature stood at "06 above zero. " The trains. "The delayed Canadian Pacific Railway trains from the coast arrived last evening at 5*30, and this morning at 215. Not many passengers were on board, but their experiences with cold are very interesting, and go to show that nothing equal to the severity of the weather of the last week has been known. At Calgary, Swift Current, Medicine Hat, and Regina, no thermometer registered lower than forty-eight to fifty-five degrees below zero. The railway company had considerable trouble attending to the wants of the passengers, and dining cars were kept on the move looking after the numerous trains. Last night a chinook wind 54 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. V was blowing at Medicine Hat and vicinity, and the snow of several days was rapidly melting away. " Great Falls, Mont., March 27. — Last Thursday six Englishmen, four Austrians, and one German, all labourers, left Maple Creek station, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, to walk to Havre, on the Great Northern Railway, a distance of 125 miles. When near the boundary line they encountered so much snow and suffered so severely from cold weather, that the Englishmen weakened and turned back. The others kept on, and reached Havre last night in such a deplorable condition that they could hardly walk. Two of the Austrians had badly frozen feet, while all of the party were suffering from snow blindness. They came here to-day for medical treatment, and are in the county hospital. It is feared some of them may die from the effects of exposure." The Romanist Archbishop Tache, of St. Boniface,, near Winnipeg, who has worked for over thirty-six years in Manitoba and the north-west, said four- teen years ago that he was not surprised at the impre.' 'i " produced on the tourist while he experk :es the real delights of a summer excursion over i.i^se plains. . . . But here comes the end of August. Already cold is threatening ; severe frosts prevent the ripening of cereals, and expose them to complete destruction. At other times a KKAL PROGRESS. 55 r similar result may follow drought. Winter has arrived in the beginning of November, and con- tinues more or less in April; and, don del! what winter! Often mercury is frozen during entire weeks." Even a Canadian writer, who, in 1880, speaks most enthusiastically of the prospects of the north- west, and of Manitoba, how they will outdo the United States, and so on, adds: "Of course there are drawbacks ; and Winnipeg, like every other western town, is filled with disappointed emigrants, who would be glad to get home again. There is not a state or province in all America where this has not been the experience of thousands. They went in and remained because they could not get out. At the best the ordinary emigrant's lot for the first few years is a hard one. No sensible man will * go west,' who is fairly well off east ; and should he go to Manitoba, he need not expect a fool's paradise." And the Vicar of Stoneycroft, Liverpool, while recommending emigration to the discontented, or to those in debt and difficulty, says : *' Don't imagine that you will find things made easier for you in the new world than they are here. Nothing of the sort. Indeed, as I have warned you, it is quite otherwise. Don't * chuck up ' a good thing here with the notion that a fellow will fall on his feet somehow out yonder. Don't ^\\ i I M f ! f 56 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. let the lazy fellow who is always trying to shirk work at home, who loves to hang about the street ccners and the village ale-house, delude himself with the notion that there is a welcome awaiting him in a land where all men are at work, busy, eager, hopeful in carrying on the God-assigned task of conquering the earth and subduing it." And what real progress the north-west has made since 1880, when the eastern mail came on dog sleighs, and the only way of getting about with luggage was in a Red River cart ! This is a primitive conveyance made entirely without iron, which, by taking the wheels off and putting it on a buffalo hide, could be turned into a boat or coracle, wherewith to cross a river. Undoubtedly, if emi- grants lived as economically now as they did then, they would sooner acquire a competence ; but making money is not after all the only considera- tion, and many of them live much too poorly as it is. I heard from a clergyman who had a church in Manitoba, that it was no use handing round the offertory bag, for the congregation had not a five- cent piece (the smallest coin taken except at the post-offices in the north-west) among them, and did everything by barter. It is well known that in the United States autho- rised figures are not always reliable, and that for years the city of St. Paul gave a false return of its I e \ TlIK CKNSUS. 57 population, to appear bigger than its nei3 the rails to the slccj)crs, as they arc of use in makinjj cart wheels ; so the contractors, very considerately, had a number strewed about the line to let them all have enough, and to pare, that they might not risk the lives of the passengers by meddling with the new rails. The post at that time still came by mail cart from Qu'Appellc station across the Touchwood Hills, to Duck Lake, en route for Prince Albert ; and a man on horseback carried the Carlton bag to its destination, whence an Indian fetched the letters from Snake IMain, forty-five miles distant from Duck Lake. In the autumn and spring there was sometimes, a delay of weeks on the road, owing to the post having to cross both the north and the south branches of the Saskatchewan, and the un- settled condition of the ice. Business men began to complain when the railway was opened which would bring letters from Winnipeg in thirty-two hours, and they found the mail still conveyed by a system that always kept letters six days on the road, so it was altered about two months later ; but on that occasion my letters announcing my visit to Snake Plain had waited two extra weeks, unable to cross the South Saskatchewan at Batoche, and I saw I lem handed over to the Indiar mounted postman at Carlton as I was continuing my journey. 1 1 64 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. It '.I' j! I stayed with the Pozers over Sunday. There was then no Kpiscopal church, nor as far as I know any place of worship within^ some miles ; and as the inhabitants of Duck Lake have not yet become blue ribbonists, Sunday appeared to be passed in a continuance of Saturday night revels, with the result that there were several broken heads and other catastrophes. The most serious was the broken leg of a mounted policeman ; and the doctor, who had been summoned to attend a lady at a distance, was still waiting to cross the river till it should either entirely freeze or thaw. However^ a bitterly cold day enabled him to pass it, and relieve the sufferer, who was impatiently awaiting him, stretched on the barrack floor, with a gun- stock fastened tight to his fractured limb. Finding no one going in the direction of Snake Plain I hired a " rig," or " buckboard," for three dollars to take me as far as Carlton. I fancy the Siberian convicts are carried to their destination in the same kind of springless vehicle as these rigs. They are like old-fashioned gigs, stuck upon a five- barred gate on wheels ; and the draught coming up between the rails in cold weather is very chilling to the feet. As the thermometer was some degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), we required to be attired almost like Esquimaux to travel safely in this conveyance ; but the Canadians do not dress as SNAKK PLAIN. 65 the in ivc- up to fees red :hi.s as warmly as in North-eastern Europe. We read of Carlton in Sir \Vm. Butler's Great Lone Land, and Lord Milton's North-west Passage by L^and^ and it is marked on maps as a Hudson Bay Com- pany's settlement 200 years old. I had heard there was a hotel, known as the Bush hotel, where I could be put up comfortably. But everything is comparative ; and since .Sir Wm. Butler and Dr. Cheadle wrote their books, the hVench half-breed rebellion has turned Carlton into an almost deserted ruin. One store and the Bush hotel are all that remain of the once flourishing^ little wooden town ; but there are other houses, and a Romanist chapel and school, at some distance. The Bush hotel is a wooden farm-house, consist- ing of two rooms : the kitchen, and a dormitory above it. Toussaint Lucicr, an old French half- breed, and his Indian wife, are the proprietors, and a fine stalwart row of tall sons and daughters, and a few grandchildren, still live under the family roof. The walls of the kitchen were adorned with some Roman Catholic pictures, and it had the general appearance of a peasant's house in France ; but the French Canadians, mixed with Indian blood, are a much stronger-looking, handsomer race than any class in France ; for they lead a healthy, out door life, fishing and shooting ; and as timber can be had for the cutting, they need never suffer 5 66 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. ' s 'I from cold indoors. The Indian wife had fallen into the French style, except that in the evening she consoled herself furtively in a corner with a pipe ; and she, like all the family, spoke very good French. I asked her age, as her husband had asked mine, which seems the custom in these parts. She was sixty-two, and had not a white hair among her thick black tresses. One married daughter was living there because her husband was in the Winni- peg lunatic asylum. Her youngest child, little Toussaint, was the pet of the family ; but the elder, who was about six years old, seemed to have in- herited her father's malady. She would sit down and suddenly burst out crying for no apparent reason, and this continued sometimes ten minutes. At first I checked these paroxysms with apples and candies which I had brought with me for some children at Snake Plain ; but I heard from the rest of the family that it was her constant habit, and it was probably a not uncommon instance of a melan- choly temperament in the child of an insane parent. His complaint was possibly brought on by spirit drinking, for no one of Indian descent can take .spirits with impunity. These two children were as fair as any English ones. I had expected that the man, an old Scotchman, who drove me from Duck Lake, woukl have taken me on to Snake Plain ; but lie pleaded another engagement, and went home 1 4 SNAKE PLAIN. 67 the same afternoon. I was indebted to the kind- ness of Mr. Sissoms, the storekeeper at Carlton, for a share in his rig, as he was driving the next day through Snake Plain on business. He also most politely offered to let me have a room in his house for the night; but as this would have entailed himself and his son sleeping on the shop counters, I could not think of accepting it ; so arranged with the Luciers to have their kitchen to myself, having brought sufficient wraps to make up a bed. I had also brought tea, and enough provisions for my own supper ; and as the family happened to be a little short of provisions that afternoon *^'icy had a .share of them. Such was the Hush hotel. The airlessness and heat of the stove-heated kitchen at first prevented me from sleeping. Then as the wood was burnt out, it became very cold, and the cat and kittens claimed a share of my wraps. The dogs also howled and rattled at the kitchen door till I let them in ; so altogcti I was rather glad when the night came to an end. The northern branch of the mighty Saskatchewan river rises 300 miles north of the southern branch, and it is therefore some weeks earlier passable on the ice. It runs through a deep narrow gorge near Carlton, where the Lucicr family own a fcrr)' boat in summer. In winter the drifting ice soon ac- cumulates in this gorge, and forms a natural bridge i ,( f 68 KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. perfectly easy to cross, while the river is still running in other parts. This we had to pass on the way to Snake Plain. The country, then covered with snow, is beautifully wooded, and contains rich pasture. We .stopped about half-way to rest the horse, and, sheltered from the icy wind in a little wood, lighted a fire to warm ourselves and to boil some tea. The .sticks were dry enough to burn, but the wind blew them out, till we made screens of our railway rugs by pinning them up between the trees. Then how to find water! Mr. Sissorns had brought a pickaxe with him, and attempted to procure some from a neighbouring lake. Hut he chopped in vain for more than a yard. It seemed frozen all through. So he put pieces of ice into the kettle and melted enough to water the horse, and to make us some tea. We had not hitherto met a human being ; but had passed the remains of an Indian encampment with the sort of substitute the Indians have for a steam bath, and into which they place invalids, having a great idea of its curative powers. Here we entered a great Indian reserve. To those not familiar with Canadian arrange- ments I must explain that the Canadian Govern- ment has behaved particularly well to the Indians. Certain districts of fertile well-wooded lands are set apart for the Indian tribes ; and as long as they remain within these reserves, they receive a pound If INDIAN AGENCY. 69 ) a head annually from the Government, with rations, distributed more frequently, of pork, meal, clothes, etc. They are given medicines ; and are generally superintended by Government officials, known as Indian agents, who live on the reserves. The money encourages them to take care of their chil- dren, as they are paid a pound annually for e.ich as soon as it is born ; and only one wife is recognised as such, so a duplicate and her children would receive nothing. Yet every year, men and women leave the reserves to settle elsewhere, and there is much more intermarriage between the Indians and Europeans than is generally known out of Canada. As in the United States, the Indian features and character permeate the national life of Canada. The last census showed that three millions out of a population under five millions were of Indian descent. Therefore the Indian cannot be said to be dying out. He is simply being civilised and merging into the Canadian. The loss of buffalo meat and the introduction of wheat and a variety of food have altered his disposition, of whici rocity is no longer a prominent feature. A farm iructor on the reserves gives him some idea of ai iculture ; but sheep,* that great source of profit 1 almost ' Also in some parts of Canada there is a n.stle which spoils the wool, and in others a spearf^rass wh.ch ultimately kills the sheep. On thickly-peopled districts the herding 70 KXCUUSIONS IN CANADA. " ll unlimited pasture like this; cannot be fed on or near the reserves on account of the number of half- starved dogs that the Indians keep foi hunting. It stands to reason that when he has been taught a civilised pursuit, his innate wandering instincts lead him to stray off to seek employment among more highly civilised men. There is no money to be made on the reserves. The law forbids trading with Indians ::o long as they accept subsidies or treaty money, and if they work they are only paid in goods. They can always get wages elsewhere during harvest time ; and the women are in request as charwomen, washerwomen, etc., in the towns. Beyond Snake Plain, which is under the charge of a Presbyterian minister, there are three more Indian reserves ; Sandy Lake under Kj)iscopalian auspices, and Muskegg T rke under Romanist priests. The Muskegg Lake Indians joined the last half-breed rebellion, and their allowance was cut off in consequence for several years. They law causes expense, as the farmer has to tence entirely. We remember a bailiil finding six milch cows trespassing , and he at once drove them off to the nearest pound. The unhappy owner met th^m on the way, and implored for their release, but it was no use ; and early the next mornin^^ he and his wife called on the bailiff's employer to represent their impoverished case. The employer, a first-class Eng- lish gentleman, at once paid the fine to release them ; but the farmer was a loser by the evening's milk. :l ? , - U i^ •o c .*^i *i"^ -'* .0 *ii' '■ • r '■■ **i^ r"-'I a k^ C/3 ■?*?: >, In 3 .0 d»^ il i 90 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. he left tried to say a few words to them recom- mending resignation and obedience for their mother's sake, he left them much disposed to go off and set up for themselves. This incident was not more strange than what occurred on a ranch in the United States, where two young men were partners. The sister of one of them came to visit him with an older friend, who was her chaperon. The young men had to build a wall of empty meat tins to make a partition in their one-roomed hut for the ladies till they could construct an extra room ; but the female element made life so much pleasanter to the ranchers that they were both soon engaged to be married, the sister to her brother's partner, and the friend and chaperon to the brother himself, though he was seventeen years her junior. These were people who, in England, had moved in the upper class. The sister of a bachelor settler wb "► is known to be a good housekeeper is regularly competed for by his bachelor acquaintance. We knew one who combined household duties with dancing, and en- joyed herself nearly all the winter. Before she went from home, she cooked enough to last her brother and his herd-boy in her absence, and froze it all, even to the loaves of bread. The settler thawed them as he wanted them. It is a novelty to a man fresh from England to see the water EAKLV IMMIGRANTS. 91 brought in for household purposes in sacks, and the milk wrapped up in a cloth. To Canadians all these incidents and details will seem too common to relate ; but the English, when they hear of a "nice farm," a "good house," a "popu- lous district," etc., are apt to imagine it to be one from the English point of view, and not the Canadian. This makes a very great difference. I have met with people sending sons to Canada, who have not tiie least idea of the country they are going to.^ I met a lady in the Canadian train preparing to join a clerical brother in the north-west. We passed an ordinary wooden house, and I observed : "That is the sort of house you will find your brother living in". She laughed incredulously, thinking I was * Not long ago I went to a lecture in London on Canada, where limelight views were given of a few north-west towns. The audience seemed most disappointed even with a view of Vancouver. It is this different point of view that gives us such varied aspects of the state of the crofter emigrants; and the advisability of sending boys to agricultural colleges in Canada before setting up for themselves. The High Commissioner for Canada, who has spoken on these two subjects, probably knows absolutely nothing of the inner life of a Canadian farm in the north-west, in winter; and if he took the English view, he would not be High Com- missioner long. A condition which to the Canadians might seem very good, considering the short time they have been in Canada, might not seem to those responsible for sending the crofters out sufficiently good to make it worth while to send out any more. 1. 1 : iBH 92 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. joking ; when a clergyman in the carriage, over- hearing her name, said, " Oh, I know your brother very well ; that is more what you will find," and pointed out another wooden house a little smaller. How crestfallen she looked ! She had imagined only cows and horses would be put into such a house as that. In the same train there were two little boys, of eleven and thirteen, in Eton jackets and large collars, the sons of a rector ; coming out alone to the charge of a brother only seventeen himself, who had not a farm of his ov/n, and was still but a hired labourer. They were landed at a. station at twelve o'clock at night. They did not know their brother's address, except that it was seven miles off. He. had not heard that they were coming, and they had very few clothes as an outfit. This seemed little better than the old German couple who sent out Tom Thumb and his brothers to lose them in the wood. But whatever hard experiences the man has now who plants himself in an already settled situation in Canada, they are small compared to what the pioneers of all our colonies endured. The railway now brings fish, oysters, barrels of apples, and other fruits into Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, both from Ontario and British Columbia, and the apples by the barrel are sold at a very reasonable price. Thirty years ago, even at Cook- 1 UNSUITABLE OCCUPATIONS. 93 shire in the province of Quebec, lemons were a shilling each ; and when the railway was opened in 1890 between Regina and Prince Albert, there were the sons of F.nglish settlers in that direction who had never seen coffee, coal, or an orange, an apple, or a lemon in their lives. Coal from the Estevan and Lethbridge mines can now be bought at Winnipeg, Regina, and Qu'Appelle, for 25s. a ton and less. Cloth clothes ani' boots are growing cheaper, though furs are dearer ; and the iron American stoves seen throughout the country keep the wooden houses much hotter than was possible with an open fireplace. The Memnonite settlers introduced brick stoves from Russia. The oldest settlers were thankful to protect themselves from the weather in wigwams made of skin, and eat Indian corn roasted on the shovel, or bannocks. We heard of a family, even fifteen years ago, the father being an English professional man, who, for the first year in Manitoba, lived on porridge, molasses, and fried pork, yet had never enjoyed better health ; and a still earlier settler then returned to England thought they were very fortunate to get even that. The East Canada m?ils were brought by dog sleighs in winter to Winnipeg. Now pro- visions are sent about by parcels post to outlying places in the north-west. Lord Mount Stephen is said to have begun his career as a grocer's errand 7 fi • I. •i w I" 94 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. boy in Montreal ; and more fortunes appear to have been made by men who began as mechanics, black- smiths, etc., or with nothing at all, than by those who started with a moderate sum in their pockets. But colonies change fast ; an J probably every year there will be fewer openings for young men without money in the towns. Already there has been great difficulty in finding work in Toronto, Brandon, Hamilton, Regina, and Moosejaw for unskilled hands ; and I have heard that there is not much opening now for even mechanics in the towns along the principal railway lines. I have met with an Oxford M.A. who was teaching seven children in a third-class school for £60 a year, and the only lodging he could get in the neighbourhood was a shake-down on a kitchen floor. A young man who had made a little in England by writing for newspapers and magazines, was acting as herd-boy on a farm. A German teacher of music and languages did odd jobs about a farm for only his keep ; and all over the country we may meet with university men working on their own farms like ordinary labourers, — men who have failed in their examinations for the army, or failed to pass the medical part of it ; young doctors, sick of the subject as soon as they had qualified for practice, turning their lancets into ploughshares ; or theological students, who have changed their minds about I :t I SUCCESSES. 95 taking holy orders. One of these educated farmers will sometimes take a young fellow for nothing to help him during the winter, for the sake of having an intellectual companion. Some young men give themselves titles, discovering that the Canadians have a great deference for an hereditary peerage. I have met with three who had assumed a handle to their names which was certainly not to be found in either Burke, Lodge, or Debrett ; and no doubt, as in the instance already quoted, they derived a pecuniary advantage from it. Yet I never found one Canadian who did not object to the creation of Canadian peers. The general idea seems to be that in a country with no resident sovereign hereditary honours are quite out of place. Strange stories are told by the older generation of emigrants of what the north-west was when they first came out ; and happy are those who then took up land at Winnipeg. In some places the Indians were still formidable, and the country had also long been made a refuge for white and negro outlaws and adventurers. The first trains were liable to be pillaged by whites — and the station- masters lived behind bolt and bar in peril of their lives. Now, in isolated places, the station-master goes with the train, so no money or article of value is to be found in the station huts. Here and there settlers have been victimised by a bogus land 96 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. company, which has sold them utterly unprofitable land ; but in the United States this has been a very frequent complaint. There, whole districts have been deserted ; notably, the real village where Abraham Lincoln was born, and where his parents were buried. r ' !> CHAPTER VI. Indians and Half-breeds — Theories concerning the Origin of the Ini'in Tribes — Early Discoverers of America be/ore Columbus — Red River Settlement — Iroquois Colonists in the Rockies — Discovery and Colonisation of Rupertsland— Jacques Cartierandthe First Colonists in Eastern Canada, or Neiv France — Iroquois — Rupertsland — Annexation — Wars — Indians in British Columbia — Indian Honesty — Other Traits. Like the hares in a field where a reaping machine is at work, the uncivilised Indian has been driven to- wards the Rockies and other corners of the Dominion, where he must conform to civilisation or become extinct. A great deal has been written by the Americans and others, with whom the wish is father to the thought, about the Indians being a dying-out race, and so forth. An article in an influential London paper asserted, not long ago, that the Indian in the United States had already died out, and that his Canadian brother was fast following him. I think Sir John Lubbock was the first scientific man to point out that even in New England the Indian could not be said to have died M I 98 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. i^ i «;< . r\ out ; inasmuch as the true Yankee in physiognomy and temperament showed that he had an admixture of Indian blood. As for some generations no pure Indians have been left to marry within that dis- trict, so the stronger European type is asserting itself, and we now have to go further south or west for the typical Yankee, with his long, straight, coarse hair, short beard on the tip of his chin, small eyes, and high cheek bones ; while the quadroon and octoroon have come in on the northern, western, and southern frontier to further improve the standard of beauty in the United States. The octoroon, with her large, soft, dark eyes ; small, well-shaped infantile hands ; light or brown, short curly hair ; aquiline nose, and little head, might be a Spanish, Italian, or Grecian belle ; while the men are often like the figures on the Egyptian monuments in the time of the Pharaohs. Yet the Indian seems to amalgamate more readily with the white man ; for all trace of him, except perhaps the black eyes, is often lost in the second generation. There are half-breeds in Canada so much like Welshmen and the Breton peasant that it almost gives support to the Welsh tradition that a ship full of Taffies and Ap-Rhys's first discovered the new world. To condemn half-breeds in the sweeping manner in which they are often condemned by people who have never been among them, is to disparage the INDIANS AND HALF-BREEDS. 99 antecedents of 3,000,000 of the 4,800,000 who now inhabit Canada. These 3,000,000 are increasing at a much faster rate than those of pure English descent, whose numbers are only kept up by- immigration. It is, therefore, worth while to in- quire into the origin and characteristics of the Canadian Indian and half-breed, who has shown himself so capable of education that boys whose mothers were pure uneducated Indians have taken prizes in composition, geography, spelling and arithmetic, when their fellow-competitors were the sons of professional men, and of educated English mothers. Probably Behring Strait was once crossed by an isthmus ; at any rate it is passable on the ice in winter. A year or two ago, fifty- two Chinese and Japanese junks, some containing crews, were driven ashore in one winter and spring on the coast of British Columbia. We have no need to look further for the means by which America was peopled. In the famines and de- struction caused at different times by barbarous conquerors in China and Japan, it is very likely that large numbers of people voluntarily sought shelter in a new country. The smooth Pacific is crossed in nine days from Yokohama to Vancouver ; and there can be little doubt that the Chinese and Japanese were early acquainted with the existence of the huge continent that lay in the eastern i i r 'V 1 ^li , i [A I I lOO EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. direction from their coasts. In the history of Kublai Khan, this Tartar Emperor of China is stated to have twice sent an expedition to conquer Japan, about 1270; but that each time his fleet was lost, and 100,000 Monguls perished or were un- accounted for. In Ranlr«r«^-)f-l'- io6 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. I> \ ,' take him into all parts of the United States and into the Red River Settlement, observed, " a half- breed inherits the characteristics of the white parent. If that parent is a rascal, he is one ; but if the white parent is honest and industrious, the half-breed will be so too." Perhaps there is a little national pre- judice in the common assertion that the Scottish half-breed is always very superior to the French half-breed. The reverse is the case in some parts of Canada, looking generally at large districts; and we fancy the idea is a little based on the public re- monstrances of the French priests, who call a spade a spade in their periodical warnings to their flocks, chiefly in the larger towns, and which appear in the newspapers ; but these strictures dealing with urban populations probably hardly apply to the indus- trious fishing and trapping families between Battle- ford and Prince Albert. I have been informed by a resident among them, that the French Indians and half-breeds never omit a morning and evening prayer. In fact, it is the amount of Christian influence they have been under, more than race, that aflects their lives. They have not the go- ahead spirit of some of the Scottish half-breeds ; but they may be equally useful members of the State, as missionaries and piiests, and in the humble fields of labour. It is rare, indeed, among the English-speaking communities of the new world IROQUOIS COLONISTS IN THE ROCKIES. 107 to find a man who has lived half a life-time in the same district. An advertisement in a shop in Prince Albert has the following : " ' England expects every man to 'do his duty'. This may be all very well for the old country, but it does not do for us. Our motto is : ' We go ahead all the time '." Here is a Romanist priest's account of the Iroquois migration west — the Rev. Father Lacombe, a venerable missionary : — " When the celebrated John Rowand was in charge of the trading post of Edmonton, or Fort des Prairies, the great emporium for the Hudson Bay Company, that company engaged some forty young Iroquois at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal. These men were selected for energy, strength, good conduct, and skill in hunting. The party left Montreal and Lachine in the spring, with the regular outfit of the Hudson Bay Company, and came by canoes, through Lakes Superior and Winnipeg and the north branch of the Saskatchewan, to Edmonton, and, equipped with everything necessary, were sent into the great prairies to hunt the beaver along Battle River, Red Deer, and many little streams then swarming with this precious animal. At that time the beaver skin demanded a high price on the market. After two or three years, having piled for the company a great quantity of furs, the Iroquois were frc? and asked to be paid what was promised to them. Then they m' ,,' r 1 08 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. bougjht a large outfit of ammunition, traps, knives, axes, blankets, etc., and left Edmonton to go and hunt for themselves in the direction of the Rocky- Mountains, at the head of the Athabasca River, where was established afterwards Jasper House, facing Mount Millet. " These Iroquois were living together like brothers, sharing their good and bad luck. Being Catholics, they determined, though far from church and priest, not to neglect their religious duties. In that country at the time the Sikanals and Shouswab Indians were camping and hunting, and they made acquaintance with them. Not having been married in their own country, the young Iroquois took the Indian maidens for their wives, intending to marry them before the Church as soon as they met with a minister of their faith. " In a li!tle time large families came from these unions. The women and children spoke their own dialect, and learned the language of their husbands and fathers. They were taught to say prayers in Iroquois. By-and-by some Cree half-breeds joined them, and so formed a band ; and the Cree dialect became predominant, especially among the young people. Then there were plenty of moose, beaver, mountain sheep, deer, bears, etc. It was a glorious time for hunting when that part of the Rockies was the home of these wild animals. COLONISATION OF KUI'KKTSLANI). 109 "In 1845 Rev. Father dc Smct, coming from the Missouri, passed the winter at Edmonton, receiving the kind hospitality of Mr. Rowand and of the Rev. Mr. Thibault at Lac Ste Anne. In the next spring, with two faithful half-breeds and dog sledges, he decided to cross the mountains and reach the Columbia River, where he intended to establish missions among the Indians. On his way to Fort Jasper he had the good fortune and great pleasure to meet with some of the mixed Iroquois families. He baptised and married a few of those whom he could prepare. **Ten years later, in 1852, after sending word to the Iroquois of the mountains for a guide and three horses, in the month of June I left our then only mission, Lac Ste Anne, to go and visit the Jasper hunters. After nine days of incredible difficulties, through the swamp, the thick forest, rivers and creeks overflowing, I arrived exhausted, but soon forgot my difficulties by the warm welcome given me by the whole population who had been waiting for the priest. I passed fifteen days with them, teaching day and night, and baptising, marrying, and giving the sacraments to the happy people of the mountain. In my life as a missionary I never felt more spiritual consolation than with that popu- lation, whom I found so well disposed to receive the Gospel. I met some of the old Iroquois, the 8 li ■^ '•' ' *i- V i f 1 , ' 1 I lO KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. founders of the colony. The last who survived, and died not lonjr ago, was named Joachim. He had yet with him, as precious relics, his prayer- book in Iroquois, and other articles of piety he brought with him from Montreal. After I was there these people were visited regularly by a priest. Finally, they abandoned their hunting ground, where they had no church and no school, and came to join with their fellow half-breeds of Lac Ste Anne, fifty miles north of Edmonton. Now they are scattered everywhere, at Lac Ste Anne, St. Albert, on the Athabasca and Peace rivers and mountains. ** The Iroquois dialect is nearly extinct among them, excepting the old people, and the French and the Cree are predominant. They are so scat- tered and mixed that it is difficult to recognise much trace of the Iroquois, but I do not think their numbers are decreasing." Some good people are not satisfied that the Anglican Church has any right to set its foot in Canada, because the Romanists, they say, were there first. This theory, logically carried out, would keep us away from India, and most parts of the globe. In fact, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel might shut up its books. But, in point of fact, an English ship, manned and equipped from England, though commanded by Sebastian Cabot, JACQUES CAKTIKk AND FIRST COLONISTS. Ill first discovered Hudson Bay in 15 12, and an- nexed as much of the shore as they could sec for Henry VIII. If the Romanists by landing first in Eastern Canada would thereby have acquired the monopoly of this enormous district, England, by her prior discovery of the central part, would have already secured that monopoly for her own Church. But such a theory either way is too ridiculous to be entertained for a moment, when it apj)lics not to merely temporal sovereignty, but to the right to assist in carrying out the commands of the Saviour towards a heathen population scattered over five thousand miles. Neither Church has yet suc- ceeded in evangelising the whole of this continent. There are reserves where the Indians have all been baptised by Romanist priests, who have then abandoned them for want of means and mission- aries ; and heathen Indians who have not yet been taught at all. There is surely room for the exer- tions of both. Jacques Cartier, a native of St. Malo, was the first Frenchman who landed in Canada. In 1541 he was trying to find the East Indies, and entered the St. Lawrence. He received a kind reception from the Indians in the villages round the hill on which now stands Quebec ; but he waited too long, till the apparently endless winter came on, and his men were decimated by scurvy. The reports he '< j i 112 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. carried back to France of black forests, deep snow, enormous blocks of ice, and poor food, while he brought home nothing worth the cost of the outfit, did not encourage the French to pursue their re- searches in that direction with much zeal. Still another expedition went out before the end of the century, under the command of the Marquis de la Roche who wished to Christianise the country and make it a convict establishment. He took with him forty convicts to begin with, and set them ashore on Sable Island, a sandy ridge on the coast of Nova Scotia, where for a century or two before this date fishermen from the north of France had been accustomed to resort in search of cod and seal. Perhaps those from Ireland and Wales did so too, knowing little about geography, but only where their prey was to be found. The marquis meant to find a site for his colony, and then fetch the convicts to it ; but a storm drove him back across the Atlantic, where he was taken prisoner, so the men remained on Sable Island for seven years without assistance. Cold and want reduced their number to seven, who were ultimately found by the marquis's pilot, sent out by the Parliament of Rouen to ascertain their fate. He claimed the furs, their only possessions, as the price of conveying them back to France ; but they stated their case to Henry IV., who wished to see them and hear their k&N JACQUES CARTIER AND FIRST COLONISTS. II3 adventures. The king ordered half the furs to be returned to them, and gave them a free pardon for former offences, as well as fifty crowns each. Early in the seventeenth century several attempts were made to establish colonies in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by members of the French nobility, who brought both men and women convicts as labourers ; and in 1608, Champlain, the most emi- nent of these pioneers, founded Quebec. Two years later Captain Hudson rediscovered Hudson Bay for England. Probably settlements for the sake of the fur trade were soon planted about the south of the bay ; but the charter of the Hudson Bay Company was not granted till 1670, when, after the revolu- tionary war and the Commonwealth Protectorate, a king (Charles H.) was again on the English throne. Under James I. the English had already made a settlement in Nova Scotia. General Champlain did more than any other Frenchman to consolidate New France. He personally explored the country to the shores of Lake Huron ; and, far from wishing to drive out or exterminate the Indians, his idea was to unite the tribes in a friendly league, under the banner of France, and convert them to Christianity by means of the Jesuits. The country would be more than a self-supporting colony ; for great wealth in furs and other natural produce would be exchanged against t 114 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. i \r ' French goods. But, finding that all the weaker Indian tribes dreaded the Iroquois, the strongest and most intelligent of them all, General Champlain acted much as the English did with regard to the Zulus and the Ashantees, and, nominally as a pro- tector of the weaker races, assumed a hostile attitude to the Iroquois. If he had sought their alliance instead, it might have changed the fortunes of the American continent. If he had done the same as with their northern neighbours, offered them presents, sent Jesuit priests among them, and advanced his forts along the Hudson River, he might have kept at bay or driven off the little Dutch colony which settled at Manhattan in 1613, and became the nucleus of New York ; and the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed at New Plymouth in 1620, would most likely have been soon forced to dec imp. But Europeans had no experience of the climate at that time ; and he could not tell how far more productive than the province of Quebec he would have found the district further south, with its open sea in winter. Neither could he have foretold that the Dutch would venture to sell good firearms to the Iroquois, who extended down to the coast opposite Manhattan, and teach them how to use them. Consequently, when Champlain had explored to the sources of the St. Lawrence, and wished to proceed south, his way was blocked by a race of ■■< , RUPERTSLAND. 115 warriors armed to the teeth, whom he had not forces enough to defeat. He then saw the dis- advantage of the isolated position in which he had built Quebec. It suffered terribly from scurvy and even from famine during the long winters, for the Iroquois had been accustomed to supply that part. Montreal, founded a few years later, seems honestly to have been intended as an outpost of Christianity, and to protect the native converts from the Iroquois; not as a commercial depot. It under- went many years of tribulation at the hands of these formidable foes, who are said to have been paid by the Dutch and English settlers further south to molest the French ; and this is likely enough, when a war was being carried on between the same nations in Europe. Meantime, Rupertsland and the great north- west belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, who did little to develop it, and next to nothing for the Indians who inhabited it. Geography books at the beginning of this century describe it as unfit for the habitation of civilised man ; but it was dotted over with forts, containing three or four strongly built houses, behind a stone wall or pali- sade ; and there were a few good trails marked out across the prairies, and through the forests, which were traversed periodically by broad-wheeled wag- gons, loaded with goods to exchange for costly furs. -; ii6 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. )'^ U'l Baggage was sent up and down the rivers between Fort William and Quebec, and by the lake of Winnipeg up the Saskatchewan to Fort Carlton, and Battleford. Lord Selkirk brought out a colony of Scotchmen, and planted them on lands in Manitoba in 1812 ; and these are still regarded as the finest body of colonists that ever came out. They are described by Franklin with expressions of pity in 1822. The Anglican Church did not do much in the north-west in th^se days, though there were a few Romanist and Presbyterian missionaries ; but in 1849 the diocese of Rupertsland was founded, and the Rev. David Anderson became the first bishop. He resigned in 1865, when the present eminent scholar, the Rev. Robt. Machray, was consecrated. Her Majesty has lately pleased the Canadians by bestowing upon him the vacant office of Prelate of the Order of SS. Michael and George. At the meeting of the Canadian Synod in 1893, the last step was taken in the consolidation of the Anglican Church in Canada, by electing him to be Primate of all Canada, with the title of Archbishop. The Metropolitan of Ontario was also promoted to be an archbishop. The Primate of all Canada lives at Bishop's Court in Winnipeg. In 1869 the ancient charter of the Hudson Bay Company expired ; and Earl Granville, at that time .k I 4 n )f y s s N '■ ANNEXATION. 117 Colonial Secretary, recommended that the chief part of the company's territory should be trans- ferred to the Dominion of Canada. The price paid was ;^300,ooo, with a right to claim a certain portion of land within fifty years, and some other privileges. A portion of the inhabitants of the north-west terri- tory, chiefly the French half-breeds, resisted the annexation ; and General Louis Riel proclaimed independence, and seized the company's treasury at Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, January i, 1870. The English had occupied New France, or Eastern Canada, since 1758 ; and the treaty, by which Old France finally ceded it to her rival, was signed in 1763. To Rupertsland and the north-west this acquisition of territory was what the conquests of Peter the Great were to old Muscovy: it connected them with civilised regions. The first effect in Canada was the migration of many Indians and half-breeds to the more distant territory. They were Romanists, and strongly attached to France, with no sympathy for Great Britain ; but long be- fore the Canadian Pacific Railway was begun, in 1883, English settlers had also found their way to Manitoba by the Grand Trunk, up the St. Law- rence, and through Ontario, as well as by the United States. Upper Canada, as Southern Ontario used to be called, was thereby settled in the begin- ning of the century. M I (m ,0 ' I 1 y !^!! ;'* if f ( I I ii8 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. In 1870, when Riel proclaimed independence, Manitoba was most easily reached by the United States route, where the St. Cloud station, north of the present city of St. Paul, was the nearest to the Canadian frontier. An old-fashioned conveyance, something like Buffalo Bill's coach, brought tra- vellers across the international boundary to Winni- peg, then Fort Garry, in summer ; and in winter, dog sledges were used. Any one who wanted to go further north or west had to hire a Red River cart, and join himself on to some Hudson Bay official, who was going towards Fort Carlton, Cumberland House, Fort Pelly or Battleford. The Indians were then rather formidable in Manitoba, and in the valley of the Little Saskatchewan, where Minnedosa now lies. The half- breeds foresaw truly enough that the annexation was only a pre- lude to increased immigration ; that the land would become valuable, and that squatters would be ejected, and their source of wealth, the fur-bearing animals and buffaloes, would be cleared away. They clamoured for compensation in money or land. They had been contented with the Hudson Bay Company, and had a right to choose their own government. So Riel argued ; and the opposition seemed so formidable that General Wolseley was summoned to the scene of action with a strong force. He proclaimed that he had come with a WARS. 119 message of peace ; and, although there had been some loss of life, a compromise was effected, and Riel obtained a pardon. Fifteen years later, in 1885, Riel headed another rising, but gathered no support except among the Romanist half-breeds and Indians about Carlton and Battleford. Carlton was burnt as well as Batoche, Riel's native place, where the gallant Colonel French was killed, and several wooden villages were recaptured from the rebels with little difficulty. Riel was taken prisoner and hanged. There was no seeding or harvest that year in the seat of war, so it was followed by great scarcity ; but since that time there has been no further trouble with the Canadian Indians. Of course, a war a few miles away is a great advantage to farmers who have provisions to sell, and carts to hire out ; and from this outbreak of 1885 dates the prosperity of many settlers. A short time ago. Bishop Sillitoe, of New West- minster, British Columbia, gave an address at Mon- treal on the work of the Church among the Indians in his diocese. He said that these were undoubtedly from Japan, and differed from the tribes in the north-west. They had never been subsidised by the Government ; but perhaps owing to the mild climate in which they live, they are self-reliant and industrious, and the bishop declared were equal to tl i I il i n k i: \i< t\ '4 r I I }/ K If. I j i 1 20 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. whites in their aptitude for work. He said the same of their mental capacity, as was shown in an English school that had been set up for them, and he hoped soon to procure from the Government educational grants for Indians. To conclude with an extract from the journal of Alexander Henry, a Hudson Bay Company's official, in 1768: "On May 20, the Indians came in from their winter's hunt. Out of 2000 skins, the amount of my outstanding debts, not thirty remained un- paid ; and even the trivial loss I did suffer was caused by the death of one of the Indians, for whom his family brought all the skins of which he died possessed, and offered to pay the rest among them- selves. His spirit, they said, would not be able to enjoy peace while his name remained in my books, and his debts were left unsatisfied." A Canadian writing in 1880 adds: "The same remains to this day. In remote parts on the Mackenzie River, and wherever it does not pay the Hudson Bay Company to keep an agent all the time, the Indian enters the store, deposits his furs, takes the exact equivalent in goods from the shelves and departs, leaving the door securely fastened against wild beasts. During the last eight years, the Canada Pacific surveyors and engineers have lived among and employed men, women, and children, from twenty or thirty trbes, between the Ottawa River INDIANS IN QU'APPELLK. 121 and the Pacific Ocean, and the chief engineer says that he has yet to hear of the first quarrel, or of an ounce of pork stolen by an Indian." This entirely accords with my own observation. St. John's College near Qu'Appelle station lay on the way between a large reserve and the town. I have gone into the kitchen, when the cook was out of it, and found Indians sitting there to rest and warm themselves. The cook assured me they never helped themselves to anything, nor asked for .food, though undoubtedly it was most accept- able, as I have seen them even in summer pick crusts out of the pig-wash tub for their " papooses ". They would bring things to se\\ and quietly sit on the kitchen floor all day till they could get the price they asked. They are regular Arabs at driving a bargain. Some of the women in European clothes, cheerful and smiling, might be Belgian, Welsh, Irish, or French peasants. There is quite a village of Indian teepees or tents scattered among the bushes, and over the rich pasturage between Qu'Appelle station and St. John's College. I have often walked through the otherwise lonely two miles between the.s^ places, late in the evening, and even at midnight, accom- panied, and by myself, and never saw anything but quiet and good order among those tents. On a beautifully clear winter's night, when we can read /, Y tin f M , il ' li 111 n I' ' 122 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. I ( I ■ I i t W t i \ I, I without a candle by the h'ght of the aurora or the vivid stars, assisted by the glare of the snow, even when the moon has not risen, not a sound proceeded from any of the Iiidian habitations. On a darker or cloudy night (though clouds are only seen when there is going to be rain or snow at Qu'Appelle), the tents glowed with the fires inside them and helped to light the way, where you might have stumbled in the darkness over a sleeping horse or cow. I went inside one of these tents one morning. The fire was on the floor in the middle, like some of the Highland cots, with an aperture to let out the smoke, and mats were laid round it for the people to sit or sleep upon, and their outer coats and various implements hung round. A woman showed me with great pride a litter of young puppies, which, with their mother, were in a kind of hammock covered with skins to keep them warm. In the spring, when the snows are melting, these tents are very damp and uncom- fortable, and the Indians in this way often contract consumption or chronic bronchitis. Civilised people, whose wages fluctuate, are apt to live from hand to mouth, and give an expensive entertainment one week, though they may be considerably pinched the next. In the same way the Indians on the reserves have yet to be taught not to waste their food or make themselves ill with eating too much OTHER TRAITS. 123 when they receive the Government allowance. A cynical official is said to have recommended that the Indian population should be exterminated by giving them the yearly portion all at once, and they would die off of indigestion. Such a fate did happen to one Indian I heard of, who consumed thirty pounds of white fish in the course of an after- noon ; about a fortnight later he was found dead in his canoe, having just gone through a similai excess, which produced failure of the heart. An Indian papoose still in arms, with its brilliant black eyes and black han, is quite a pretty little thing ; but there is a very large infant mortality among Europeans and natives. On one occasion when I was passing through the Indian tents,a woman came out to show me a very nice tailor-made female jacket, which she had picked up on the prairie, and she wanted to find the owner. She did not at all expect any gratuity for restoring it ; but it had evidently never entered her head to appropriate it. if ^i il i'' III m ,1 ' CHAPTER VII. Further Experience of English Settlers — Mr. Andrew Mackafs Advice — Autumn — The Harvest Festival — French Exaggeration of the Cold in Russia — Real Cold in Canada — Okanayan. It seems to be still a question as to whether land mixed with wood, hill, and water, as about Minne- dosa and Prince Albert, or the flat, open prairie, where the eye ranges over twelve and twenty miles of grass and corn, only spotted occasionally by clumps of trees, is the most liable to early frosts. In 1 891 the prairie country had the best of it. The farms on the prairies, being generally larger, are usually only partially enclosed, and herd-boys are required for the summer months. It is an idle occupation, and if a young fellow begins with it sometimes leads to permanent idleness ; but an educated youth will get through a good deal of reading while watching the flocks, and, if a delicate boy, may become acclimatised in this easy post before beginning harder work. On the larger cattle and sheep ranches it is a very lonely life ; and some cannot stand it and have attempted suicide, for FUKTIir.R rA'PKRIKNCKOF KNCLISM SKTTI.KKS. 12$ which the penalty is two months in gaol. Herdinj^ out of doors only lasts through the summer months. For several years before 1891 the generality of English farmers in Canada had been working at a loss ; but in that uncertain climate a man must be prepared to set the losses of several seasons against the gains of several more. In many places the young English gentleman settler began by carrying on his work on an experimental basis, refusing to follow Canadian notions as to the management of land or stock. Frequently an English public school man, or a former undergraduate at Oxford or Cambridge, he had never learned to wash up plates or dishes, clean his own boots, mend his clothes, or attend to a horse, before he set foot in the country. Perhaps he had been sent as a farm pupil to an Englishman of the same calibre, and they smoked together over the stove most of the winter. Experienced English people say that if men discontinue outdoor employment throughout a winter, but only smoke and read indoors, the climate very soon affects them. The houses, it must be recollected, are too small for anything like exercise. Porridge, soda biscuits, and pre- served meats and jams, with a little whisky for ?. relish, form the chief diet of this kind of farmer. The pupil sets up for himself, and asks his relations to help him. He buys a quarter section, 9 !i ( T ' .11 ' k< r^ 126 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. builds or buys a house, and collects a little stock, and then lives much in the same way as his instructor. In a climate where our domestic animals are exotics, and the native birds' legs are clothed with feathers down to their claws, and the animals are provided with the thickest fur or with down to supplement the hair ; his English stock bought at high prices dies off from not being kept warm and dry enough, his half-starved pigs are unsaleable, and his unfed fowls cannot get enough off the ground to live, even during the summer. A shower of cold Canadian summer rain kills them. He has not prepared in the autumn for the spring sowing, and a late spring does not give him time enougii to plough as well as sow, before the grain ought to be fairly advanced to pass the critical stage by the last w cek in August. Then comes a night when the thermometer runs suddenly down to 24 degrees, and his wheat is reduced in quality till it is unsaleable. He lays it all on the climate ; but in reality, if he started as a squatter in the middle of England, he would never be anything more. Take the case of another young man in a much advertised quarter, who was really a good worker, and had been well instructed by a practical Canadian farmer for two years in agricultural farming, but not in the management of cattle. He FURTHER EXPERIENCE OF ENGLISH SETTLERS. 12/ started with ;f 300 and a partner long before he was twenty ; and his father, perhaps not knowing how essential it is to plough in the autumn and sow in the spring, allowed him to come to England at an important season on a visit. He was robbed at Montreal of his purse, or dropped it ; and had to borrow money to come home. He returned to Canada to find his partner had done little or nothing towards a future crop ; so that year they had none, but parted company in the autumn, and he had to pay heavily for his means for breaking his contract. He invested in cattle on the faith of a neighbour being able to give him fodder for the winter ; but when winter came the neighbour had only enough for himself, so the cattle were both starved and cold, and were totally unproductive the next summer. Not satisfied with one quarter section he took up two (320 acres), and tried to work it with the help of two expensive hired labourers. He bought all the usual farming implements, including a binder, which generally costs 170 dollars at the least (^33), having paid by instalments four dollars an acre for his land, and paying six per cent, on those sums that he was unable to pay up at once. No wonder he had to come on his parents for another ;^2C)0. His crop failed the first year, and the second did not defray its expenses ; as through the winter he was giving his hired men £2 is. 8d. a IT Ml 128 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. '1.^ month ; and the board of an English labourer in Canada certainly costs as much as that in addition to the wattes. In the summer he had to pay £^ and £4 a month or more to each of his labourers, and was too young to get the amount of work out of them that an older man would have done.^ Very young fellows often damage their health by smoking too much and sitting up late at night ; and if they come back to England to recruit it, some one else has to be paid to look after their farms ; so it can easily be calculated how much profit there is likely to be, Mr. Andrew Mackay, the head of the Government Experimental Farm at Indian Head, wrote March 19, 1892, to the Manitoba Free Press : — " I have for some time been prescribing a cure for frost, which, if rightly taken, will go a long way in saving loss to the farmers, — that is, for every farmer to sow less wheat. Frost, I am afraid, is native to the country ; and notwithstanding frost in former years visited Ontario, and then for ever left it [he must mean only the extreme south of Ontario, and even there it returned in 1892-3], we may make up our minds that we are not in Ontario ; but about September i may expect the unwelcome visitor, and our object should be to leave as little at his mercy ^ Being afraid to give orders to hired men twice his own age, seems a common difficulty with very young employers. ( O "c 1 ill 111 i I i ! ■ ' V g B p S 1 T 1 1 1 : ll l'^ I ' 1 ■ MR. ANDREW MACKAY'S ADVICE. 129 then as possible. So long as every settler sows twice as much grain as he should do, or is able to put in quickly, so long will frost claim half; and only when the fact is realised, that early-sown grain alone nine out of ten years escapes frost, will farmers take heed. A man with a yoke of oxen, and no help but his wife, thinks nothing less than 100 or 150 acres of wheat sufficient. May is well over before he is through seeding ; and there is no- thing in this country more certain than that before he and his oxen and the wife can have the crop cut, one half or more will be frozen. Were he content with fifty or seventy acres the chances are that all would be safely in stalk before danger came. '' When we consider the expense of harvestings threshing, and marketing frozen grain, and the small price obtained for it, the wonder is that so much wheat is sown ; but hope ever animates the north-west farmer, and so long as seed and land hold out, he will run the risk. " In the north-west of this province (Assiniboia) there is a district where so far frost has done little harm. Frost visits there the same as other places ; but up to the present time railway facilities have been such that no inducement has been offered the farmer to sow much wheat, and, consequently, they have only sown to satisfy their own wants. This is quickly put in and as quickly harvested ; and •n i ; I 'li whom they minister there. These settlers have gone there, and are content to live a hard life for their own profit. The clergy live the same life, only generally a little more comfortably than the majority of their parishioners. It is no act of self- denial in itself, in the eyes of the settlers, that the cleray should be there. Tnd : d, o.)e of the greatest difficulties I had, was to jiersur-vrle the people that it was no easy matter to p; .u»e r';irgy at least for the chief places in the diocese, ihe people could not understand why, even from a worldly point cf view, there should not be a large number ready and anxious to obtain the £160 to ;^200 that is usually given there, rather than starve, as they considered many curates were doing in England on £120.'' Yet, with all its drawbacks, the climate of the north-west is remarkably exhilarating, and many young men like the life extremely. Horses are procured and kept at less expense than in England. No licence is required to keep a dog or carry a gun. A man can become a landowner ; and in time may bequeath his name to a town, and he or his chil- dren may some day take a prominent part in the government of the Dominion. Education is very cheap, and young men study at the universities and pay the fees by their work in the vacation. There are openings in other callings than farming ; and in these men may gain a living, and become I n THE TARIFF. 147 V important and useful people when they would not have the opportunity in England. There is still an old-fashioned, wholesome feeling of horror at cruelty or crimes of violence, which makes the Canadian Legislature able to enforce the lash when it is desirable, and no fear of being ousted by their constituents. Also, a love for law and order ^ which I hey brought away with them from England, and a respect for authorities, including European sovereigns. The people are extremely hospitable and sociable ; and in the towns winter is a very lively time. The > oung settler in a few years may be able to leave his farm in winter under the charge of a junior partner or bailiff, and go an ' enjoy himself in England or elsewhere ; but the mistake made is to put the cart before the horse, and to take these trips before he has paid off his early liabilities, or seen his way to become assured of a competence. There cnn be no doubt that the tariff is a draw- back to the prosperity of the north-west, and deters many settlers from coming to that part, when they have realised all the inconveniences it entails. A ' A law has just been passed in Ontario ordering the church bells to be daily rung at nine p.m. ; and any one under seventeen found after that in the street may be arrested by the police. Women of bad character are very summarily expelled from Winnipeg. ii 148 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. young man settles in a remote district for the sake of a free grant. Agricultural work and the climate are most destructive to clothec. He has no acquaint- ance in a Canadian town to choose them for him» and he naturally writes home to his mother or sister, and asks her to send him out some woollen socks and shirts. They arrive, all home made, and marked with his name to show they are not in- tended for sale; but they are detained at Winnipeg or Regina till he has paid the duty, which some- times amounts to more than their English value. The sanie with books. The Canadian censors seem to be very ignorant on this subject, for I have seen a new copy, just after it came out, of the Earl of Iddesleigh's Life, allowed to come duty free ; while an old copy of Coleridge and Southey's poems, printed at least forty years ago, and published very much longer, was taxed. The rule that an article must be of the value of a dollar or more, and new, to make it liable to duty, does not seem to be strictly kept. It involves trouble and inconvenience for a man living at a distance from a post-office ; and in a district where there is little or no money to be iiad, the settler is sometimes unable to remit the duty at nil. In a manufacturing country these duties would be reasonable enough ; but authors, publishers, and manufacturers, are conspicuous by their absence in the north-west. A shilling's worth ' !•* LORD URASSKVS SKTTI.EMKNT. 149 . of toys sent by post from England to the children on an isolated farm among Indian reserves in Saskatchewan, was taxed thirty cents. Conse- quently, cheap American reprints is the literature chiefly current ; and if anything eventually makes the north-west join itself on to the United States, it is this tariff; as such a union would lower the price of machinery and raw and manufactured goods, now heavily taxed. Among several attempts to settle a large tract of country in the north-west. Lord Brassey's has been the most important, and through his able manager, Mr. Sheppard, he has turned a howling wilderness into a well-cultivated district, dotted with houses, an hotel, and a street of shops. Some agricultural labourers with their families were imported in a body from England, besides a large number of gentleman settlers. Quite a luxurious boarding- house, with a concrete outside and hot-water pipes throughout, was established for the bachelors under a housekeeper ; and the furniture and fittings were a pleasing novelty in the north-west. I went there on an occasion when a Church of England service was held in the largest room ; and so far from home it was quite a treat to see the Shropshire and Staf- fordshire labouring families, just such as we might meet any market-day at Stafford, Market Drayton, or Shrewsbury, who came to take part in it. A ♦ \i w r\ 150 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. lay brother from St. John's College officiated. There was a Presbyterian chapel on the estate, but not a church ; though, when I left Canada, it was rumoured that Lord Hrassey is going to erect one. Indian Head, the site of the Hrassey farm, is also near the Government Kxperimental Farm. At ICdgelcy, about seven miles from Qu'Appelle and rather more from Indian Head, Mr. Cameron farms twelve square miles, with ali the latest im- provements in agricultural machinery. The post- office is attached to his house ; and during the summer a service is held by one of the Qu'Appelle clergy in his dining-hall for the benefit of the dis- trict. A little beyond is a Methodist colony. The winter of 1892-3 was a terrible one for cattle in the great grazing districts, and about fifty per cent, are said to have perished. With such losses neither the north-west nor Manitoba was in a position to offer additional stipends to the clergy, so that the failure of the noble effort to establish a brotherhood at St. John's College is at the present moment a special subject of regret. Visiting England again before he is fairly planted often upsets a young settler's plans. He con- trasts the comfort in which his friends live with the hard work he has to do ; and some of his relations laugh at him, or pity him, when they hear that he blacks his own boots, and cooks his own LORD HRASSKY's SKTTLEMKNT. 151 . food. Those who send out young men to the colonies must expect them to do all kinds of things, falsely called menial in this country, otherwise they will never succeed in Canada. There we have seen an earl's son cleaning his own boots ; and indeed it is generally the third-class men, more than those of the upper class, who cannot do anything in the house for themselves ; and when they are off out- door work expect to be waited on hand and foot, even when all this falls upon a wife. A man who has never learnt to put things into their proper places when he has used them, and who is radically careless and untidy, is an uncomfortable settler. He lo.ses his tools, keeps his small rooms like a rag-.shop, and gives his wife much unnecessary trouble, besides losing his animals by letting them have damp beds which get frozen. Waste, which in England may not be of much consequence, is more serious where a five-cent piece (2id.) repre- sents a penny, and a dollar often goes no further than a shilling ; and if )ou throw away even string, you cannot buy it again at once. This a boy learns as a farm pupil ; particularly if he is far away from a shop. I have seen very happy Canadian farms where the husband was a man of neat habits, and ready to take his hare of the domestic duties when not otherwise employed. The "washing up" is of course a heavy business when the house is filled i w w, I ■'fi 6 1 It 152 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. with volunteer guests, or after an entertainment ; and some of the young men visitors offer to assist the ladies of the family in this work ; so there is as merry a party in the kitchen as in the parlour, where the elders have adjourned to pipes or to play at cards. Nothing is more unpopular in America than to say anything against marriage being most desir- able at all times and all seasons. The United States Government even exercised its censorial rights on a novel solely for that reason, and forbade it to be sent by post. Canada is keener in the matter than the States. Still, in our humble opinion, a young settler should think more than twice before he asks a girl who has a comfortable home in England, and the means of remaining there, to come out and share his work. To begin with, she has no idea what it is. If he has a small income independent of his farm, it is a different matter, or when he has got a nice home, and secured the prospect of a competence. But when he is only living on loans, marriage, except with a woman brought up to work, is too apt to lead to an unhappy menajfe, and life-long disappointment. The husband ought to be able to keep a servant exclusively for his wife, unless he helps her in the house himself Canadian boys are brought up to cook or do anything in domestic service ; so it is |i t I Urs AND DOWNS. 153 not absolutely necessary for her to have a female servant, often very difificult to obtain. Even the girls among the Hungarians, Germans, and half- breeds, ask liigh wages compared to what they can get in England. But if a delicately nurtured woman has to cook, wash, keep the house in order, and pass days entirely alone, fetching in wood and water when her husband is engaged out of doors, it tells sooner or later on her health iii this extreme climate ; and if she has a child, she is unable to look properly after it, and after her husband too. A baby, though charming in theory, is not equally pleasant to the hard- worked farmer when it shrieks throughout the night in a little wooden house, suffering from its teeth or from having been mismanaged by an inexperienced young mother, and no soothing syrup at hand. In all the colonies there has been great mortality among the children of the first settlers, particularly in Canada. It is most unfortunate for the husband, if the wife, from broken health, is obli^^ed to return to her friends in England ; yet this is a better alternative than becoming an invalid out there. Cooking over the stove in a little wooden Canadian house, on which the sun has been playing since dawn, and when the thermometer indoors without the stove is at 89', is extremely trying. I have seen a kitchen with the thermometer over 100" in I) 154 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. ili the summer, when simply a small ordinary dinner was being cooked. Yet when the haying time and harvest comes, there are sure to be mowers, threshers, and other men employed, who require to be fed as well as the husband, and whose appetites are sharpened by having been up since four A.M., and perhaps not in bed till ten, the previous night. Cooks' wages are always higher for those months ; and even though the men may get their own break- fast, the cooking day after day for all these hungry people's dinner and supper is too much for the wife. They are satisfied with less when they have to cook for themselves, and there is no woman about the place. Tea, cold pork, and bread is then enough for their supper as well as dinner : but in such a case the farmer often offers higher wages to induce the men to work for him. We remember one young fellow just out from England, and only fourteen, who was appointed cook because he was too small to be of much use in any other way to a party camping out to get in hay. How the rest upbraided him when they came in tired and hungry from their work, and found he had poured away the tea that was left in the morning, let the fire out, and allowed the only box of matches to get damp in a heavy shower of rain ! The Government and the railway companies allow hay to be taken off unallotted land ; so that where there is much still li.i! UPS AND DOWNS. 155 unsettled, farmers procure hay — and most nutritious hay it is, grown on the rich prairie — from this source; and can lay down all their own estates in crops. Several young men assured me that they had never known what it was to enjoy really good health till they came out to the Canadian prairie. There, with the air blowing straight from the North Pole, without a hill of any height to inter- cept it, a man must be braced up if anywhere. I was once indebted to a Scotsman for a ten-miles' drive. Born on the Solway, he had been sent in his youth to a merchant's office in Liverpool. His constitution would not stand the sedentary town life : but his health had been excellent out here, where he had beer seven years. 1 le was the second Annandalc man whom I met in Assiniboia. Others came out who have been consumptive in England, or been overworked at .sc.^ol or college, or have even suffered from asthma ; and these think it well worth while to forego some English comforts for the sake of health. One young fellow, the .scion of a good county family educated at an English public school, was glad to take a place in livery stables ; but then his "boss," orempl())er, wasalso an English gentleman. I le pla)ed the organ, and read the lessons in church, and used to dine with the clergyman every Sunday. 1 1 ! / ■ 156 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. 'i' Another man, the son of a county magistrate, took a place as a waiter at a restaurant in Toronto, while he was looking about for something better to do. A third, the son of a deceased high English official, who might have taken precedence before everybody, except perhaps half a dozen, in the north-west, hired himself out on a farm where he was expected to dine in the kitchen with the co<>>k. He did not mind this, as it saved him the trouble of brushing himself up when he came in from his work. Then the farmer's wife requested he would address her as " ma'am ". This he did not mind. But he left at last because he found he was doing more than other hired men about the place, and was only being paid half as much. All these "stooped to conquer," and did conquer adversity at last, gain- ing far more experience of life than if they had settled down at once on their own land, and made all their inevitable mistakes at their own cost. Most of the young men who went out on the same ship with myself were talking of places as cowboys ; and it seemed to be the height of their ambition ; but I soon found that in the north-west it was considered anything but a desirable life for a youth fit for anything else. I deeply insulted t!ic son of a professional man by saying he would m.ikc a good cowboy becau.se he rode so well. Dok [lile do. ;ial, )dy, ired to not ling hen her ft at han >nly i to ain- had and own the s as their west s for ilted ould well. ! ■/i 1 < c O o' a ft 50 n •1 c/: •-» r «^ •-i ft 3 n ft 3 O. O r* P s: WIXTKR. 157 This youth entered the mounted police, which his friends thought a far better opening. In the spring of 1893 the ice did not begin to move on the Red River at Winnipeg till April 26, and the thermometer sank to 18 on the 28th. liefore the rivers are affected by the milder weather, the sun thaws the snow many times on the surface, and it freezes again at night till it finally disappears. One fine April day the sun for some hours had been thawing the ice on the roof, and this pouring down on to the snow below melted it for about a square yard. The bared patch covered a gopher hole, and, for the first time since September, its owner came out, peeped round in the cautious way the gopher commonly does, sat on its ■. » and folded its fore paws, and then looked about Hir something green, which it did not find. But its appearance was like the olive branch in the dove's mouth at the time of the flood. It showed that the winter was going. During April of 1893, the warmest day was only 49 and the coldest 12" above zero ; but the emigrants had begun to arrive a month before. A party of Polish Jews were so disgusted at finding snow still on the ground that they gave a great deal of trouble on the railway, and some of them were consequently lodged in prison directly they arrived at the settlement, which had prepared to receive them most cordially. I * 158 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. •: i They had probably read in the guide-books that the Canadian winter only lasts four months. On January 24, 1 894, the thermometer was 46° below zero. The Rev. William Crompton, who is a travelling Church of England clergyman in Algoma, takes a few farm pupils into his family to instruct in farm- ing ; and some time back in the Guardian gave curiou. eminiscences of one or two of those he had from England. His sons apparently act as farm instructors. Algoma is neither in Manitoba nor the r.orth-west, but is reached by a branch line from Sudbury, on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and lies on Lake Huron, a region of fir trees and timber, but not much depth of vegetable soil. This district is probably milder than the north-west, but not so exhilarating nor fit for ranching. Another success- ful farmer, a mile and a half from Qu'Appelle station, Mr. Herbert Boyce, offers a comfortable colonial home *.o two farm pupils at the rate of £^0 a year ; but they are not obliged to stay or pay for more than a month if they dislike the country. He is married, and assists them in their choice of land when they wish to set up for themselves, and also meets them at the station in his own convey- ance, if they let him know when they are going to arrive. He is still a young man ; but having come out at eighteen, and made his own way, he has much experience. His father, who lives near to P ALCiOMA. 159 him, is a justice of the peace. Mr. Herbert Boycc owns a threshing machine, a blacksmith's forge, and other requisites for instruction. Having mentioned Algoma it is only fair to give a letter about it which appeared in the Manitoba Free Press y as I do not know it myself. As far as I am aware, no one contradicted this letter. Sir, — I notice in one of our local papers that a few unsuccessful farmers in Manitoba think of moving to Alj;oma this year. Poor deluded souls 1 Such a change would be worse, to use a homely phrase, than jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Manitoba, like every other country, has its drawbacks; but to compare Algoma with Manitoba for farming purposes would require an imagination superior to all the facts of the case. There is considerable land fit for cultivation on Manitoulin and other islands in the Georgian Bay, and a few patches hefc and there on the north shore; but the rest of the dis- trict at this end is mostly a barren wilderness of rocks and swamps, unfit for settlement, except by the inhabitants, who work in the lumber camps during the winter, and thus earn enough money to keep the wolf from the door. But such farms as they have — merely for homes, and not to make a living out of — would be curiosities anywhere else in the world. The largest area of fairly good farming lands I know of in Algoma is on the Rainy River, just east of the Manitoba line. If the Ontario Government would adopt the American Homestead Act and give the settler in Algoma the timber, minerals, and everything on and under the ground, as in Northern Michigan, which is a similar country, there would be some inducement for settlers to come here, as they could get enough for the timber on the land to give them a start. But as it is now, the timber is sold to the lumber kings, the til ■1 H i6o EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. :? minerals arc reserved, and the poor settler jjets nothinj; but a chance to starve— but begets lotsof that, the Government being very liberal with him in this way if in no other. Mr. James Stolice, whu has been farming near the Bruce mines for over twenty years, wrote a long letter to the Sudbury Jourmil last week on the grievances of the miners and settlers in Algoma, in which he said among other things: " A farmer in this township who never heard of the direct tax on all patented lands here, was very much alarmed one day while at work, when one of his neighbours told him his farm was advertised for sale and to be sold in Toronto with- out ever having given him notice. He had no remedy but to pay, and being short of cash he had to sell his only cow to pay this tax. In the next township a settler wanted the lumber- man to leave two pine trees which he wanted for shingles; but the poor request went unheeded, the pine trees were taken, and the settler will have to find shingles elsewhere." The last and almost the only settler we had on this range sold out and left for Manitoba last fall — glad to be able to get away — and is now located north of \ irden. Many of the settlements on the north shore were started over thirty years ago, but all the flour and most of the beef used in the district come from Manitoba and Eastern Ontario. They expected at one time that the mining industry was going to give this section of Algoma a big lift and help the settlers on the north shore in various ways, but the short-sighted mining policy lately adopted by the Ontario Government has knocked all such prospects into infinite space. A great many young men and others who come here to setv'e down find it hard work now to settle up and get the wherev/ithal to take them away. No, there will have to be another glacial period to grind down the rocks before Algoma can be compared with Mani- toba as a farming country. A. McCHAKLES. Sudbury, March 5. > • i r. CHAPTER IX. Funerals — English Orphans — Children of the North west — The Curried Chicken — Hired People — Bishop Anson's Last Tour. The only cheerful funerals I ever saw were of an Austrian official in Austrian Slavonia, and of a Jew in the valley of Jehoshaphat : a lar^c crowd followed both, lau^hin^ and talking, ^iviii!^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 873-4503 1 62 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. its way, amidst brushwood and pasture, to the little corner of the prairie, railed off as a cemetery, and backed by a wood of low birches. There, far from his native land, the body of the settler was com- mitted to the ground with our beautiful English service by the chief pastor of the diocese ; while the sun shone out with the fierce heat of the north- west on the melting snow. " Everything that hath breath " was wakening up to welcome the approach of spring ; and never did the words, " in the midst of life we are in death," seem more appropriate. Where are his kinsfolk and acquaintance ? They stand upon another shore. Lord, vouchsafe his soul to keep In Thy peaceful blessed sleep. Another settler elsewhere had brought his family of twelve children from England, and had not com- pleted the purchase of a farm when he died of a cold he had caught in the railway carriage, and which turned to inflammation of the lungs only a fortnight after he arrived. His widow took the farm on herself; her eldest daughter at once applied for the school of the township, and obtained it ; a second daughter was engaged to be married almost immediately to an English gentleman in the neighbourhood, and all the children old enough were at once hired by different employers round. Another widow took up the Government post 1 j»^ I' " ENGLISH ORPHANS. 163 . which her late husband had held, and of which she had done the work during his long illness ; with it she educated and brought up her four children, and yet found time to teach in the Sunday School, and assist in parochial affairs. A third took her six children, the youngest only three years old, and settled with them on a ranch near a railway station in Western Assiniboia, where they will probably become the chief men of a new city, which will bear their name. A born Canadian soon begins to work, and feels it no grievance ; for it is the object of existence in the north-west. There was a child of seven who cleaned seven pairs of boots every morning before he went to school, while his brother of six cleaned the stove ; a sister of nine scrubbed the floors. And a wooden house, with people coming in and out from the fields, requires a good deal of keeping clean. Canadian children soon pay for their keep ; and this makes them very independent of their parents ; for they know if they run away from home they can obtain wages elsewhere, and that their parents really will be the losers. Last winter a farmer went to look for his cows driven away by a snow-storm, and he was found dead in the snow, twenty-two miles from home, his sleigh overturned and broken. It was a subject for general mourning in the district. He had gone '! :p :•' 164 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. out alone, refusing to take his sons or hired boys on account of the danger ; and it was they and the neighbours, who, after a long search, found him. Another farnmer the same week was arrested for having caused the death of an orphan boy who worked for him, by sending him out after the cows; and when the boy said " his clothes were not warm enough to go outside," he pushed him out, and fastened the door behind him. There is always some kindly person or a magistrate in the neigh- bourhood to look after the welfare of the young boys who are sent out in large numbers from English charitable institutions ; otherwise, the fact of there being a home for them to go to, about 300 miles from the farm where they are working, would not avail them much. The farmers engage, as a rule, to keep them the whole year, in consideration of their work in the summer being worth more than their wages. When winter comes, the farmer often finds the boy troublesome, and is glad to get rid of him. One case I knew of a Kilburn orphan whose parents had lived in Shore- ditch. He sold his warm clothes to spend the money in a chain not worth a tenth what he paid. He could not chop wood or go out of doors without getting frost-bitten ; and the farmer, who had only one room for kitchen and bedroom, took advantage of the boy saying he wanted to go, by sending him ► • ENGLISH ORPHANS. i6; off. He was kindly treated by one or two people at whose houses he called, who let him warm him self at the stove and gave him food ; but he was in a very dirty condition, and they could not take him in for a night. At last a clergyman found him, with his nose, feet, and fingers frost-bitten, on the road leading to that refuge for the destitute, St. John's College, Qu'Appelle station, and there he was taken in, washed, and re-clothed, and kept very comfortably for another year, when a good place was found for him. Other orphan boys have been returned more than once to that beneficent establishment as not worth their wages ; but long- suffering householders from England, rather than turn an orphan boy out in winter to go down hill most eftectually in an inferior situation, have long put up with idleness, thieving propensities, and falsehood. The ^born Canadian farmer, with no special sympathy for Britons, not unnaturally ex- pects his money's worth ; and with him the boys find their wages stopped, and themselves fined for damage to or caused by cattle under their care. At the end of a twelvemonth even a steady in- dustrious boy is sometimes paid with only a lean good-for-nothing animal, or sent off without any thing, because his employer says he cannot afford to pay him. All over Canada, English orphan boys and girls arc frequently adopted by couples I ii. {. -If 1 66 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. who have no children, and want some one to look after them in their old age; and these children have a very happy time of it. I heard of one instance where the couple afterwards had children of their own ; yet the adopted daughter never seemed to lose her first place in their affection. The indis- criminate sending of workhouse and reformatory children, or born members of the criminal class, to Canada, is hardly fair to the Canadian rising generation, as from their superior knowledge of the world they are likely to influence the simple chil- dren of the backwoods ; but it is too well known a fact to need repetition, that carefully selected boys and girls are very acceptable, and as a rule improve their prospects by going out.^ It is very desirable that all boys intended for Canada should be specially taught to be kind to animals. We knew one who lost his place because whenever he saw a cow looking towards him he would seize a pitchfork to attack her with. Brought up in a London home for waifs, he evidently thought that a cow's only mission was to toss people. On another farm, where a trough had been purposely constructed to water the cattle after a day in dry pasture before they were folded for the night, the 1 The Rev. F. A. G. Eichbaum, Warden of St. Edward's, West Malvern, periodically takes out orphans to Canada, but carefully selects boys with good antecedents. without meeting any one to ask. After the bishop had walked some distance, they came upon a young tree sufficiently strong to substitute for the broken portion of the buckboard, and a little further on the refreshing sight of a house or wooden hut. It was tenantless, and fastened up. Travellers in the north-west are permitted to shelter themselves how they best can when a heavy storm is coming on a.s at present ; and these very soon extracted the staple which held the padlock on the door, and took temporary possession. A letter in the house showed them that the nearest post-office was Yorkton, a railway station about thirty-five miles from Fort Telly. After a few hours' rest they resumed their journey ; but, for the last hour and a half of it, drove through pelting rain — the quite tropical rain of the north-west, which no overcoat will keep out — with lightning playing round them. Such are the ac- companiments of episcopal visitations in the Qu'- Appelle diocese ! In summer the provisions for a journey must be chosen of a sort not likely to turn sour with the excessive heat ; and in the winter the traveller has to stow them away carefully wrapped up, lest they should freeze as hard as rocks. A smudge is the Canadian name for rubbish BISHOP ANSON'S LAST TOUR. 173 burned to drive away the mosquitoes. It should be slightly damp — to smoulder more than blaze ; and horses and cattle will come as c!«^se to it as they can without getting burnt, to have some relief from these pests. In the summer of 1891, the mosqui- toes were particularly bad. When a plough and horses drew near bushes, a cloud flew out, and settled on man and beast, till the oxen or horses became so restive that the work had to stop. The luxury of mosquito nets round beds, which are used even in Germany, did not seem to have reached the north-west ; but men working out of doors put on gauze veils round their hats, and humane people began to cover their horses with netting when they took them out. Old and young, Europeans and half-breeds, are alike victimised ; but there are some skins, occasionally the softest and whitest, which, for reasons of their own, they will not touch. They flourish most in wooded districts, and near water, or in rainy summers ; and are consequently much less troublesome in the towns or when there is a drought. 1 ,*l /ti[ i ■• ■}. i If* In the Rocky Mountains. m ^ i' 1 i I f ) Y !■' U ! • I li f i f u 'I GRADUAL ASCENT TOWARDS THE ROCKIES. 1 79 i and Yorkton. Further on along the line, Brandon is 1 1 50 feet high, Qu'Appelle station 2050, St. John's College 2100, Maclean 150 feet higher than the college, and then it descends. Regina is 1875 feet, Moosejaw 1725; but at Swift Current another elevation begins. This station is 2400 feet high ; Medicine Hat in the South Saskatchewan River valley is 2 1 50 feet high ; but here we come into the neighbourhood of coal. Calgary, 180 miles further on, is 3388 feet high ; and Morley, 148 miles be- yond, is 4000 feet high. At this place the Rocky Mountains are in full view, and are entered at a station called the Gap, 4200 feet high — a point which is said to resemble the Bolan Pass in the Himalayas. The Rockies are the retreat for the animals driven from the prairie. Here the bear still holds its own ; and the buffalo might be there too if it were not for the wasteful slaughter of that useful beast. Taking advantage of the timidity of its nature, whole herds are said to have been destroyed by driving them along roads leading to precipices, where they leaped down and were killed, simply that these pseudo-sportsmen might carry home trophies of hides and horns. Still there could not have been much farming carried on if a herd of wild buffaloes were still in the neighbourhood. I heard a rumour of a herd being seen in Assiniboia r ' \i ;i fi ' 1 80 KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA. as late as 1889. From Medicine Hat westward the prairie is influenced by the chinook, a warm wind which blows through the valleys of the Rockies from the Pacific ; and I was informed that the weather was generally less intensely cold in those parts than further east, and that rapid thaws were apt to occur in mid-winter. It is supposed to be a district more suitable for ranching than for extensive crops. In 1892 a young Englishman was working nine- teen miles from Vancouver with an enormously powerful crushing machine, which was turned by a grand waterfall running down between snow-capped hills. Vancouver has suffered much from fire, like most of the wood towns in the Dominion ; an a 1 50 tons of this granite was being sent down every day to the city to replace the old wooden pavement. The machine crushes up large rocks in a few seconds, and empties the fragments in a barge below. Vancouver is a damp climate, and Cana- dians frequently cannot stand it, as it makes them very rheumatic. Nineteen pouring days last Novem- ber was a large proportion, but the fine days between are most beautiful. A friend of mine paid £^0 a year to the charwoman who came every day for two hours to do her two rooms. The Chinese cook at the camp of the granite quarry is paid ;^i i 190 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. school, there was a catechism of questions and answers, dealing with the holiest mysteries, which the children learned by heart, and regarded only as the driest and most uninteresting of their tasks. Bible history was learnt in the same way among the other lessons, with no explanations ; and the preceptors might be sceptics or most ill fitted to impress these subjects favourably on the youthful mind. It must be allowed that good has come out of evil in this respect ; and we may hope that it will be so in Canada. The Wesleyans and Presby- terians contrive to have Sunday schools, and their }outh attend them, even grown-up men. When our clergy are numerous enough to serve the churches in the dioceses, then they will be able, if not in the Government school-house, in their own dwellings or in a church-room, to hold classes for instructing the children of their parishioners. Already children's services are frequently held. As the population increases, Sunday schools will be more general, and new-comers who have taught classes in Sunday schools in England will teach them in Canada. But it seems quite useless to have Sunday schools or boarding schools if order and discipline are not maintained in them. The teacher unable to keep even a decent appearance of respect and obedience towards himself might gracefully retire, before he allows an insubordinate ' SCHOOLS. 191 tone and licence to become the tradition of the school ; but, probably, no better man would be found to fill his place. There have been one or two projects for boarding schools in the north-west for girls born in the Anglican Communion ; as at present, if anything more is required than can be obtained in the mixed day schools, they are sent to one of the Romanist convent schools : of these there is one at Prince Albert, to which two Presbyterian girls I was acquainted with went. They were not expected to attend any of the Sunday services there, but on that day accompanied friends in the town to their own place of worship. In many ways a girls* school would not be so expensive to keep up as a boys' ; and in educating girls we educate two generations. It would seem a splendid opening for a branch of one of our Anglican sisterhoods ; as I hardly believe in the prejudice said to exist against them in the north-west. Emanuel College at Prince Albert, founded by the late Bishop of Saskatchewan, is said to be self- supporting. There, the boys and young men wait upon themselves, and grow their own vegetables ; and a large proportion are half-breeds. The Romanists have supported for many years an industrial school for Indian boys and girls at Fort Qu'Appelle, which sends out many excellent young --/' 192 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. i '^i ;; If} servants. Fort Qu'Appelle is twenty miles from the station, and reached by a daily mail waggon. The echo in the valley of the river is supposed to have given rise to the name of the province ; and the Marquis of Lome has written a very pretty poem on both. The name has also been attributed to the challenge of the French sentry, in the days when the old fort was occupied by a French garrison. But if the Canadian schools are imbued with a distinct national tone, there are many patriotic associations intended to keep up the filial sentiment with Great Britain. The " Sons of England," who must have all been born in England, is partly a philanthropic society, and has branches throughout Canada. Their chief festival is .St. George's day» which is a public holiday, and on the last occasion this verse was sung : — Loud in exultation England's sons to-day, Fain to England's patron Praise and honour pay. Praising him they render Worship to his Lord, Whence ulone all virtue On His saints is poured. Bishop Cleveland Coxe's hymn was also sung : — The chimes, the chimes of Motherland, Of England, green and old. That from grey spire or ivied tower, A thousand years have tolled ; M . PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES. 1 93 How glorious must their music be, As breaks the hallowed day, And calleth with a seraph's voice A nation up to pray 1 I love you, chimes of Motherland, With all this soul of mine, And bless the Lord that I am sprung Of good old English line; And like a son I sing the lay That England's glory tells. For she is lovely to the Lord, For you, ye Christian bells. These lines were chiefly inspired by a visit the American prelate paid to the midland counties of England. He stayed at Northfield Rectory, Worcestershire, which faces a grand old church possessing an ancient tower and peal of bells, within sound of the chimes of King's Norton and Hales Owen, where there are old and very elevated spires. The spires of Bromsgrove, Hampton-in- Arden, and Solihull, are within a drive ; and the two cathedral towns of Lichfield and Coventry, with their three spires each, are within easy reach. No wonder that Bishop Coxe went back to America deeply impressed with the towers and spires of the old home. Of course, the Scots, wherever they can gather together in Canada, take a holiday on St. Andrew's day; and the sons of St. Patrick have only too \ ii It i 194 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. many societies, for they perpetuate the rivalries which destroy the prosperity of old Ireland, in the new world. As poetry is still in its infancy on the other side of the Atlantic, we give a hymn for St. Andrew's day which appeared in the Manitoba Free Press last year. I. First of the chosen band, whose vision clear Could recognise the light of Jacob's Star, Foretold far back by many an ancient seer, And at whose dawn the Gentiles came from far, Yet still unknown by men in that fair land. Till " Follow Me " came forth as His command. 2. Unknown by all but the strong-hearted one, Who dared to brave the tyrant in his lair, The saintly priest's inspred saintlier son Who pointed out his Lord to ears that hear. Andrew, prepared by what the Baptist taught, Believed at once the Christ he humbly sought. 3- " Fishers of men," this promise was fulfilled With those two lowly brothers, till their fame Exceeds all conquerors or in art most skilled. For thfouj^h them myriads learnt the sacred Name. From east to vest the word wh'ch Peter spread Bore fruit a ^ilousand-fold and still endures, While nations by the holy Andrew led. Extend from Asia to the Atlantic shores. Till in the Mystic City's glorious zone, They both are found inscribed, beside the Corner Stone. t i PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES. 195 Yet, with the born Canadian, sentiment will never outrival pecuniary interest. The exigencies of a young and poor country have to be considered; though at present it gets every advantage from being connected with Great Britain, and no draw- back. The test will be, if ever the mother country again embarks in a long expensive war. The north-west would feel secure in its isolation ; but the patient British taxpayer might not see the justice of defraying the cost of defending the colonies as well as himself. fl I I i »1 m v: CHAPTER XI. Leaving the Norih-ivest for Manitoba — Minnedosa — Typhoid Fever — JVinnipeg — The Memnonites — Ottatva — Red River District — Grand Forks — St. Pauiand Minneapolis — Niagara — Through the Lakes. It was at a quarter to four in the early morning by the only train in the day going east, that I started on my way homeward. There was a severe frost, and the stars shone out from the sky with the brilliancy seen in northern climates. A young relative helped me to pack all my impedimenta into the raUway carriage ; a sackload of furs, chiefly bought from Indians, and birds' skins ; and some blankets, sheets, and other useful things brought from England and Regina, destined for a young farmer and his wife whom I was going to visit near Minnedosa. My heavy baggage was checked for Winnipeg, where I found it a week later in the luggage office. The Manitoba and north-west line, on which Minnedosa (the valley of water) stands, branches off from the Canadian Pacific Railway at Portage la Prairie, about seventy miles west of Winnipeg. LEAVING TIIK NORTII-WKST F(JR MANITOBA. I97 Apparently for the benefit of the hotels, of which there are several at Portage, the Manitoba line trains are timed just to miss those on the Canadian Pacific Railway, so that, coming from the west, passengers for Minnedosa must sleep at Portage. The trains only go up that line three times a week, and are usually full ; but the compan)- could not pay their dividend in the spring of 1893. It is a pretty country, the more striking as we pass through very bare districts on each side before we reach it. The Little Saskatchewan winds along it, bordered by trees, and in some parts running in a deep cutting. This part of Manitoba (the Indian for "the Great Spirit speaks") is cried up through- out Canada ; and the Hudson Hay Company, which owns a large proportion of it, puts on a heavier price in consequence. The little town of Gladstone, with 378 people on twelve square miles, as seen from the station, might be an English or Welsh village. Further on we come to Minnedosa, lying in a valley, with two hotels, each giving comfortable accommodation for a dollar a day. This settlement seems to have gained the credit it enjoys from its being well watered ; so that it did not suffer like the prairie during the years of drought between 1884 and 1891. A branch line was being made to Rapid City and Brandon on the Canadian Pacific Railway, which I. / '• I i f« i 198 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. would considerably shorten the journey to the capital of the north-west. The Minnedosa line continues to Yorkton, where it enters the province of Assiniboia and diocese of Qu'Appelle. In the neighbourhood of Saltcoats there is a Hungarian settlement, and the Vicar of Saltcoats (the Rev. T. W. Teitelbaum), who is of Hungarian parentage, is able to give them the Church services in their own language. About fifteen miles from Minnedosa there is a Swedish settlement. These foreigners at first kept to themselves, and mixed little with the other inhabitants ; but now they are gradually monopolising the hired man department. The census shows that in six years Minnedosa has increased from 549 to 611; the township of Clanwilliam, adjoining it, from 349 to 569 ; Glad- stone added 79 to its population in the same time ; and Rapid City mounted from 258 to 543. All these townships are twelve miles square. Russell, swelled by Dr. Barnardo's Home, now ^^ches, with Silver Creek, 1407. The places nearer Winnipeg naturally increase faster; and if the line is ever finished to Prince Albert it will benefit this pro- vince. The old Hudson Bay Company's trails, where we came across them, are, like the Roman roads in England, now intersected by railways and other lines, but still showing that they were well chosen TYI'IKJII) FEVKR. 199 and substantially marked out. Some wooded hills lie to the north-east of Minnedosa, and give it a milder climate than Churchbridgc and Yorkton on the other side of the hills ; but we missed here the invigorating dry air of the prairie. The farmers of Manitoba, with a common-sense which i)Uts our halting legislation on the subject of habitual drunk- enness to shame, have petitioned for the prohibitive system of the north-west to be extended to their province. The want of it caused great havoc among the early settlers in Ontario, and more than decimated the Indian population. In fact, doctors assert that spirits are simply poison to young men or women in this stimulating climate, and that everybody is really better without them. The ex- cuse is the difficulty in getting good water. Typhoid fever is a very common complaint, partly from drinking unfiltered water, and also from careless- ness in throwing offal and other rubbish away near the houses ; and when the thaw begins the odours are pestiferous, and the water supply gets con- taminated. The Canadians are not accustomed to send for doctors except for broken bones or some very serious matter. When they are not well they take a patent medicine. Chlorodyne is a very favourite one ; but if they would keep a bottle of castor oil, and at the first symptom of enteric malady of any description, take a dose (supposing 14 1 '1 I' ' ^l 1 If;. !| 1 i r fi. til 200 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. it is unnecessary, it does no harm and helps to nourish them), then if they have swallowed any un- wholesome substance or germ, serious consequences will probably be averted. Also washing soda and chloride of lime, when they can be had, should not be spared about the premises. Winnipeg, the queen of the prairie, had increased greatly during a year and a half between my first and second visits. Restaurants, new hotels, banks, pawnbrokers' shops, and detective agencies— the advantages and disadvantages of civilisation — had been added ; and the number of places of worship being improved or enlarged seemed to show that the recent exhibition, of which north-west Canada was so proud, had brought money into the country, and that some of it at least was being spent in a right spirit. Canon Pentreath's church was entirely re- built ; the old materials being used for the new foundation. The primate had lately introduced the office of canon into the Church of the north- west, and Mr. Pentreath was one of the first ap- pointed to it. The re-opening of this church and the consecration of the new Bishop of Athabascow were events to occur at the end of that month. English aristocratic names, that of a German, a Pole, a Swede, a Scotsman, an Irishman, and a Chinese laundryman of long standing, were all close to each other in one of the streets of l^•. Mt WINNIPHC 201 peg. A tram-car traverses the city,' and takes no one a yard under twopence half-penny. The electric light arrived in Manitoba before gas, and most of the shops and hotels are lighted with it. There is a child of four sitting on a chair outside a shop, and ringing a bell at intervals to call attention to the goods. I heard another boy ask the child how old he was, and how much he got for sitting there. It was five cents an hour. " O you ought to get more than that," said the boy; " I would not i «. ?! 5 I 202 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. Russia, they were exempted from the combatant part of the army, even if they drew " the bad lot," as it is called in France ; but they did object to a law obliging Russian to be taught in the schools ; and they are now leaving Canada for the United States, or for more remote districts where such legis- lation is not enforced, lest the Canadian law should be brought to bear on them, obliging every child to be taught the English languagej whereby ihey say the next generation would be Canadians instead of Germans. A little further on there are two brothers, from St. Boniface, the earliest Romanist ecclesi- astical outpost in this part of Canada. One hotel employs entirely Norwegians. It is the same story with them as with everybody else. The Canadian guide-books brought them out. " They seemed to- show that every one must make his fortune at once." Most of the Norwegians had suffered from typhoid fever since they came ; and all I spoke to said they did not feel so strong as when they left Norway. Still, all the girls were engaged to be married, and I have no doubt will make excellent wives. Ice is a cheap luxury in Canada ; and even in May when the Red River had not thoroughly thawed, a block of ice was placed every morning on the wooden pavement in front of the provision shops, melting in the hot sun, and keeping them cool.. WINNIPEG. 203 There are some fine public buildings, and a monu- ment raised to the memory of the heroes of Batochc, and the last half-breed war. There is a Young Men's Christian Association, and, if I mistake not, a Young Women's Christian Association also. To judge by the convictions there seems to be a very small amount of crime in even this, the largest centre of population in the north-west, and everything gives the idea of a well- ordered and prosperous place. We hear of no such doings in the university as occurred in the Ohio Wesleyan Girls' College not long ago, when some of the students deliberately held down several new girls, while others rubbed their faces and necks with caustic, disfiguring them for life. The courtesy of Canadians towards strangers is proverbial. There are not a few who look forward to Winni- peg being the future capital of the Dominion if it remains united. C tawa was only selected because Toronto was too near the American frontier, and Montreal was too French and Romanist ; but the handsome parliamentary buildings erected at Ottawa would be, it is suggested, a difficulty. The Canadian legislators are more carefully considered than at Westminster ; for each has a desk before him with writing materials, instead of having to take notes in pencil on the back of old envelopes on the top of his hat. I ! I. I ' i I / \ i ! \ Mi ! 204 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. The country between Winnipeg and the United States boundary town of Gretna is very different to the rest of Canada. The raihvay runs in the valley of the Red River, through a cultivated district, with neat little villages. The Romanist priests and nuns, whom we noticed on the way, showed that Romanism chiefly prevails there ; and a Government inspector in the carriage gave me its history. In 1871 it was inhabited by Indians, Hudson Bay Company officials and other whites, and a population of half-breeds, who all remained loyal. The parents of the last had simply not been married because there were no legal or ecclesiastical functionaries, and no places of worship. The Government passed a bill, legitimatising them all, and gave them the lands on which they lived, and a Roman mission soon planted themselves among them. It was thought desirable to encourage a loyal population on the borders of the States ; and that they should be Romanists was deemed another advantage, because the United States in that quarter is chiefly VVesleyan. Grand Forks, the first large town we came to outside Canada, is the junction for another railway joining the Canadian Pacific Railway at Medicine Hat. We were leaving winter behind us, and coming back to beautiful autu mn weather ; and how leafy all this district seemed compared to the bare Red River plains ! The twin ST. PAUL AND iMlNNEAPOLIS. 20: cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis ("city of water") begin the series of rich manufacturing towns in the States. Only Montreal and Toronto in Canada can in any degree compete with them in size, and in Minneapolis there are the largest grain mills in the world, throwing out 9000 sacks of meal every day. How different this from the little provincial mills, where the weary Canadian farmer, after some- times two days of trudging beside a team of oxen loaded with his corn, has to sell it at what price the miller chooses to give ! The want of law and order in the Southern States is not felt to the same extent in these colder blooded northern provinces ; and crimes against property seem to be more severely punished than in Canada. A man is liable to 1000 dollars fine, or three years' imprison- ment, who extracts a letter from a pillar box with a bit of wire. " The People v. the Criminal " is the phrase used legally in the States for " Regina V. the Criminal," which appears on the records of our law courts. Chicago and Detroit are two more of these overgrown cities with colossal brick manu- factories and rich dwellings and hundreds of log and frame houses and huts. We see no such sharp contrasts in the north-west of Canada. There is more crying destitution in these new American cities than even in our European towns ; but old men and women, as in Canada, are very rare. '; '1 :• I) ! t 206 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. When a septuagenarian does appear, he or she seems to be treated with kindness and respect ; but the States, like Canada, arc essentially for active people. To quote a favourite Canadian expression, *' they have no use for the aged or infirm ". I refrain from describing Chicago and the ex- hibition building, as by this time the British public must be weary of both. The American railways are much over-praised. The Pullman car was suffocating, and the first-class less comfortable than the third-class almost anywhere in Europe. The travellers, a very mixed set, including negroes, were on a par with the carriages. Only a fortnight afterwards this train was stopped and pillaged. I availed myself of the privilege of a first-class through ticket to stop the train at Niagara Falls in order to pass Sunday there. The moisture thrown up by the huge mass of water in its descent fer- tilises all the neighbourhood ; and Victoria Park, on the Canadian side of the falls, is the most beautiful of any of the numerous pleasure grounds which I have seen throughout the Empire bearing her Majesty's name. There are old inhabitants who can recollect the 31st March, 1848, when the Niagara Falls were almost dry. The winds had been blowing clown Lake Erie, which is only about eighty feet deeo, and there had been an immense flow over the falls. Suddenly the wind changed f NIAGARA. 207 and blew the little water left in the lake in the contrary direction. The ice, which was breaking up, got jammed like a dam between Buffalo and the Canadian shore, keeping back the waters from Lake Erie for about a day. One man rode out into the bed of the river, and so on outside Cedar Island to Table Rock- In a channel fed by the falls, another recollected seeing a number of old gun barrels supposed to have been thrown in during the war of 181 2. Below the falls the water was so shallow that immense jagged rocks appeared and people shuddered at the idea of having frequently passed over them in the little *'Maid of the Mist". The line from Detroit to Niagara runs through that portion of Ontario including London which is rightly called the garden of Canada, and produces the apples and peaches that form so tempting a portion of the Canadian products at European exhibitions. But the young man who reads on emigration bills that there are free homesteads to be had in Ontario must not for a moment suppose the advertiser means this part of it. Ontario is a very large province extending to Hudson Bay, and if he buys a plot or takes up a homestead without looking at it first, he may find himself expected to plough up a half-frozen soil, with only Esquimaux to help him, or digging away at a :( / \ §^ .'I !^/|! f i l< ' ' I iir 208 EXCURSIONS IN CANADA. granite rock on the north of Lake Superior, where there is hardly depth enough of soil for the roots of the fir trees. Stories are told of men who have bought land, and been unable to find it, because it was actually allotted to them in the centre of a lake, and the sites along the shore were already taken up. The pleasantest of three routes from Winnipeg to the Atlantic is through the lakes from Port Arthur, along the famous canal of the Sault Ste Marie to the port of Toronto, and thence either by way of Niagara and Buffalo to New York, or keeping within Canadian territory along the Grand Trunk Railway to Montreal. But the navigation closes in November, and seldom reopens before June, and at the time I left Winnipeg was tempo- rarily closed by a wreck in the canal. But by coming that way I should have missed the spectacle of three American towns in flames; and the really beautiful scenery of Wisconsin, with the picturesque and flourishing cities of Ann Arbour, Jacksonville, Sparta, and a variety of others bearing names alternately classical and commonplace. At beauti- ful Detroit we re-enter her Majesty's dominions ; but at Niagara again bid adieu to them, to make the rest of the land journey through the States and then home by the splendid S.S. " New York ". ii INDEX. >*m li ^1 \\ Lj.. ^j I N D K X. Abernethy, 20, 24. Alaska, 141, 178. Alberta, 41, 83, 177. Albert, Prince, 59, ct seq., 191, — St., no. Algoma, 158-9. Anderson, Bishop, 116. Andrew's, St., Day, 193. Anson, Hishop, 9, 19, 24, ^^. Anticosti, Isle of, 144-70. Assinaboia, 8, 19, 47, 73, 83, 102, 129, 137. Barnardo, Dr., 198. Batoche, 63. Battleford, 52, 106. Bishop's Court, 116. Brandon, 49, 94, 197. Brassey, Lord, 144, 149-50. British Columbia, 17, 51-2. Brotherhood, 12. Burn, Bishop, 9. Bush Hotel, 65. Cabot, Sebastian, no. Calgary, 51. Canadian Agents, 28, 58. — Pacific Railroad, 27, 197. — Parliament, 57. Carlton, 60, 64, 74. Carthage, Prince Hanno of, 103. Cartier, Jacques, in. Champlain, General, n4. Chicago, 205. Chinese, 4. Churchill, Fort, 77. Church, Anglican, 34, 70, uf,, 182. -- Romanist, 34, 43, 70, "7- Churchbridgt, 199. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop, 192. Columbia, British, 17, 51-2, 92, 141. Columbus, 103. Cumberland House, 71. Dakota, 175. Duck Lake, 62, 78. Dutch, The, n4. Earnscliffe, Lady, 59. Edgeley, 150. Edmonton, 107, no, 139. England, New, 114. Estevan, 93. Farm Pupils, 130. France, New, or Canada, 59, 7h 113-17- French in Canada, 71. Funeral;',, 161. Garry, Fort, 117. George's, St., Day, 137, 192. Gladstone, 197. Granville, Earl, 116. Greenway, President, 175. •'I: r.'.f r.i.t '"r 212 INDKX. Half-breeds, 71, t7 seq.^ 98, 106, 119. Hamilton, 94. Herding, 124. Hired Men, HH. — Women, iCnj. Hospitality, Canadian, 42. Hudson's Hay, 77, m. — liay Company, 65, 72, 107, I lO. — Captain. 113. Icelanders, 29. Indian Head, 22, 150. Indians, 17, 68, 81, 119. Iroquois, 108. Japanese, 119. Jesuits, 113. Kublai Khan, 100. Lansdowne Hotel, 181. Lawrence, St., 11 1-4. Lethbridfi;e, 93. Lome, Marquis of, 17, 192. Lubbock, Sir John, 97. Machray, Bishop, 116. Mackay, Andrew, 128. Manhattan, or New York, 114. Manitoba, 17, 25, 39, 55, 85, 130. Medicine Hat, 37, 41, 53, 179. Memnonites, 93. Methodists, 34, 82. Mexico, 100. Millers, 31. Minneapolis, 57, 204. Minnedosa, 31, 198. Monguls, 100-3-5. Montreal, 2, 3, 82, 107, 127. j Moosejaw, 93, 179. Moosomin, 37, 49. ' Muskegj; Lake, 70. Napoleon's Ivxpcdition, 138. Natural I'roducts, 47. New V'ork, 102-14. Niaj;ara, 207. North-west Police, a, 76. Okanayan District, 141. Ontario, 81. ii(), 128, 147. Orphans, I*2nj;lish, 164. Ottawa, 3, 203. Paul, St., 175, 204. Pelly, Fort, 13, 38, 170. Pheasant Plains, 19, ct seq. Pinkham, liishop, 84. Portage le Prairie, 178-97. Pozer, Mr., 6^. Presbyterians, 34, 74, 182. Qu'Appelle, Port, 38, 191. — vStation, 5, et saj., 37, 61, 142. Quebec, 16. Red. River, 78, 157, 204. Regina, 53, 61, 73, 79. Rockies, The, 108, 179. Royal, President, 181. Rupertsland, 8, 115. Russell, 198. Sable Island, 112. Saltcoats, 198. Sandy Lake, 70. Saskatchewan, 61, 77. — River, Little, 197. — River, N orth, 67, 75, 80. — River,South, 61,67, 179. Saskatoon, 61. Sillitoe, Bishop, 119. Sissoms, Mr., 67. Snake Plain, 63, et seq., 177. h I INDKX. 213 Spring?, 126, 157. Sunday Observance, 35. — vSchools. }4, iH(j. Swift Current, 50, 17^. I Vancouver, 52, 180. i Victoria, 52. — Park, 206. ' — Queen, fio. Tache, Archbishop, 54. Tariff, Canadian, 147. Tchuktshi, The, loi. Touchwood Hills, 63, 170. Tumuli, 74, 105. Wales, I'rince of, 60. Weather, 124, ij6. I Winnipeg, 4, 40, (jj, 178. — Lake, 178. W'inter, 48, et siuj. TT -i J o. Wisconsin, 208. Lnited States, 5, 26, 56, 69, Wolseley, Lord, 118. 04, (JO, (/), 101-44.52, ^^^- Yokohama, 99. 177.