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32X

WINTER AND SUMMER

EXCL'RSIOXS IX CANADA

AliKNUKKiN UMVKKsnV I'KESS.

■»

WINTER AND SUMMER

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA

C. L. JOHNSTONE

AUTIIOK OK "historical FAMILIES OF DUMFRIESSHIRE," ETC.

LONDON

DIGBY, LONG, & CO., Publishers

i8 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C.

285U9

*©e^tcafeb

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

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

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

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

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

■A

I'A(;B

124

143

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,

FA(.K

'74

196

161

■ ''^

i'(

'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.

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.

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.

(

!•

I.'

ti
tl

1(
p

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

II (il

lif 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

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

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-

()U'apim:llk

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.

'■%

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<Ts, leavin^j the heavier baggage
on the platform, where we were assured it was quite
safe. A porter was roused, and rooms were found
for us, although in the brilliant sun of a May morning
we felt disinclined for more sleep. A bath seemed
the greatest necessity : as for food, I subsequently
discovered that this hotel was not singular in that
none of our party succeeded in convincing the
owners that we were exceedingly hungry, having
had nothing to eat to speak of since the middle of
the previous day, and should be glad of a meal>
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

in.

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.

"'%

-:-,(,

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.

ill I

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

i li

THE BROTHERHOOD.

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 ,^l

■f

t ;'

!-'

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 u

' !

BISHOP ANSON.

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^

i!»

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.

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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.

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

;(

1'.

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

lij

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

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

\\\

}>!!

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

FASHIONABLE ARRIVALS FROM LONDON. 23

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'^.

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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 >

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

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.

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

^ 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

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.

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

KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA.

" \

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.

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

«(1

:i'

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

ENCilJSIl CllUKClI WOkKKRS.

ling

fby.

ird,

lard

ted

uld

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

^ .1

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

baptised over forty miles ; and people arriving in
time for the morning service wrapped up like
Esquimaux, having driven eight miles in a sledge
when the thermometer was 10" bolow zero. It is
all very well to say that they expect to m.eet their
friends and have a gossip; that it is the only
opportunity some of the out-lying farmers have of
seeing another civilised being, and so forth. The
young Englishman of modern times is better
brought up as regards his religious education at
our public schools than were his forefathers in the
days when the poet Cowper pointed out that while
boys were taught the Roman and Greek Pai beon,
they were left ignorant of the fundamental truths
of Christianity. Even when thrown on the prairie
to gain his livelihood, and with nothing more swift
than an ox-waggon, not even a bicycle, he will find
his Vv'ay occasionally to church, however distant it
may be. Many grateful thanks are due ♦^o the
English friends of the Canadian dioceses, particu-
larly ladies, who have supplied these distant
churches with beautiful embroidery, and other
accessories of Divine worship in costly materials,
which ::he colonists themselves have neither money
nor time to procure. We could imagine that the
Roman ladies in ancient days devoted time and
means in the same way to the decoration of the
early English churches ; and it is to be hoped that

A PRAIRIE FIRE.

lat

the colonists in Canada will preserve their ecclesias-
tical art-treasures for the benefit of future genera-
tions with the sacred care that they were preserved
in Britain. The banner in the church of St. Peter
at Qu'Appelle station is really second to none in
the mother country for beautiful design and work-
manship. Medicine Hat, Moosomin, and several
other churches might be envied in many parts of
England. But fire is a terrible enemy to wooden
churches in wooden towns ; and it is greatly to be
hoped that the settlers will replace most of the
unsubstantial edifices with brick or stone, when
they have had a few more good harvests. There
are still settlements in the north-west, where the
kitchen or parlour of a farm, larger than the rest,
has to be used for the Church services ; and where,
to quote Bishop Selwyn, old settlers are ready to
weep on hearing the hymns their mothers once
sang to them, played on a cracked old harmonium,
which has been carried miles up the country on a
missionary waggon. If these services are not so
well attended as might be expected, it is generally
owing to the difficulty of letting the outlying
farmers, fifteen and twenty miles away, know
exactly where or when they are to take place.

The grass of the prairie burns so easily in dry
weather that a fire lighte 1 carelessly for camping
out at night, and even lighted matches thrown

It'*

. {■

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

about, have destroyed miles of corn and pasture,
and endangered the safety of many homesteads and
stacks. Far beyond the sight of the flames, the
heavy murky sky and stifling atmosphere proclaim
a fire in the neighbourhood, perhaps only seven or
eight miles off ; and then, if a farm is not provided
with a fire-guard, all hands run out to make one.
This is done by ploughing up a piece of ground
several yards wide all round the homestead, so as
to destroy the herbage. If the wind is high, the
flames literally race along the parched grass, and the
fire-guard stops them. One of the clergy leaving
Fort Felly for his short summer holiday to be spent
at St. John's College, accompanied by a lay reader,
had a most narrow escape in 1891. The journey
lies through a wide lonely district, and one night is
generally spent " camping out". The spot chosen
is regulated by the neighbourhood of water, which
is rather scarce in this part. By the second night
Fort Qu'Appelle is generally reached, and it con-
tains several hospitable families. The travellers
were proceeding, surrounded with thick smoke,
when they saw the flames of a prairie fire fast
gaining upon them on both sides. The horse rip-
preciated the situation, for it required no whip, but
galloped desperately forward ; and the dog following
them was pulled up on to the vehicle, when its hair
was already singed. When by great exertion they

A PRAIRIE FIRE.

had gained some distance beyond the fire they
looked back, and saw the trail they had just passed
enveloped in flames. They arrived at St. John's
College with part of their conveyance smoked and
charred, and the horse slightly scorched, giving
evidence that they had had a race for their lives.

Possibly some Canadians may think that the
relation of these incidents will deter Englishmen
from coming to Canada. On the contrary, dangers
and hairbreadth escapes are an attraction rather
than otherwise to the spirited British youth, tired
of what he looks upon as jogtrot life in the old
country ; and the experienced British agriculturist
will only reflect that he must lose no time in in-
suring his house when he arrives in the north-west.
A farmer in Manitoba, only lately from England
with his family, had his house, stables, and stacks
entirely destroyed by one of the children lighting
a lantern in the evening, and throwing the lighted
match behind the wood box, where it ignited some
shavings. Yet the insurance office nobly paid for
the damage. Boys accustomed to brick and stone
houses are very apt to be careless of fire in a
wooden one ; and a farm boy, ordered to burn some
rubbish in the yard, quietly lighted it up at the side
of a hay rick to prevent the wind from blowing it
out ; and in a few minutes the rick was in a blaze.
The danger of fire in these log and frame houses is

B. A

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

perhaps lessened by the impossibility of having a
fire in the summer in any room but the kitchen, as
the other stoves and pipes are removed when the
spring begins, and are not generally put back again
till October, the holes in the walls through which
the pipes run making a comfortable ventilator
during the heat of summer. The first year I was
in Canada there were slight falls of snow at inter-
vals till the end of June, and all May was wet and
cold. The house at which I stayed was for the
north-west rather a large one, with spacious rooms,
plenty of draughts, and no means of warmth but
in the kitchen. Petroleum stoves had not reached
this colony, and methylated spirits were not obtain-
able for an English Etna. As the kitchen was
already over-full with four hired indoor people, and
two very rough outdoor working men, and three
working boys, as well as casual visitors, who collected
there in the evening and in the rainy weather with
their books and newspapers, I was often glad to
go into a neighbour's house and warm my hands
by his kitchen stove, where there was generally no
one but the cook, and now and then a passing
traveller who came in for the same purpose. No
wonder a cook is a popular functionary when she
commands the only fire in the establishment, and
the thermometer — May though it is — is at freezing-
point ! I stayed at a friend's house just before I

A PRAIRIE FIRE.

left Canada ; it contained a large family of daughters,
and was a very comfortable residence. But every
hand outside was employed in trying to get in the
harvest before it was spoilt by the frost. One
night the thermometer stood at 24° Fahr., nobody
could be spared to put up stoves and pipes, so the
kitchen, which would not have held all the family
at once, was our resort ; and one night when I went
to bed, my towels hung over a chair by the little
window, were frozen tight to the glass. And yet
a sojourn in the north-west is very beneficial in
some cases of consumption and delicate lungs.
The winter is as varied in its temperature as the
summer. The thermometer sometimes rises above
freezing-point in December, and there are even very
occasional soft muggy winter days. Alberta, and
even Medicine Hat, are influenced by the chinook,
a warm wind which blows from the Pacific; and the
average of winter cold is not so low as in the most
central districts, though they are even higher above
the level of the sea.

CHAPTER III.

,«;

Canndidn Hospitality — Storm — Winter Casualties —
Amusements — Newspapers — Vegetation — Statistics of
Cold — Archbishop Tachk's Opinion — Real Progress —
The Census — Booming.

Hospitality is most truly understood in the
north-west of Canada. No guest ever seems to
be found de trop. Householders leave the outside
door unlocked at night, so that a wayfarer may
be able to shelter himself till morning ; and a
sudden storm coming on, perhaps on Sunday
evening, will add seven or eight people to the
ordinary number on ar outlying farm. A wild
storm of rain or snow is seen to be rising, and, as
in a prairie fire, it is a scamper for bare life. The
preparatory driving wind is blowing the light soil,
like brown snow, over trees and crops ; and the
animals are excitedly rushing about, looking for a
hiding-place. A house seems to become common
property on such occasions, and all travellers make
for the nearest. Here come a lady and gentleman
on horseback, some of the aristocracy of the
district, riding a mile out of their way, as they had

WINTER CASUALTIKS.

five miles to get home, to take advantage of the
only dwelling on the road. Then a humble pony
cart containing a Presbyterian minister, his wife
and child lately arrived from Scotland, and alarmed
by the extraordinary blackness of the heavens. At
last the rain begins, sweeping down and forming
rapid brooks and waterfalls in a few minutes ; and
some herd-boys, struggling against it, reach the
friendly shelter soaked to the skin. A few more
appear in li. dme condition ; and the resources of
the house are taxed to find dry clothes, supper,
and accommodation for the night. The Presbyterian
minister and his wife insist on returning seven
miles home, and set off in the first break in
the storm ; they have left three little children
behind them, with only a herd-boy of thirteen,
and are afraid to pass the night away from
them. The wife gratefully accepts the loan
of a felt hat instead of her Sunday bonnet ; and
blankets and waterproofs to wTap up the baby in
case the storm comes on again ; and off the brave
souls go. Many fatalities occurred the first winter
I was there, and take place every year from people
being unable to find a dwelling ; for an uninhabited
house, like an P2astern khan, without a fire, would
be of little use. The Romanist priest at Regina
was returning home in a covered waggon which
contained a stove, a very unusual luxury in a con-

r.^i

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

vcyance. Twenty- five miles from home his horses
could get no further, an!, anxious to arrive in time
for his Sunday services, he got out to walk ; he
proceeded eighteen miles, and then sat down and
died. A farmer was taking his corn to be ground ;
he had only oxen, and oxen cannot be hurried ;
and he became numbed with cold. The first hut
he passed was deserted, and he could not undo the
door. He plodded on through the snow, and saw
another, where the people had gone to bed, but
he roused them up to help him. His legs were
frost-bitten, and, following the Spartan treatment
in use in Switzerland, they were plunged into icy
water ; but it was too late, and a day or two after-
wards he w-'S taken to the hospital at Winnipeg,
where they were amputated. I have heard that
among the Esquimaux they treat a frost-bitten
part by holding it in their warm skin-gloved hands
till sensation returns, which seems like a common-
sense method. Canadians make a distinction be-
tween frost-bitten and frozen. The last is only
what a very cold winter's day will cause in Eng-
land, if the hands grow numb with cold, and feel
as though they were being pricked with pins and
needles, when sensation return.s.

It is curious, when the thermometer is below zero,
to see liquids freezing before your eyes, and plates
being washed in almost boiling water, with the

WINTER CASUALTIES.

steam rising up, and freezing on the wall and
window. The breath freezes in festoons round the
room. Every drop of water for every purpose has
to be thawed ; and it chills the kitchen so much when
pans and kettles of ice and snow are thawing on
the top of the stove, that cooking becomes a dif-
ficulty. With all the drawbacks to baths and
washing clothes, when water has to be thawed for
animals as well as man, young and poor settlers
are apt to dispense with both till warmer weather.
This is supposed to bring on a complaint called
prairie scurvy ; but it often looks like gouty eczema,
and is possibly quite as much caused by want of
vegetables and fruit, as it was particularly prevalent
one year when the potato crop failed. It is imagined
to be infectious. The calves on the prairie are
sometimes afflicted with a kind of ringworm, which
the herd-boys are apt to catch, and that is cer-
tainly infectious. This, and the insects, which are
difficult to keep out of wooden houses, is an ob-
jection to lodging in doubtful quarters in out-of-the-
way parts of Canada ; and it is the same in the
United States. Deserted huts should be avoided,
even if it entails camping out. We have known a
couple who passed a night wrapped up in their
sleigh outside in mid-winter, rather than accept the
proffered hospitality of a French Canadian.

Canadians, like the Yankees, call all flies and

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

insects by the original name for a Norfolk Howard.
A child told me in church that I had one on my
sleeve, and looking for it with some dismay, I saw
nothing but a harmless spider.

The Canadians, like all northern nations, are
extremely fond of dancing, and a series of socials
are held through the winter in most of the north-
west towns. The town hall is generally built for
this purpose, and a shilling or sixpence admits
any one who likes to go. Young men who want
to explore other ulslricts, and cannot afford the
expense, will now and then organise an amateur
play or concert which they perform at most of the
towns on the railway as they go along, and thereby
pay their way. Horse-racing, steeple-chasing,
cricket matches, cattle shows, choir meetings, and
other festivities, secular and religious, have all been
imported by Canada with special entertainments of
her o\\x\. She has some well-edited newspapers,
among which are the Manitoba Free Press, printed
at Winnipeg ; the Canadian CJiurcJi Magazine, the
Canadian ChurcJunan, and the Week, published at
Toronto; the Regitia Leader, the Qii Appelle Pro-
gress ; while Prince Albert supports three weekly
papers ; also the Fort Qu' Appelle Vidette, the Moose-
faw Times, the Mediciiie Hat Times, and so on ;
besides the older publications in Eastern Canada.
'^hi^ Illustrated Dominion i.i a splendid paper. The

\ \

VKC^ETATIUN.

country is by no means in a state of mental stagna-
tion ; and scarcity in Europe and the United States
would make an enormous difference to its pros-
perity. The sprin*^ of 1893 found 6,560,000
bushels of wheat waiting for transport at Fort
William and other points of the Manitoban and
north-west territory.

The Canadian lakes produce most excellent fish,
the white fish especially ; and the wild birds, '^uch
as the prairie chicken, often have fat ur.>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

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

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

*l I

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,

STATISTICS OF COLD.

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. : —

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 .

above

zero.

♦>

below

zero.

>»

»»

• 1

>»

»>

" 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.

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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.

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

^\\

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.

population, to appear bigger than its nei<i;hbour and
rival Minneapolis.^ This kind of thing has been
imitated in Canada. There was rather an amusing
debate in her Parliament with regard to her last
census. Provincial people knew that names were
put down of settlers who had returned to England,
and others visiting another part of Canada appeared
twice ; but they were hardly prepared for the facts
that came out in this debate. A member cast
doubts upon the reliability of the returns by showing
that in villages with which he was acquainted,
sewing girls, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and other
individual workers, must have been set down as
manufacturing industries, in order to make up the
number given. The Government advocate said all
the details of the census were confidential ; that the
enumerators were bound by oath not to reveal them ;
but further discussion showed that in another vil-
lage a blacksmith with a solitary forge, a carpenter
who did odd jobs here and there and could make
rolling pins and bread trays, and an old Indian
living in a tent who weaved grass mats and baskets,
were three out of six manufacturing industries with
which the town was accredited in the returns.
"Canadians who will hear no more of their boodling
politicians," headed the obituary one day in the
principal organ of Manitoba and the north-west.

^ Vide Wiscotisin Press, i8go.

\ ,

] (

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

Canadian officialdom seems very sensitive about
the climate; and many a poor fellow has left the
country again with his health permanently damaged
because he had believed when he read that the
cold in Canada is not felt so much as in England,
and that ordinary English clothes are quite sufficient.
The manager of a weather record office was threat-
ened to be f'^privf^' ot it because he gave the returns
lower than '.i^ it' d company's agents in the neigh-
bourhood lik 1 Ue did his best to bring up the
thermometer, for he puL ,t on the part of the wooden
wall where the kitchen chimney pipe ran up just
outside, and it had a wooden cover over it as well.

A few dciys after I arrived in Canada I was
paying a morning visit when a land company's
agent came in. Seeing I was a stranger he began
to talk of a new line that had just been surveyed,
and there was not a doubt would be completed in
the coming summer. He added, "the land was
consequently being bought up at a high price along
the road, and would go up a good deal higher".
When he was gone, my friend told me there was
no more prospect of this line being made than five
years before (and it has never been made yet) ; but
the land agent saw I was fresh from the old country,
and thought I might take the land at his estimate,
which no old resident would.

This is one way in which fortunes are made in
the new world.

CHAPTKR IV.

Prince Albert — Regiim — Saskatoon — Duck Lake — A
Winter's Drive — The Bush Hotel — Carlton — Snake
Plain — The Indian Reserves — Indian Agency — Prince
Albert — Projected Raihvay to Hudson Bay.

Prin'ce Albert is the most northerly t». vr. n
the world. So, in 1891, wrote the wide / o i
Canadian premier, and a member of thf ^2t. age.
Prince Albert is latitudinally situated 250 miles
north of Folkestone, about the same i^ 2 Vork-
shire town ; but the true Canadian ij^nores every-
thing beyond Canada and the States — Edinburgh,
Christiania, Stockholm, Berlin, St. Petersburg and
Moscow, Copenhagen, and all the minor towns
between Yorkshire and the North Pole, are nothing
to him. The chief point about Great Britain
taught in the schools is a justification of the policy
of the United States when she separated herself
from the mother country. The English armies,
which added New France to the British Empire,
are described by Canadians as if they were auxili-
aries of a native Canadian force which had resolved
to expel the French.

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

1 1

it,!

Many years ago, going over the field of Waterloo,
an American of the party asked the guide if the
Prince of Orange, in whose honour the Lion Mount
was erected, was a son of the -King of England.
I should not have wondered at this question if I
had then known Canada. The Roman, the Saxon,
the Norman invasion of England, or any allusion
to them, conveys nothing at all to the educated
Canadian, unless he has read something about
them in a novel. But are we, as a rule, any wiser
about Canada? George III. was the first King of
England with whom Eastern Canada had anything
to do ; so hei knowledge of English history begins
and would end with him, if it had not been for
the visits of some of our present royal family to
Canada, and the extreme popularity of her gracious
Majesty in the north-west. Her birthday is one
of the national holidays.

The first place of worship erected in Prince
Albert was a Presbyterian chapel in 1886, about
which time it dropped its old Indian name. The
Hudson Bay Company subsequently removed their
chief establishment from Carlton, and opened a
store there ; and, in spite of having no railway
near it till 1890, it has improved and increased
more rapidly than many of the towns further
south.

I left Qu'Appelle station for Regina by the one

SASKATOON.

train in the day going west, which is timed to
arrive at Qu'Appelle at a quarter to four A.M., but
on this occasion did not arrive till six. The new
branch line from Regina to Prince Albert had not
been opened for passenger traffic more than three
months, and two trains a week run each way.
They professed then to leave Regina at eight A.M.,
and to arrive at Prince Albert at nine P.M. ; but
they never seemed to keep those hours, and now
run at night. Railway boards in this country are
quite irresponsible ; and to Canadians, except when
eating their meals, time does not seem to be of
much consequence. I reached Regina at seven
A.M., in cold November weather, the thermometer
scarcely above zero, and waited an hour and three-
quarters till the Prince Albert train was ready to
start. Regina was a poor station to wait in, but a
larger one is being erected. We were under cover,
with a stove to keep us warm, and that was all ;
but at Saskatoon, a little town on the South
Saskatchewan, the train stayed more than an hour
to give the passengers time to dine, which they
could do very fairly for half a dollar.

The Saskatchewan, in consequence of several
dry seasons, had been so low the previous year
that a steamer could not reach this point from
Prince Albert, — a great loss to the 120 inhabitants,
who constitute, what the guide books call, this

_ I

KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA.

rising and flourishing town. The prairie stretches
wide on each side, and was covered with snow, and
there were about forty piles of whitened buffalo
bones standing by the line, waiting till a train could
convey them away to a sugar refinery in the
United States.

Half-past nine P.M., and no hotel to be found at
Duck Lake. It is Saturday night, and the train
goes on to Prince Albert, forty miles distant, and
there will be no more trains either way till it
returns on Monday morning on its road back to
Regina. But the kind hospitality of Mr. and Mrs.
Pozer, who had a spare bedroom in their house,
relieved me of any difficulty in finding a shelter for
the night. Mr. Pozer is agent to Messrs. Stobart,
the " universal provider " of Duck Lake ; but his
house is separate from the store. The whole town
consisted of about two dozen wooden houses, which
had been moved a few months before, three-quarters
of a mile, to place it contiguous to the new station
on the line from Regina to Prince Albert. The
Canadian wooden houses are moved about on rollers
or wheels like caravans, when required. The train
is still a new sight, a never-ceasing wonder to the
Indians and half-breeds in the vicinity, and there
was a crowd of them at the station, who had waited
for hours, only to see it come in. They are supposed
to have a partiality for the large nails which pin down

( ari.tdn.

^>3

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

'.I'

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.

the
in

ivc-
up
to

fees

red

:hi.s

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

' s

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

SNAKE PLAIN.

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

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

INDIAN AGENCY.

)

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

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.

? , -

•o

.*^i

*i"^ -'*

*ii' '■

•

r '■■

**i^

r"-'I

C/3

■?*?:

d»^

fe-j

^•'-r?

INDIAN A(iKNCV.

have been in favour again, since the governor of
the north-west was a Romanist. The chiefs of
Snake IMain and Sandy Lake kept their people
loyal, and were granted small Government pensions
as a reward. To the north of these reserves lies a
third, which has hitherto rejected any form of
Christianity and its accompaniment civilisation ;
but the new railway is bringing a tide of emi-
gration northward, before which this heathenism
will probably soon disappear. Under the Rev.
John Hines, for a long time missionary at Sandy
Lake, the people there made great advance in
education. He has now nobly undertaken a still
more remote post at Cumberland House, where,
with his devoted wife, he is exercising the same
humanising influence in a large district watered
by the North Saskatchewan, of which he is rural
dean. A small steamer enables him to go about
in summer to the various settlements under his
charge ; and in winter he uses a regular Esqui-
maux sledge.

The Indians, or Crees as they are called within
fifty miles of Carlton, are much fairer than those
further south and north, and are probably all more
or less mixed with French blood. They all have
French names. The sons of Gaul planted colonies
in Canada as early as their King Henry IV., who
was a contemporary of our Queen Elizabeth ; but

•I'

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

1 t

* I

. I

J'-

their colonics were exclusively of men. As time
went on the impoverished French nobles sent their
younger sons to Canada, but not their daughters ;
and descendants of the most noble blood in France
are found among the half-breeds. They fished and
hunted, but scarcely scratched the soil ; so, when
Eastern Canada was conquered, and partially re-
settled either from England or the United States,
many of the French Canadians moved on, keeping
by the sides of the rivers, till they reached Carlton,
and other distant districts. Scottish names are
also prevalent on some of the reserves. Young
men came from the British Isles 200 years ago, and
ever since, as officials of the Hudson Hay Com-
pany, and the rules of the company obliged them
to marry. British women were not adventurous in
those days, and seldom wandered to a primitive
country : life was rougher on board ship, and the
passage longer, than at the present day. Except
when sent as convicts, workhouse waifs, or kid-
napped, their friends would not have permitted them
to encounter the hardships of a colonial life. The
young men had no resource btit to marry Indian
women ; so a half-breed race has sprung up in
Canada, as it has done in India, bearing British
names. That these half-breeds are capable of
being highly educated is shown by the fact that
they are found in all the professions and in every

I'KINCK ALHKkT.

department of public life. Not lon^ ajjo an Indian
child of twelve took a prize for writing' offered by
the Educational Hoard at Regina, outdistancing all
of European descent.

It was growing dusk by the time we reached the
Indian agent's house at Snake IMain. He is a
Scotchman ; and Mrs. I'inlayson, his hospitable wife,
and his daughters, kindly pressed me to put up at
their hou.se for the night, and complete the object
of my journey the next day. I was thankful to do
.so, a.s I was nearly frozen ; and during the next
two days acquired a good deal of information about
the Indians. Mrs. Einlayson, the daughter of a
Scottish official, was born in the most northerly of
the Hud.son Hay Company's forts, and had tra-
velled much in this province of Saskatchewan and
its neighbour Assiniboia. Theirs was a house in
the wilderness, but a very comfortable one for a
.stranger. As in most outlying districts, the ladies
managed the house entirely, but a.ssisted by a
Norwegian half-breed boy, whom I observed
showed the careful economical spirit of the Scan-
dinavian race, which makes them excellent colo-
nists wherever they go. The Misses Finlayson
were well educated and wel' informed, and the
youngest was still at a convent school in Prince
Albert, about seventy miles away. An elder
sister had learned Cree, and for a short time

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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had taught the Government school on Snake
Plain.i

The Presbyterian church of Snake Plain contains
a harmonium, which one of the Miss Finlaysons
played, and the service on Sundays was held in
Cree. The Indians about here all keep their hair
closely cut, and dress like French peasants, with a
little extra clothing for winter. I called on the
chief, whose house had an open fireplace and chim-
ney like a French cotter's ; and he looked himself
like an old Scottish labouring man. If their parti-
ality for vapour baths, and the tumuli in Manitoba —
just like the tumuli or Scythian tombs in Southern
Russia — point to the Tartar descent of the Indians
in West Canada, a rudimentary medical appliance
which nearly every family possesses shows that
they are overlaid with French civilisation. The
scarcity of surgeons is very obvious when travelling
among the Indians, for distorted limbs brought on
by neglected fractures are most common. They
arc a sociable people, fond of music and dancing,

^ Sir John Franklin, who explored these regions in 1823,
and calls his narrative A Journey on the Shores of the
Polar Sea^ describes Carlton as a good wheat-growing dis-
trict, though only five acres was grown at that period. He
gives portraits of the Indians of that part, and describes
them as better-looking than the tribes further west. He
considers that they were still uncivilised, because the whites
who intermarried with them descended to their level, in-
stead of trying to raise them to the European standard.

PRIN'CE ALBERT.

and sharing any benefits they receive with all their
neighbours. The savage sun-dances intermingled
with tortures, which are still seen among the heathen
tribes, are really in the hope of propitiating the
deity, whom they imagine they have offended in
times of famine or domestic affliction.

On my return journey to Carlton, though late in
November, a rapid thaw had set in. The Saskat-
chewan looked dangerous ; and the horse certainly
thought it was so, and at first declined to set foot on
it, for there were seven inches of water above a
thick stratum of ice. I went northward from Duck
Lake to Prince Albert for two nights. It is a
"city"^ with a handsome training college, and a
Romanist convent, and is prettily situated on the
Saskatchewan, with a belt of fir and larch trees
beyond ; rather resembling a small town on the
lower Danube. But the thermometer has been
known to go down to 70" below zero (Fahrenheit),
and even last winter was for a few hours at 60°
below,- so it can hardly be recommended for

^ The train being late I did not arrive till two a.m. I went
to the best hotel in its omnibus; and, though the fourth
week in November, there was not a stove lighted throughout
the building, and no double windows. There is no over
luxury in the north-west.

^ Although the spirit thermometer actually indicates this
excessive depression, it is generally supposed it cannot be
very accurate, and that a certain amount of the contents
must adhere frozen to the side of the tube.

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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farming purposes. Also the excellent rifles brought
by sporting men from England are fast clearing
away the game. A Roumanian minister had lately
been to look at it with a view to establish a Rou-
manian colony ; and, as far as I have seen of
Wallack peasantry, they might learn something in
cleanliness from the Indians in those parts.*

Prince Albert is a principal station for the
mounted police, a fine body of men, who seem
made up of settlers, often of the upper class, from
all parts of Europe. As it would be otherwise an
idle life, each man is obliged to ride or walk a
certain number of miles a week, but not more than
is required to keep a vigorous individual in good
health ; and they all drove in to church and chapel
on Sunday, though it was a beautiful day, and the
barracks are in full view of the three places of
worship. A large number were set down at the
P.piscopal church, rather less at the Presbyterian,
and still fewer at the Ror.ianist. Those responsible
for laying out Prince Albert certainly expect a

1 The Canadian Indians swaddle their babies tightly in
the fashion that once prevailed in England, and is still seen
in Eastern Europe. They probably learnt it from Europeans ;
for a British medical treatise in 1752 recommends its abo-
lition, on the ground that the American Indians allowed
their infants the free use of their arms and legs in their
cradles, and were a remarkably well-grown, straight-limbed
race.

PROJECTED RAILWAY TO HUDSON HAY. 7/

large population in time; for it is in three divisions,
and covers a great deal of ground. There is an
endeavour being made to ** boom " it, as the Cana-
dians say, by the project of a new railway, between
600 and 700 miles long, to Fort Churchill on
Hudson Bay. The object of this railway would
be to bring the produce of Saskatchewan and
Assiniboia, by a nearer route than Winnipeg and
Montreal, to England ; for the north branch of the
Saskatchewan, like the south, when it is unfrozen,
is often too low in dry seasons to carry steamers ;
and a few years ago luggage being conveyed from
Winnipeg to Carlton was known to be two years
on the way. The disadvantages of the railway,
which, like others in Canada, would be built with
English money, are, that Fort Churchill, the ter-
minus, and the route across Hudson Bay, is only
open to vessels about three or four months in the
year, and that the 600 and odd miles from Prince
Albert runs through a district only fit for trappers
and Esquimaux, with a few Hudson Bay officials
to buy their wares, and could never be made a
profitable district for settlers ; and it is by selling
the railway lands to settlers, and attracting them
to come and live along the line, that other railway
companies in Canada have been made to pay their
way hitherto.

The system of a grant of land all along a new

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

line of railway, as well as the right of way, is bor-
rowed from the United States, where, at the present
moment, a number of old settlers on the Red River
are being requested to move away, as their lands
are within a grant to a railway company. It is the
only mode in which railways in these thinly-popu-
lated countries could be made to pay ; and as the
companies are not obliged to give compensation for
risks, and crops burned by stray coals from their
engines, or for horses and cows killed when stray-
ing on to an unprotected line, they ought to have
a better time of it than our railway companies in
Great Britain. An almost desert track, with a
salt plain and brackish water, is shortly to be tra-
versed by an extension of the line from Yorkton to
Prince Albert, and it will doubtless be advertised as
first-class ranching or wheat-growing soil, unen-
cumbered with timber. But between Duck Lake
and Prince Albert, and between Duck Lake and
Snake Plain, there are still splendid timber trees
and fine grass. English critics have often asserted
that the Russians were mistaken in ploughing up
their grass-covered steppes, and trying to lay them
all down in wheat, instead of continuing to feed
nothing but cattle and horses from them ; yet this
is just the course which Britons are repeating in
Canada.

The Monday morning train professed to leave

PROJECTED RAILWAY TO HUDSON HAY. 79

Prince Albert at 7*30 ; and I breakfasted at one
table with the members of several different nation-
alities, who had come to look out for something to
do. The railway staff lived at the hotel ; and the
omnibus, driven by a young English gentleman,
took them first to the station and then returned for
the passengers. One of these was a young man
from St. Petersburg, who expressed himself dis-
appointed with the climate, and said he meant to
try Mashonaland instead. A sudden rise in the
temperature continuing for several days in mid-
winter seems common enough in Canada ; but the
North Saskatchewan was never known to thaw en-
tirely when it had been once ice-bound. For no
apparent reason, the train was not started till 8*30,
and we did not reach Regina till 10 P.M.

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I'll

CHAPTKR V.

J'/ie Iroquois — Squatters — Emigrants — Yankee Settlers —
Hard Times — Winter — Extraordinary Marriages —
Early Immigrants — Unsuital^le Occupations — Suc-
cesses.

All the world over there seems to be an idea that
the rivers are not as deep or as rapid as they used
to be; but if the Northern Saskatchewan, which
connects Prince Albert with Lake Winnipeg, was
ever much deeper or more reliable for summer traffic
than it is now, it seems strange that Prince Albert
should not have been earlier selected as a European
settlement, unless it was formerly a swamp or lake.
The Hudson Bay Company built Fort Carlton also
on the river, forty-five miles to the south-west, in
1690 : but there the stream runs in a deep cutting,
while it is very little below the level of Prince
Albert. Almost every one in this neighbourhood
looks as if he had Indian blood in him ; but I saw
no Indians except the chief at Snake Plain with
long hair, nor do any wear the feathers and other
adornments supposed to characterise Indians. A
colony of Iroquois, one of the finest of the Indian

(

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jiPtib

MawailallnJalia

Tin: iKO(,)Uuis.

tribes, left Eastern Canada many years ago, and
settled in the Rocky Mountains ; but as they were
all men (Romanist converts), they married with the
French half-breeds and Crces round Hattleford, and
further north. Battleford is the old capital of the
north-west, and has lost in population since it had
to abdicate in favour of Regina.

The first English settlers in any number who
came to Prince Albert arrived chiefly from Ontario
in 1880 and three subsequent years, with the idea
that the railway would be continued from Winnipeg
to the Pacific Coast by that route. How many
isolated settlements there are in the north-west
founded under the idea of a railway being made,
when probably those who spread the report by
way of "booming" that district, knew perfectly
well that such an event was not contemplated !
A trail, as the Canadians call the tracks which do
instead of roads, went by Humboldt to Winnipeg ;
and when the railway had advanced to Regina, a
shorter trail of 250 miles connected Prince Albert
with Qu'Appelle station on the Canadian Pacific
Railway. The Canadians say that the first French
conquerors and the Indians always got on well
together. They soon intermarried. The French
gave fair prices for their furs and other wares ; so
looking upon the French as their friends, they were
easily stirred up into the hostility against the Eng-

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i:X(UKSl(JNS IN CANADA.

lish, which bore fruit even as late as 1883. Rut
from the way in which the Canadian Government
are now treating English squatters, it might be
inferred that the French half-breeds who joined
with the Indians in that war may have had griev-
ances. Some of the pioneers in the north-west
who have acted as civilising agencies among the
Indian tribes got permission from their Indian
neighbours to plant a farm on unoccupied land ;
and there t'ley have married, and brought up a
strong family, built houses, and lived in a Christian
fashion on the products of their industry. Yet if
these people are found living within a certain dis-
tance of a new railway, or on a twelve-mile area
marked out for a new town plot, they are compelled
to move away, and their improved land sold without
any compensation. They have aided in mak'ng
the Indian regard an Englishman with friendly
eyes, and are the very quality whom a young
country should encourage to remain. While so-
journers in gaols, asylums, orphanages, and work-
houses are allured to the north-west by the cheap
rates issued in the colonists* tickets when bought in
Europe, the French East Canadians are immigrat-
ing in large numbers to the United States, as easier
of access from Montreal, and Eastern Canada ; for
once within the bounds of the Dominion, you have
to pay first-class fare to the north-west. Between

KMK.KANTS.

Quebec and Qu'Appcllc it makes the difference of
more than ^7, besides which the cheap colonist
cars have sleeping accommodation and the first
class has not, so the occupants are expected to pay
extra to have a bed in a I'uUman. The I'rcnch
Canadians leave their native country to make a
living ; for in Eastern Canada, and Ontario, they
are becoming, to use the Canadian expression,
" rather crowded ".

Every six months or less, large numbers of emi-
grants were reported to have arrived, or to be
immediately expected at different points of the
north-west. I collected some information on this
subject when the census was taken in 1891. The
papers were filled up minutely. People were asked
to state not only when and where they were born,
but also the age and place of birth of their parents.
I ascertained that in that year the only English-
men who had arrived at Qu'Appelle station to
settle in this part of Assiniboia, had come through
St. John's College ; but eighteen people had come
from Ontario, and foreigners of several nationalities
in other parts of the province. Assiniboia has
gained a little over 8000 in six years, and now
possesses 30,470 ; Saskatchewan, a larger district
than Assiniboia, has only acquired 504, and is now
1 1,150 ; while Alberta, the great ranching province,
has 25,277, against 15,533 '*" 1885. The two last

}

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

are united in one bishopric; and the present bishop,
Dr. Pinkham, who has been thirty years in Canada,
and was for some time vicar of St. Andrew's, Win-
nipeg, is making great efforts to collect sufficient
funds to enable each province to support its own
bishop.

As is usual every spring, the officials are sanguine
about the immigration for the season ; and one of
the emigration agents, who has been busy in the
United States, is responsible for the following :
" Alberta and other favoured spots will receive an
immense influx this spring. People are leaving
Washington because taxation is too high ; interest
is exorbitant, and their crops are not what they
used to be. They are also dissatisfied with the
administration of their own laws : a man can get
married to-day, divorced to-morrow, and married to
some one else the day after. Other laws are equally
bad. Those coming are mostly Canadians, who
left their native land several years ago, have made
some money, and are now desirous of returning.
They will settle in most cases on the Canadian
Pacific Railway lands, bring in good implements,
great stores of cattle, and other stock for farms. In
all cases the emigrants will have money."

This anticipation is partly explained by a para-
graph in the Industrial World, published in Wash-
ington county, United States : " We are in receipt

I
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HARD TIMES.

of a copy of the Dominion's Land Act, which com-
prises the land policy of the Dominion Govern-
ment. The Government is co-operating with the
Canadian Pacific Railroad Company to induce
immigration to the Canadian north-west. The
United States Government is co-operating also by
making it undesirable to live on the American side
of the line. The Dominion Government profits by
our mistakes, and has pursued a liberal policy to
induce immigration and protect the settler. The
rates of interest for money are lower there than
here. The primitive honesty of the people, to which
all travellers testify, indicates that this part of the
Queen's dominions may yet become the citadel of
American liberty."

As to low rates of interest, we know of more than
one young Canadian farmer who is paying twenty-
four per cent, on money borrowed from the bank.
There has been " a bitter cry " from the farmers in
Manitoba and the north-west throughout the last
winter, and it must in time be heard, and lead to an
alteration in the tariff which imitates that of the
United States, in a country with less resources, and
where manufacture is practically in its infancy.
One young man finds a remedy in demanding that
the implement dealer should have no power to re-
cover his debts. But it is the little power that the
dealer has now which makes him put on such a

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

:fll

■t Iff'

heavy interest till his bill is paid ; and the farmer's
remedy is to mow his hay and reap his corn by
hand, till he has saved enough money to purchase
a binder straight off, and not pay by degrees. It
is this system in buying his land, cattle and every-
thing, with interest on the unpaid money running
up, and soon doubling it, that is the ruin of young
men. Let them, as the Canadians do, buy nothing
which they cannot pay for, and hire out their labour,
and exchange work with one another, till their first
crop is sold ; and not be at the mercy of any
dealer, obliging themselves to traffic exclusively
with him by taking goods on credit. Young men
are ambitious to be landowners, and have a vote,
and become personages in a colony, at an age when
if they were in England they would still be sub-
alterns, clerks, or underlings.

Some men will not learn to milk because it en-
tails early rising ; and the milker is expected to
light the kitchen stove. The August or autumn
calves keep with their mothers and monopolise the
milk as the only hope of rearing them so late in
the year, and a cow in Canada does not give the
amount that is expected from a stall-fed English
cow ; so the milking is not invariably required in
winter when frozen milk supplies the household.
But the inclination to shirk anything does not fore-
shadow a successful farmer ; and early rising is a

WINTER.

great point, as in summer some rest is required in
the heat of the day. Churning is a man or boy's
work. The wife, particularly if she has a baby, has
quite enough to do without it. The farmer him-
self should be able to turn his hand to any-
thing. For what are the hired men ? We have
seen thirty dollars a month, besides his keep,
given to a farm labourer, who was selling coal
in London before he went out to Canada, but
imposed on his young employer with a very fluent
tongue. Complicated machinery like a binder should
never be bought till a man has a covered shed for
it ; yet it is often one of the first purchases. Then
the house. I have seen a large farm-house built
after an English plan ; and the stove, standing in the
middle of the kitchen, was in the draught of three
doors, two leading on to the open air. The dinner
was constantly under-done, from all the heat going
up the flue, and the fuel (wood) burning as fast as
tinder. In the wooden houses in Zi money (on the
Danube) and Belgrade, there are double doors to
the merest cottage ; and this is required in Canada
to break the intensity of the cold air. In these
scantily built Canadian houses I have seen a tub of
water frozen hard within two feet of the kitchen
stove, which had been lighted several hours. An
egg was dropped on the floor in the dining-room
at breakfast time, and breaking froze to the floor

t :

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

^'!

Vl *

'11

before vvc had finished. After breakfast I told a
hired boy to fetch a wet cloth out of the kitchen to
get it off. But the cloths were all frozen. At twelve
o'clock, when it was almost time to set the dinner, the
egg was still there, and I fetched a kettle of boiling
water out of the kitchen which led into the dining-
room, and poured it on the egg. The water was
frozen on the floor before the egg was thawed.

The employed has quite as good a time of it in
Canada, if not better, than the employer, who, while
paying heavy wages, frequently has to wake his
lazy servitors, and if he wants his breakfast in time
to get it himself. No engagement made in England
can be enforced in Canada ; and people sometimes
go to great expense in bringing out hired men and
women, who either will not stay, or are worse than
useless when they arrive.

At the busy time of the year all the resources of
the house are required to feed the labourers, no
matter how the rest of the household fare. The
growing boys sent out from English orphanages
will often eat half a pound of butter each at a meal
if they can get it, besides other things ; so unless
they are good workers they are not worth their
keep. I saw a farming man at breakfast one day,
his employer paying the bills. He was sitting
down to porridge, coffee, eggs, beefsteak, buttered
toast, and stewed apples. He would be ready for

EXTRAORDINARV MARRIAGES.

his dinner at twelve, for his tea at five, and his
supper at eight. That a man is too hungry to be
honest, is a common Canadian expression.

This incident was related by the clergyman who
tied the marriage knot. A young man, tired of
living alone in his settler's hut, with his Gladstone
bag as a pillow, and subsisting on biscuits and
tinned meats, asked his neighbour to come and
perform the marriage ceremony between him and
his intended bride. The clergyman arrived at the
farm-house indicated, where he found a handsome
girl of eighteen, whom he supposed was to be the
bride, and several other children, who, in an awed
way, retreated for want of other cover into the bed
places (Scottish fashion) round the kitchen, while
he put on his cassock and surplice for the service.
There was only one room besides the kitchen, and
out of this the bride appeared. To his astonish-
ment he saw she was the mother of the household.
He drew the young man outside the house for a
moment, and said to him : " What on earth can
you be thinking off? Why don't you marry the
girl instead ?" " Oh that would never do for me,"
answered the bridegroom. " Don't you see if I
took /ler, I should not have all these children to
work for me?" The couple were consequently
married ; but the young ones were in a rebellious
frame of mind, and although the clergyman before

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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.

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

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-

UNSUITABLE OCCUPATIONS.

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

•

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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

SUCCESSES.

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

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

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

«;< .

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.

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

1 ^li

, i

[A 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 Ranl<ing's historical researches
on the conquests of Peru and Mexico, the author
imagines that these fleets were driven on the shores
of America, and were the invaders known in Peru-
vian history as the founders of the religion and
dynasty of the Incas. He believes that Manco
Capac, of the Mexican annals, was the son of Kublai
(whose brother and predecessor was called Mangou),
and commanded the expedition. The yellow com-
plexion of the Mongolian would burn red in the sun
of the tropics ; but any one looking at the Mexican
antiquities in the British Museum must observe the
great resemblance in colour between the ancient
Egyptian, the modern Abyssinian, and the Mexican ;
so that a nearer relationship with these ancient races
seems more probable.

The term "red man" for the Cmtadian Indian is
rather a misnomer, as the want of red in his com-
plexion, except when painted for a sun-dance or
some other festivity, is the great difference between
him and the sun-burnt European trapper. The
squaws are very fond of plastering their cheeks
with red paint, to make themselves look like

CONCERNING ORIGIN OF INDIAN TRIBKS. lOI

Europeans. Travellers who have been among
the Tchutcki in Siberia see a strong resemblance
between them and the yellow bronzed Indian of
north-west Canada.

The Sioux, who are refugees from the United
States, are darker than the natives of Canada.
During centuries it is likely that they have been
recruited by runaway negroes ; but a lady who can
speak Hindustani told me she could make them
understand in that language ; and certainly a half-
breed Sioux is very much like an Eurasian. In
1 89 1, there was a disturbance going on in the
United States between the Government and the
Sioux on one of the reserves. The aggressive
conduct of which the Sioux were accused on that
occasion was disbelieved by experienced people in
Canada, who imagined the difficulties had been
brought on in order to make a pretext for dcpri\ ing
the Sioux of what has now become valuable land.
Some of the Sioux about Qu'Appelle station were
asked if they meant to rise against the Canadian
Government ; and they all laughed at the very notion
of it, and said they should be very foolish if they did.
Only twenty-one years ago, a band of Indians, with
twenty-two teepees, or tents, crossed the United
States frontier for the winter. The local governor,
with Republican irresponsibility, sent troops to
destroy the little encampment. They lighted fires

Ki 5

I' I'.

1 02

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

I ;

round it, and burnt or sufifocated every living soul,
driving them back if they tried to escape ; and
including women and children, nearly 2CX) perished.
They were British subjects, so no wonder a
Canadian wrote at the time of the Zulu War:
" Why trouble ourselves about the Kaffir women
being carried off, as they probably wanted to go ;
when we could quietly put up with chis far greater
atrocity on the part of the United States ? " This
was the version of a reliable English gentleman
who was near the spot.

The Crees in the reserves in Assiniboia are a
plainer race in appearance than their half-brothers
about Prince Albert and Battleford, who have all
adopted French names. Those in Assiniboia have
taken Scottish names, so we find Bruces, Gordons,
Macnabs, Macdonalds, Scotts, Leslies, etc., very
plentiful ; for next to the French, the largest number
of European emigrants in the last generation came
from Scotland. As regards the Western derivation
of the American and Canadian Indian, the Nor-
wegian Icelanders as well as the Welsh are supposed
to have sent out expeditions to find unoccupied
ground for some of their young men who could
not make a living at home, and to have planted
colonies in Nova Scotia and about New York.
The natives they found seemed to have resembled
the Esquimaux. Probably these colonies in search

DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS. IO3

of food went westward along the rivers ; certainly
they lost all connection with the mother countries.
In the history of Virginia by Captain Smith, one
of its earliest governors, who wrote in the reign of
James I., the author describes an expedition from
ancient Carthage, under Prince Hanno, to form a
colony in the new world, as Carthage had already
done in Spain. He states that Prince Hanno's
discoveries, as well as those of the Norwegians, were
known to Columbus, and a Punic inscription is said
to have been found at Monte Video. Carthage
itself had been built by Phoenicians, a race from
ancient Egypt, the parent of both Phoenician and
Carthaginian civilisation ; so that Prince Hanno's
people were more likely to have introduced the
arts and sciences, which have perplexed antiquarians,
into South America, than the Monguls. The de-
struction of Carthage would easily account for all
connection having ceased with her colonies across
the Atlantic ; while the Monguls, who would have
followed about 1300 years later, probably carried
their wandering propensities to the new world, and,
after a time, advanced northward, driving the an-
cestors of the Esquimaux to their present haunts.
Still, any race, in the course of centuries, might
become, like the Esquimaux, subjected to the same
conditions of life. It was a favourite idea in the
last century that the American Indians were the

I04

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

lost tribes of Israel. Any way, they seem to have
come of a noted ancestry, and need not be regarded
as the scum and refuse of humanity.

Whoever looks at one of the old atlases published
in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. will
see that the world lost a great deal of geographical
knowledge, which it is picking up again in the
present century. Mercator and Speed fill up Africa
nearly as much as our most recent maps, even
placing two lakes not very far away from the Albert
and Victoria Nyanza.

Many who have described the habits of both
Indians and half-breeds seem to be unacquainted
with the characteristics of the uneducated poor in
Europe. Certain vices and virtues seem to belong
to half-starved uneducated people in the same
condition of life in most parts of the world : and
better living and work is their salvation ; rich living
without the work, their ruin. At present the
Canadian Indians on the reserves suffer from the
loss of buffalo meat, and buffalo hides to keep
them warm ; yet, like the Russian Tartars, they
are said to be healthier in their draughty tents than
in wooden stove-heated huts. The Indian never
kills animals for sport, only for food or the fur.
But the British sportsman, more than the trapper
or settler, is fast driving the game of all sorts into
still unoccupied parts of the country, or exter-

RED RIVER SETTLEMENT.

105

minating it altogether ; while the prairie wolf is
greatly increasing in Alberta. When the game is
all gone, and the woods are cut down, then, perhaps,
statesmen will begin to think of some way of
arresting the wholesale destruction of both.

Those who have crossed the Russian steppes
between Moscow and the Crimea, or Tiraspol and
Odessa, will remember the mounds or tumuli placed
at intervals, and which, when opened, have been
found to contain tombs with some of the para-
phernalia that the Scythian warriors were accus-
tomed to bury with their chiefs or kings. Similar
mounds are seen in Manitoba, and have been found
to contain mortuary relics of a poorer description.
The Monguls, or Moguls, appear to have left off
scalping when they conquered Asia and half
Europe in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries ; but one of their Scythian ancestors is re-
presented on an ancient Roman bas-relief with two
scalps fastened to his horse, and it was a well-known
practice among the Indians of former days. An old
Indian woman is still living, who, for a trifle, will
pull off her headgear and show her scalped head.

The festivities at the new year among the
Indians, and kissing each other all round, may be
of either Chinese or French origin, as both follow
this fashion, and think much of the new year.

An old official of Scottish parentage, whose duties

MW»i>r«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

,,'

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

■^ '•' ' *i-

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

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

114

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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

I 4

n
)f

s
s

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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.

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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

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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

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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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.

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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,

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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

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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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.

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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

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when other districts are slowly and sorrowfully
cutting frozen grain this one rejoices in a harvest
completed."

At the Qu'Appelle agricultural dinner, January,
1894, Mr. Mackay further advised the farmers to
sow more barley and oats, and less wheat ; but, in
1 890- 1-2, wheat was considered the only thing that
paid the expense of the labour.

Another farmer writes from Manitoba much to
the same effect, adding : ** We all see now that it
was a great misiake for Canada to overstep her
boundary and annex the north-west of Manitoba.
She should have left them as a fur-bearing animal
and buffalo reserve. But having done so, and
driven all the animals away, we must now make
the best of it."

There has been a good deal said of late against
the system of farm pupils ; and it has been sug-
gested that a boy should be given £$ and thrown
upon the prairie to make his own way. Undoubt-
edly, people have taken farm pupils who knew
nothing about Canadian farming themselves, and
have no proper accommodation for them ; and the
other plan may be all very well for a labourer, or
English working farmer's son who has learned to
work, and the employers see it by his hands and
general air, and are glad to take him ; but to a
youth who knows nothing, and looks as if he ex-

AUTUMN.

131

pected comfortable quarters and easy work, this
may involve much hardship and temptation, un-
less he is well over twenty, or has friends to go to
at once. Except for two months in the year it is
not easy for a totally inexperienced young man
to find work ; and the fact of being an English
gentleman is against him in the eyes of a Canadian.
1 did hear of a nobleman's son being engaged by
a farmer at fiftcei: liars a week ; but it was
simply to give his employer the pleasure of telling

everybody that he had Lord in his pay. On

the larger farms a young fellow who has not been
taught how to manage horses, oxen, or agricultural
machinery, and can neither milk nor chop wood,
may cost a good deal in damages while he is
learning, if he does not incur a long doctor's bill
for a broken, maimed, or dislocated limb. He can
often not get a place on these farms even for a
premium. Travelling is expensive, and distances
great ; and the friendless boy may have to sell his
clothes at a great loss, to keep himself, before he
finds a situation. Then what and where is it? I
have listened to many of these experiences. One
young man, for a week, had only a dollar for board
and lodging ; and then he took a railway job, doing
navvy's work, sleeping twelve in a tent, twelve feet
square, his companions having chiefly left England
for England's good. A contractor fed them for

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

■At.

l6s. 8d. a week each, and they had no other means
of obtaining food. Boiled, over-sweetened tea with-
out milk, tinned meat, soda biscuits with a rare loaf
of bread, and occasional apples, but no butter, was
their food from June to October. Then the work
was stopped, and he had to go to a farm-house for
the winter, and cut wood, milk, thaw snow for
water, and do other things about the premises for
his board. This farm-house consisted of one room
for kitchen, and bedroom, and besides himself con-
tained the farmer and his wife, and their son and
two daughters. The food was salt pork, molasses,
and porridge, with sometimes bread or potatoes, but
not both at once. An^Lher young fellow, still less
fortunate, paid two and a half dollars a week for
similar accommodation, though he almost kept the
family with his gun. A boy coming from a well-
fed English house loses energy and physique after
a few months in a situation like this, and is less
fitted to stand the climate than when he came out.
Also, at an age when he ought still to be learning,
he is absolutely cut off from intellectual companion-
ship, and may grow so ragged and dirty that if there
is an English clergyman, or anything like culti-
vated people in the neighbourhood, he avoids coming
across them. I must admit thct these two young
men have since done well as farmers. Another
young Scotsman took the first occupation he was

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AUTUMN.

133

offered, which was in a store at Winnipeg; but
he gradually moved west ; taking a schoolmaster's
situation next, and is now ranching, and able to
support an English wife of gentle birth.

Manitoba from its earliest settlement has had
the reputation of being a spirit-drinking place, a
vice which thinned the early settlers in Ontario ;
but the prohibition laws are still enforced in the
north-west, and these, though not actually pre-
venting the sale of spirits, makes them bad and
dear, and acts as a great check. There is a 200
dollar fine imposed for selling intoxicating liquor
to any of Indian parentage.

The Manitoba Free Press of Winnipeg, in a well-
timed article of advice to settlers, says : " Without
an industrious spirit, fortified with frugality, the
raw hand from the old country had better leave
farming alone. It is attention to the little details
that makes a successful settler ; for with them well
in hand, and their importance realised, the bigger
things of the farm present no difficulties. The
great mistake is supposing that any one knows
enough to farm : and under this notion many young
men are sent out with capital enough to make a
fairly good start ; but by taking it easy, and allowing
matters to run themselves, their capital yields no
fruit, and the experiment ends in miserable failure.
No one need hope to get on in the north-west

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EXCURSIONS IX CANADA.

without hard work, intcUij^cntly applied. The stock
must be well fed, the implements cared for, and all
domestic jobs (' chores ' is the Canadian word) of
whatever nature dili^^Mitly attended to. The autumn
plouj^hing will be one of the first and j^eatestof
the settler's anxieties, for on it will depend that
early seeding so essential in Canada. Not a day
in spring must be lost, but advantage taken of the
earliest moment when the snow is off the ground
to put in the seed. Thi.s work will not be scamped ;
and the utinost care taken to have everything in
readiness to begin the harvest at the first sign of
ripening. Farming is not a perpetual holiday, but
requires the same intelligent application as is neces-
sary to the merchant or manufacturer."

I may as well describe the habits of a successful
Scotti:;h farmer, at whose house I vi.^ited in Assin-
iboia. He had engaged his labourers for the
harvest in the spring, and at half-past four they
were at their breakfast. The mistress of the house
had a young child to look after, so did not appear
quite so early ; but one of the hired men got up
sooner than the rest, lighted the stove and warmed
the breakfast, which had been got ready the day
before. The porridge is always put on over night.
All the energies of the household are directed to
getting in the harvest ; for girls as well as boys can
assist in the "stouping," z'.e., following the binder,

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AUTUMN.

135

and proppinfj up the sheaves, as they are thrown
out by the machine already tied up. The men
generally take their dinners to the field, and if it is
distant their tea as well ; for when fine they work
till it is dark, as the next day rain or even snow
may stop them, and give them an undcsired holi-
day. A threshing machine goes the round of the
neighbourhood ; and those who can hire it first, get
their corn threshed out, and then sell it off at once,
generally do best.

Ploughing has probably gone on at intervals i)K
the summer ; but if not, it is done in any open
weather there may be before the great frosts begin,
and wood is stacked under cover if possible, and
as close to the house as space admits. The stables
should be rendered warmer by haystacks, or manure
heaps close against them ; and the fowls are con-
signed to a half-underground abode, and there they
remain through the winter. The sheep have to be
folded, and the lambing season begins before they
are released. The cattle are put up. Opinions
differ about the colts, who through the summer have
run beside their mothers when in harness. Some
stable them ; others let those that are natives of
the country run loose. Potatoes, everything likely
to be wanted during the winter, are brought into the
house, and those who possess milking cows freeze
a quantity of milk and butter to last through the

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

winter. I'^^^s arc often accidentally frozen ; and
they do for puddings, but not for boiling or poach-
ing. Winter is heralded by the departure of living
creatures. Mosquitoes have been a scourge since
April, but at the end of August have no spirit left
to sting ; and the flies come into the house, cluster-
ing round the stove pipe and swarming in the
kitchen to avoid the cold outside. The swallows
are all gone when August sets in, in spite of the
ingenious way in which they have built their nests
packed together, and with very small round en-
trance holes, only just wide enough for one bird to
squeeze through at a time. The rooks, crows, and
prairie chickens — hawks, kites, owls, and ravens —
fly away. A herd of moose deer is reported as
having been seen going south, and the Indians
bring some proofs of it in excellent venison. The
gophers, the farmer's " little tyrant," have dis-
appeared into their holes '.vith a good store of
grain ; the sparrows, robins, cross-bills, and wild
pigeons go somewhere ; and at last nothing is left
outside but the little white and yellow snow-bird,
which hops about on the snow, and feeds itself in
some invisible way. After the first autumn frost
there is often a thaw again at the end of October,
and a little mild weati^er before the great severity
of winter sets in. The farmer may be thankful if
this is postponed till all the grain he wants to sell

THE IIARVKST FESTIVAL.

137

has reached the mill. Then he has a little time to
turn round and to enjoy himself before the sprinj^
sovvinj^ begins.

The second year I was in Assiniboia, where I
kept a record of the weather ; the thermometer
rose on April 23 (St. George's Day, and a national
holiday) to 84 in the shade, Fahr., and continued
so all day. On April 3 it was 6 below zero, Fahr.,
as well as on i)rcvious nights, and had never risen
above 28\ The sudden change caused a rapid
thaw ; the snow streamed off the roofs and off the
ground, and before April 30, when snow fell again,
a great deal of seed had been put in throughout
the country. In the high prairie lands, water is
collected in tanks in default of wells, and frozen
snow was brought out of them as late as the end
of July, whenever the bucket was put down. Ikit
that year was a glorious harvest. There was no
frost to speak of till the night of the 12th Sep-
tember, when eight degrees of it killed everything ;
but the corn had passed the stage when it could be
spoilt. It was fully ripe, and most of it cut. The
harvest festival took place at St. Peter's Church,
Qu'Appelle station, on Michaelmas Day ; and was
so crowded with the grateful parishioners, even some
Nonconformists, that many had to stand outside.
It was touching to see how heartily the oldest
farmer joined in the chorus : —

138

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

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Tor His meicies still endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.

The previous year, 1890- five degrees of frost on
4th August spoiled the corn. On the 20th there
was another frost. On the 4th September it
snowed all day long, and the snow lay over the
corn-fields, and covering the leaves on the trees for
four days. It was a curious sight to see the green
leaves with the boughs much broken by the weight ;
and the green corn — alas ! too green — reappearing
from under the melting snow.

Why do our 'Mstories go on repeating French
exaggerations about the cold having destroyed
Napoleon's forces in Russia, when our countrymen
endure twenty or thirty degrees of frost more than
was experienced by the French army in the winter
of 1 81 2, and when that army would have been none
the worse for what they did experience if they had
been clothed and fed like the north-west mounted
po'ice? In February, 1893, the thermometer for
a fortnight ranged ^'■om 30° to 40^ below zero,
Fahr., and in January there were many days re-
corded when it never got above 10'' below zero, and
one day sank to 50° in an exposed place. The line
extending for 24/ miles from Regina to Prince
Albert was blocked for more than two months with
snow. Mailb and other traffic were suspended; and
it was at last cleared by a rotatory snow-plough

FRENCH EXAGGERATION OF COLD IN RUSSIA. 1 39

with three engines attached. There was an excep-
tionally fine open autumn ; yet the Edmonton and
Calgary train was stopped by snowdrifts in October.
Blizzards come in Canada even when the ther-
mometer is at zero ; and this means many people
being lost in the snow. Every town along the
Canadian and Pacific line had some sad tale to
record, and more in the remoter districts ; yet all
this is not thought worth mentioning when it occurs
in Canada by the English press, although telegrams
are inserted about people being frozen to death in
Russia. Can we wonder that an indignant English-
man who had lived in Canada should write the
following to one of the Canadian papers ?

" As if with the famine in Madras, and poverty
knocking at the door in thousands of homes in our
overcrowded towns, the British philanthropist had
not enough scope for his money, a society lately
set up in England is appealing to him for funds to
help prisoners in Siberia to escape. When listening
to one of these escaped prisoners, I could not help
reflecting that what he was set to do as a punish-
ment — i.e., make his living by his hands, if in no
other way in any trade, or in any part of Siberia he
chose, — the sons of many of the oldest families in
England are doing by choice in Canada. Why
should not a Russian hot-brained student, who

tries to stir up an ignorant peasantry to set fire to

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140

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

if
M

) !

1
i

1
(
1

libraries and towns in Russia and has thereby
incurred exile, not among foreigners but among
his own countrymen, be left to work at a handicraft,
as thousands of more honest men are doing else-
where, instead of being helped to settle in over-
crowded England to make his living by literature
as more befitting his rank ? Why this peculiar
tenderness for the delicacy of Russian hands ; when
the so-called political exile is frequently a criminal
who has bribed the gaoler to put him among the
politicals ; or has purposely incurred his penalty by
writing a scurrilous pamphlet to escape a criminal
process for fraudulent practices? Old Dr. Giles
Fletcher wrote in 1591, that *the Russe neither
believeth what another man saith nor saith himself
anything worthy to be believed '. This charac-
teristic sticks to him still ; yet so-called political
exiles are taken at exactly what they represent
themselves to be. A generation ago, English
singers, dancers, and artists used to adopt foreign
names in order to be patronised by their own
fellow-countrymsn. Even now, if a man is without
money, interest or occupation, he has a better
chance of making a living with a foreign name in
England than if he bears a British patronymic, in
which case he may go and dig in another Siberia
without even the allowance these political convicts
received from the Czar."

REAL COLD IN CANADA.

141

Very different from the prairie is the Okanayan
district within British Columbia, and two days'
journey from Qu'Appelle station by train and
steamer ; the last plies on Lake Okanayan, and is
a Canadian Pacific Railroad boat. The lake is sixty
miles long, and not more than two wide at its
broadest. It is a hollow between two ranges of
hills, clad with timber down to the water's edge.
The Fairview gold mines are in the neighbour-
hood, and, worked by an English company, bid
fair to be productive. It is the opinion of an
engineering English expert that the corntry is
full of gold, not in nuggets but in the quartz rock.
Game is plentiful here ; bears, mountain sheep
and goats, deer, ducks, geese, prairie chickens,
and grouse. In the Okanayan valley anything
belonging to a temperate climate seems to thrive ;
and after a shower the air is perfumed like Rim-
mel's shop. Truly Canada possesses a variety of
climates.

It is perhaps in its minerals that the future wealth
of Canada lies, and when they are generally worked,
farming will pay well. We have heard of gold
workers in the district bordering on Alaska, who
paid in gold the worth of three dollars for a cab-
bage (a huge Canadian one), having been living for
months on only dried meat and fish ; and potatoes,
fruits, and other vegetables sell at remunerative

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

prices there, when a dealer can get them safely to
that remote spot.

I picked up on the grounds of St. John's College^
Qu'Appelle station, a piece of sparkling stone, and
shook the gold dust from it. I showed it to an
Australian mining engineer in England, who told
me it was not true gold ore, but was often found in
the vicinity of gold ore.

CHAPTER VIII.

Mission Work in the Colonies — Bishop Anson's Address
to the Clergy — Advantages of the North-7vest — The
Tariff— Lord Brassey's Settlement — Marriage — Ups
and Downs — Winter — Algoma.

*' The first want of our mission work is knowledge,"
said Dean Vaughan ; " the Church at home does not
know the Church abroad. In the Christian home
it should be more disgraceful that children should
know nothing of the planters and waterers of
Christ's vineyard in India, in Africa, in Australia,
than that they should be ignorant of the exploits
by which Switzerland was made free, c • the battle-
fields on which Germany was made one." This
ignorance seems to extend to the secular affairs
and geographical situation of our colonies ; so that
any advertisements framed in the interest of a land
company's speculations will go down. In the case
of young men or of the uneducated classes it is
natural ; but their parents and advisers have had
the opportunity of reading personal narratives on
the subject of emigration to Canada since the last
century. Mrs. Jamieson graphically described the

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

portion with the best climate, and now the most
thickly peopled, in 1837, and the inevitable priva-
tions of the first colonists. She also showed how
the ignorance of the British commissioners, who
marked out the boundary, treated as of no account
the beautiful districts south of the lakes, and quietly
handed over regions then unpeopled except by
Indians to the United States. Many a settler
in East Canada, only thirty years ago, has come
home to relate his hard experiences ; and the for-
tunes and misfortunes of adventurers further west.
All have been much the same, varied according to
the means and common-sense of the settler, or the
special characteristics of his place of abode ; for all
show that continued hard work, and the most care-
ful management, is the only way to gain even a
comfortable livelihood. At different times there
have been rich men like Lord Brassey who can
afford to have a hobby, and who have taken up
large tracts of land, and farmed them through an
agent, with no expectation of any immediate return
for the money they are expending; and philanthro-
pists like Bishop Anson, who are aware that many
young men must leave England for a maintenance,
and give them facilities of knowing something of
the country, before they settle down (although there
is now every hope that the agricultural college he
founded may become self-supporting). These do

BISHOP ANSON'S ADDRKSS TO THE CLERGY. 145

more for a new colony than any hired emigration
agents, such as the Canadian Government employs.
But the ordinary intending settler when he reads
of the great crops which can be raised on the virgin
soil in the north-west, might also comprehend that
all the large crops thus raised cannot be required for
home consumption, and that the great distance
from a seaport, and the low price of wheat in
Europe, must greatly reduce his profit. The West
United States requires no grain from the Canadian
north-west. He would also see in the Government
pamphlets the high rate of wages, so that young
farmers can seldom afford to employ hired labour ;
and he might understand, without reading it, that
all manufactured articles, tools, clothes, and even
articles of food which require labour to produce, or
have to be brought 1400 miles, would be dear too ;
so that besides hard work, he must expect to do
without much which in England he has considered
essential. Bishop Anson, as high an authority as
any one on the subject of the English settlements
in Canada, when addressing a clerical meeting on
the mission work of the Church, said : " Even among
our own people in the colonies, we must remember
that much that seems to their friends at home
self-denial and self-sacrifice on the part of clergy
who go out to the further parts of the colonics,
does not appear at all in the same light to those to

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EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

'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

THE TARIFF.

147

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.

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

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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

♦

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

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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

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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

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.

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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
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ilted
ould
well.

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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.

158

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

•:

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

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

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

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<j the
idea that the first had been a hard taskmaster, and
the second perhaps some old miser who had left no
one cause to grieve over him. Melancholy as a
funeral must always be, with those exceptions, that
of an emigratit in a new country, particularly if he
is the father of a family who have looked to him
for their support, seems the most melancholy of all.
It is on these occasions that the sympathy of those
Knglish colonists and Canadians who have seen
much trouble and difficulty themselves, comes out
in its most practical and warmest aspect. Who
has not known several of these tragedies when " the
voice of the mourners wailed manhood in glory,"
and how all the outsiders joined in it? The whole
town followed the funeral procession as it wended

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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

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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

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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

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.

CHILDREN OF THE NORTH-WEST.

167

herd-boy would amuse himself by whipping them
ofif directly they got near the trough, and not
allowing them to have a drop. No wonder milk
was so scarce on that farm that it had to be bought
elsewhere. I might multiply instances. One boy
sent to work for a friend of mine told him he
hated farm work ; but if he could get into a town
he could soon make a living by picking pockets.

There are many farms in the north-west where
a high Christian standard is maintained, and on
which if a boy, gentle or simple, obtained a situa-
tion, he would have every chance of doing well ;
farmers who in the busiest season find time to have
daily family prayers, and if too far from a church
to attend its services regularly, read the whole
service at home to the household on Sunday, and
allow no work but what is absolutely necessary to
be done. The want of books which the children
in these remote farms can understand is often felt.
Their vocabulary is ro limited that they do not
know the meaning of numerous words in common
use in English children's books ; and unless they
keep up the habit of reading it is soon forgotten.
Mrs. Barbauld and old-fashioned books of her date
seem more easily read by the children of the north-
west than those which please their contemporaries
in England. It is into these primitive households
that a youth who has graduated in crime on the

;

1 68

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

London streets, and well versed in the base litera-
ture allowed to circulate in our large cities, is liable
to be introduced. The children listen in amaze-
ment to his description of steam-boats, and marvels
that neither they nor their parents ever saw ; and
he soon gets an influence over them. The half-
breeds educated at the Roman mission at Fort
Qu'Appelle and at some of the Government schools
are far preferable as companions to the children to
such a boy as this.

Employers and employed share the same meals
very generally in north-west farms. The labourers
will give warning at a busy moment if, owing to the
arrival of a stranger, they are set to have their
meals at a different table. The bishop of the
diocese may arrive with his driver, and ask to be
put up for the night, and he sits down at the same
board with the hired boys in their working clothes.
On one of these occasions the only dish cooked
consisted of a very high prairie fowl. It was bad
keeping weather; and the mistress of the house,
having no other meat, curried it, thinking curry
would conceal the flavour, which it quite failed to
do. She hoped that the bishop was too hungry to
notice it, as he courteously partook of it without
remark.

The custom of paying a hired man or woman's
fare from England, binding them to remain a

HIRED PEOPLE.

169

certain number of years on special wages, does not
seem to be much adopted now. The English farm
servant, accustomed to do everything for herself,
is most suitable for Canada, or what is known as
a general servant ; but those who have been parlour
maids, cooks, or servants in good town situations,
find a reverse of fortune in north-west establish-
ments. The situations there are not what they are
used to ; and they are likely to be attracted by the
high wages offered at hotels, or for the summer on
some other farm. They also soon marry. As to
men, there are so many looking about for work,
who would be glad to perform domestic service for
their board, and the wages which would be equally
given to servants straight from England, that it
is hardly worth while to bring out people from
England, who may dislike the country, and refuse
to remain or to work when they arrive. We have
known instances of people being engaged in England
by the friends of those who want them in Canada,
and the arrangement made has been to pay their
journey there and back after a certain term of
service. One of these would do absolutely nothing
when she arrived; and as she was simply an expense
in food, washing, and stove, her employers assented
to her proposal to leave them after a few weeks.
She declined to take the payment for the short

time she had been there ; but a few days later

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170

KXCUKSIONS IN CANADA.

ii '

returned with a lawyer, to claim wages for the
longer term agreed upon in England, and the fare
for her passage home ; and it was given to her !
An uneducated person often comes out in quite a
different light in a new country, and also never
quite takes in the novel situation she must expect.
The narrative of Bishop Anson's last visitation
tour, given in the diocesan magazine two months
later, shows a little of the difficulties which beset
the traveller whose journey takes him beyond rail-
ways in Canada. The bishop had visited the Indian
reserves in the Touchwood Hills, thirty miles north
of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and thence drove
another ninety miles to Fort Peily, in the north-
western extremity of his diocese. His carriage was
an open conveyance, differing from the ordinary
buckboard by having two seats, like an uncovered
char-a-banc, such as we find in some parts of Europe.
It was drawn by two horses ; and Mr. Dee, lay
reader at Fort Felly, accompanied the bishop and
his driver, but in his own buckboard. They de-
cided to halt for the night in a ravine which con-
tained water, about thirty-five miles on their way,
at the edge of a new settlement of farmers from
Dakota. " It proved to be a delightful place, ex-
cept that it was infested with myriads of most
ravenous mosquitoes." This, it must be observed,
is the common drawback to summer journeys.

IHSIIOr ANSOxN S LAST TOUR.

171

Even in an ordinary house the plaster is often
stained towards August with red and black patches,
the remains of slaughtered insects. The bishop
and his two companions pitched their tent, and
proceeded to cat the supper they had brought with
them ; and then taking all the precautions which
they thought would prevent the mosquitoes from
sharing their tent, retired, but not to rest. A
''smudge" lit inside the tent almost drove them
out, but did not seem to have half so much effect
on the mosquitoes. In the middle of the night an
experiment was tried, which probably caused an
unlooked-for disaster. Torches of paper were
lighted to drive out the tormentors. A commotion
was heard among the tethered horses ; but as, on
looking out, they were seen to be all there, no more
was thought of it till the little party rose at half-
past three A.M. to continue the journey. But the
bishop's horses had disappeared ; one of them with
his tether rope and pin, so that there was fear he
would get entangled in the brushwood. One of the
party went in search of some of the Dakota settlers,
from whom they might borrow a horse, and go and
hunt for the runaways ; and, this obtained, Mr. Dee
drove the bishop on in his buckboard, as the bishop
w'as expected to officiate at Pelly the next day.
After driving hard till four A.M., with a brief halt,
the buckboard came to pieces, and Mr. Dee began

lil

172

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

also to doubt as to whether he had got on to the right
trail ; for in these lonely parts a day may pas.*>
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.

,*l

/ti[ i<l|

li;.

■t

CHAPTER X.

Yankees in Canada — North Dakota — Alaska — Loyalty
in the North-west — Gradual Ascent towards the
Rockies — Paving Vancouver
Patriotic Societies.

Schools — Regina —

From the very first year in which the tide of
emigration turned towards the north-west, the
British settler has had a powerful rival in the
Yankee. He has been reared from birth to the
extremes of the climate, and knows how to be
prepared for them ; and he is so much nearer that
he can at once drop upon a good thing when he
hears of it. The unfortunate farmer buys taxed
twine for his " binder," and a Yankee combination
controls the price of the twine. In different parts
of the north-west we find hotels kept by Yankees^
and educated Englishmen acting as waiters and
omnibus drivers ; Yankee station-masters, and
English porters ; — in fact, the Yankee somehow
getting the uppermost, and Englishmen taking a
subordinate place. The Canadians generally as-
sure English people that, except as farmers, there
"are no openings for Englishmen with only small

YANKEES IN CANADA.

175

means in Canada, for that other places are filled up
by natives ; but it would be more correct to say,
natives of the new world, than specially Canadian-
born, for the Yankee seems everywhere to be ad-
mitted on the same footing as the born Canadian.
This feeling extends to the postal arrangements,
which treat the United States as already part of
the Dominion. Three cents, the Canadian internal
postage, will carry a letter from Fort Churchill or
Labrador to Florida and Arizona. Mr. Grcenway,
the President of Manitoba, has lately asserted that
he looks upon the States as the great source from
which immigration will in future proceed to Canada ;
and it is indeed no wonder if people settled in
North Dakota (United States) snould be thankful
to transfer their homes to the Dominion. I met a
family of German farmers in the large station at
St. Paul's in the United States. There were the
parents, the old grandmother, treated by the rugged
farmer with filial deference, children of all ages,
and a herd-boy, with their cows, and a little of
their furniture. They were going to try a new
place, for they could not make a living in Dakota.
I was told by another settler there that the bishop
travelled up and down the railway, crossing the
province with a carriage fitted up for services,
halting at different points where there was a popu-
lation, on account of the want of churches and the

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176

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

great poverty of that district, which like Minnesota
is apt to be scorched by south winds. A heart-
rending story came from Dakota in the spring
of 1 89 1. A traveller, wishing to put up for the
night, entered a farmhouse, containing only a
woman and two little girls. The woman was
insane, and the children almost starving. They
said a little sister had died, and they had been
obliged to eat her for want of food ; and then their
mother fell into the condition in which the traveller
found her. Their father had disappeared early in
the winter. He had taken the horse and sleigh to
the nearest town, but never returned. The un-
happy woman was at once cared for, and ultimately
transferred to an asylum, and the children placed
in one of the many orphanages in which America
abounds. It was supposed that the man had been
eaten by wolves, possibly when lying on the
snow, as it appeared he had left the town rather
the worse for liquor. As soon as the snow melted,
the remains of his sleigh was found overturned, as
well as his clothing and most of the horse's bones.
The horse had probably got entangled with the
shafts and harness, and could not free itself till it
was overpowered. The Canadian wolf used to
have the credit of not attacking men ; but of
late years it has got mixed with English dogs,
who were imported on purpose to keep it down

I',
ii

ALASKA.

177

in Alberta ; and a much fiercer race is the
result.

If Eastern Canada ever separates herself from
Great Britain there is no reason why the north-
west should do the same. That extensive territory
only sends two members to Parliament, so it has
not much voice ; but it is extremely loyal, and
could subsist alone just as easily as it did when
it belonged to England, while Canada belonged
to France. The polling district of Snake Plain
only contains eight voters, because all the rest are
subsidised half-breeds ; and as long as they are
subs'dised they have no vote, but those eight all
voted at the last election for the candidate pledged
to support the Empire. The sons of the only
Englishman not an official in that district could
sing " God save the Queen " as soon as they could
read. Probably British Columbia would equally
vote against separation ; but even alone with the
railway communication with the United States
and two ocean ports, on three sides, the north-west
would be in quite as good a geographical position
as Russia, for trade and progress. The United
States, like the ancient builders of Babel, seems
determined to set all natural difficulties at defiance.
Some of her merchants, two years ago, supplied
money to survey Alaska for railway purposes, and
they are said to be meditating at some future

\ 4

178

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

time a junction of their railway system witli that of
Siberia and Russia.

Alaska is a favourite excursion from Canada and
the United States ; so much so that it has been
thouLjht worth while to publish a guide-book about
it. One great sight there is an enormous glacier,
projecting to the sea ; another, the town of Sitka,
with its Russian church and warmly built log-
houses, more like those of Norway than of Canada.
This territory, formerly known as Russian America,
was sold by the Russian Government to the United
States, when English emigrants began to pour into
the north-west and British Columbia, on account
of the cost and probable impossibility of defending
it in time of war. Yet I have the authority of an
eminent diplomatist for the statement, that re-
membering the horrors of Indian warfare in the
American struggle for independence, the Russian
and British Governments agreed during the Crimean
war that neutrality should be observed between
their respective trans-Atlantic possessions.

The prairie district begins a short distance before
reaching Winnipeg, which is about a hundred
miles from the lake of that name. This district
extends over 1000 miles to the foot of the Rocky
Mountains, gradually rising from an altitude of 700
feet above the sea at Winnipeg to 800 at Portage la
Prairie, where a branch line runs up to Minnedosa

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In the Rocky Mountains.

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1 i

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U ! •

GRADUAL ASCENT TOWARDS THE ROCKIES. 1 79

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 '

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<X) a
year ; but besides the overseer he has thirty men to

PAVING VAN'COUVKK.

I8l

cook for, as well as a doctor, who is kept there in
case of accidents.

The excessive and unusual cold in British
Columbia in the winter of 1893 seems to have
induced some of the animals to go further east
again, and herds of antelopes were seen from the
railway in the vicinity of Medicine Hat, the most
westerly town of the Qu'Appelle diocese.

It requires some years of residence for the Eng-
lish settler to become really interested in colonial
politics, unless he does work for Government in
any way. As a rule, he seen.s profoundly indif-
ferent to them. The late lieutenant-governor of the
north-west, Mr. Royal, was of French origin and a
Romanist ; yet in very Protestant circles I never
heard the smallest objections made to the appoint-
ment. Regina is a slowly-increasing town, with
a very comfortable hotel, the Lansdowne, well
managed by its excellent proprietress, Mrs. Arnold,
which charges two dollars a day ; and some of the
ministers reside there. The smaller hotels seemed
full of young men from England, looking about for
something to do. I went into a little shop to buy
some apples ; for a settler had come 260 miles
to meet me there, and he had not seen an apple
since he entered the north-west twenty-three years
ago. The young man who served me was evi-
dently an educated Englishman, and looked so

1 82

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

dreadfully ill that I asked him how he was
getting on. He had been only out from Eng-
land five months, and had been laid up with
typhoid fever, and its consequences, almost ever
since. He said a friend with whom he had
come out also caught it. The shadows of the
wooden houses falling on the stagnant ponds in
Regina give this town a Dutch look ; but the ponds
are possibly responsible for much fever. It is the
headquarters of the lieutenant-governor and of the
north-west mounted police, whose barracks are in
a healthy spot, about two miles distant. The
citizens are very proud of the large school for boys
and girls. These Canadian public schools are on
the system of our Board schools. No religion is
taught in them ; but the Methodists and Presby-
terians provide Sunday schools for those belonging
to their own denominations. The scarcity of
clergy and the scattered population make this a
difficulty in the Anglican Church. ** I can't afford
bread for my own children," was the answer of an
English farmer to a churchwarden who asked him
to subscribe to the vicar's stipend. It is this
poverty of the settlers after such winters as that
of 1892-3, that is the difficulty in providing much
that is considered essential in England. Some
energetic churchwomen have supplied the want of
Sunday schools in a parish or two in Qu'Appelle,

SCHOOLS.

183

and the Church school was founded at St. John's
College ^ by Bishop Anson, in view of the difficulties
in the way of the religious education of the youth
of the diocese.

The drawbacks and expense attending large es-
tablishments of non-workers in the north-west are
not always realised in England, or without experi-
ence. In the dry air produced by intense frost,
fuel of any description burns like tinder ; yet warmth
is the first necessity when the thermometer is 30"
or 40^" below zero. Wood is growing dearer and
more scarce; and the price of coal is still high, and
far from the railway it cannot be obtained at all.
To warm the establishment is, to begin with, a most
formidable expense. If born Canadians form part
of it, they are certain to be more chilly than
Englishmen : they are accustomed to small houses
much heated, and where the whole family (when
living in a small way) will encamp in the kitchen
for the night, if they cannot otherwise keep warm.
Hot air after the European system is perfectly
inadequate without stoves in the room in addition.
Even the cost of living is more expensive than with
us. The commissariat which would be considered
good and sufficient for an English school does not
always please Canadian boys, though, as one of
them once said, if he did not like a thing he made

^ See chapter i.

1 84

EXCURSIONS IN CANAIM.

up for it by eating more. They have been accus-
tomed to tea or coffee at every meal, as well as
potatoes ; and, as a rule, cakes, eggs, and jams with
"candies" are much preferred by them to beef or
mutton. What meat they have had has been
generally pork, white fish, birds, and even venison ;
but they take kindly to English school puddings.
A farmer's children, too young to do much besides,
can pick saskatoons, which make excellent jam ;
and the north-west Canadian grows enough vege-
tables for his own family, but not much to sell ;
and as a rule lives on his own produce. Taken
from an active life and set down at a school desk,
with, at the same time, a larger proportion of
animal food in his diet, the Canadian school boy
naturally acquires a superabundant amount of
physical energy, which has never been trained like
an English boy's ; and the instructors have a hard
time of it. The parents cannot control their chil-
dren except by sending them out to work. I heard
of a schoolmistress at a Government school in
Saskatchewan who was kicked and beaten by a
strong boy of eight, and when she spoke to the
boy's father he said he should be most thankful if
she would flog his son, for he could not manage
him in the least. Then good domestic servants
are very rare, and very expensive. For a school
they ought to be most specially and carefully chosen,

SCHOOLS.

185

in a country where there is practically no choice.
Able and judicious instructors are also difficult to
obtain ; for if capable of teaching, able to stand the
climate, yood disciplinarians, and conversant with
the Canadian character, they are certain to be
offered niore attractive posts elsewhere. They
may combine all these qualities and yet the es-
tablishment may be run into most inconvenient
expenses with very little to show for them, from
the fluctuating and sometimes almost prohibitive
prices of quite necessary commodities. Carelessness
in leaving a little water in tin cans and basins a»ul
crockery jugs, will spoil them all in one frosty
night. I recollect one house where the pupils, two
English boys who had been at school in England
before they came out, and two Canadians, sons of
English parents, were supplied with crockery basins,
tin ones not having yet reached that part of the
north-west. The boys broke five basins by throwing
them at each other in a fortnight, and with jugs
(for they could not be bought separately) they
cost sixteen shillings each. A mischievous slide
at the dining-hall entrance destroyed a whole set
of tea-things. Hardly a window was left unbroken
in that establishment from hard balls being shied at
them ; and although a man on the place could put in
the panes, each large pane of glass cost two shillings.
A boy who has been at school in England is certain

1 1

1 86

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

to be the leader among Canadian boys who have
never been to school before. The first thing taught
is that it is good form to ask regularly for a third
" helping, " in order to leave it on the plate. ^ Two
of these boys killed two sheep by riding upon them,
and with great ingenuity pulled to pieces and broke
a forty-dollar stove, so that it could be sold for
nothing but old iron ; yet the principal of the
school did not correct them, for he said discipline
could not be enforced in Canada as in England,
and the offenders would run away. When this
sort of treatment extended to the other expensive
fittings of the school, as well as to the books, it is
obvious that a large amount must be scored off for
damages. The parents would remove the boys if
those damages were inserted in their bills. Yet
except in mischief, what is there to amuse the
boys, who will not read, at a north-west school
during their long leisure hours? What with bliz-
zards, snow, severe frosts, and excessive heat, so
little of the year seems fitted for outdoor sports,
and the Canadian clothes and boots still less. The
Canadian boy, if he consulted his own pleasure,
would spend his spare time in gambling or in

^ The poor Indians in the neighbourhood benefited much
by this English school practice ; but some of the Canadian
parents objected when it was continued in the holidays, and
said their children learnt to be wasteful at school.

SCHOOLS.

187

making himself look like a (Canadian) masher,
and standing about with a pipe in his mouth on
the side-walks of the nearest town, and in the
principal store, to see the world, as far as it can
be seen in a wooden north-west settlement. The
Canadian parent expects his son to learn everything
in an incredibly short time, as if at an army cram-
mer's. The rarefied air is against hard study or
sedentary occupations, except when the pulse is
lowered by excessive smoking, which can hardly
be permitted even in a north-west school. So that
considering the few who can afford to send their
boys to boarding schools, it seems too evident that
with all these obstacles they cannot at present be
self-supporting. The day-school system, universal
in the United States, seems to be the one most
suited to the present conditions of the north-west.

The fairly prosperous people living at a distance
from the towns are glad to send their children for
a year or two to board with an acquaintance, not
only for the sake of what they learn at school, but
to enable them to see a little of the world — a rail-
way train, a row of shops, a possible menagerie,
and other spectacles, which they have no chance of
meeting with in the backwoods. In the chief
attempt I know of to start a boarding school on
the English system, the parents were not pleased
when they heard that their children were not taken

i88

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

to see every entertainment in the neighbourhood.
A magic lantern, showing a tour round the world
with an admirable clerical exponent, was being ex-
hibited to wipe off a church debt ; but the head-
master declined to let the boys go and see it, on the
ground that they had been out to a choir practice the
previous evening. The exhibition would have been
better than a dozen geography lessons, with its
views of elephant catching in Africa, Buddhist
temples, the streets of London, the Pyramids,
Paris, etc., to boys who had seen nothing but the
prairie, and had never been by railway. But how
should an English master, who had never lived in
the backwoods, or been away from the Illustrated
London News, realise this and the depths of his
pupils' want of knowledge of the commonest things
in Europe ? Shut up within the bounds of a square
mile of garden and playground was like being in a
cage to them ; while the boys who attend the day
schools in the town can employ their leisure in
assisting their relatives, and many of the boarders
living in the towns for the sake of the schools give
their work instead of payment. It is therefore to
be feared that, as this plan works to the satisfac-
tion of most colonists, a boarding school founded
with English money might only be turned into a
kind of reformatory for troublesome or insubordinate
youths.

SCHOOLS.

189

That education, and religious education^ espe-
cially, is a crying need in the remote districts is,
unfortunately, too true; but so are churches and
clergy, and the one is likely to remedy the other.
The Canadian boy has none of the false pride
which prevents him from coming to a Sunday
school because there are younger bo)'s there, or
girls ; and, indeed, girls would make it an attraction.
Time was when it was thought all England would
become heathen because religious teaching was
banished from Board schools. But one result has
been the re-introduction of catechising in the
churches, and the adoption of children's services,
especially for the uneducated. Then, all over the
country the clergy have given up some of their
little spare time to the task of instructing the chil-
dren of their parishioners apart from the Govern-
ment hours, till the youth of the working class of
the present day is growing up far more thoroughly
taught with regard to Church matters than when it
was left to the lay schoolmaster and schoolmistress.
In those days, in the curriculum of many a village

^ The educational law, which provides the free schools,
enacts that no pupil is to be required to attend any reading
or study or to join in any religious exercises objected to by
the parent ; but they may receive any religious instruction
that the guardian or parent approves, only no book is allowed
to be used except such as is authorised by the Department.

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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

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192

EXCURSIONS IN CANADA.

'^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 ;

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

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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.

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.

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.

i »1

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

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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

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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^•.

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
<lo it for so little if I were you." When he attains
manhood, this boy will be a leader of strikes.

Everybody is busy in Winnipeg, no loiterers.
There are some very curious carts laden with still
more curious folk come out of the country to sell
their wares. There are also a group of Memnonites
in sheep skins, looking like Russian peasants ; but
they loudly assert their German nationality, and
•speak German. They hold Quaker principles, and
in 1818 left Prussia and Germany for Russia to
avoid the conscription. The Canadian guide-books
say they came to Canada to escape Russian perse-
cution ; but their burgomaster will tell you that
they were induced to come by the exaggerated
representations of a Canadian emigration agent,
and that they find the climate more severe than
the part of Russia where they were formerly settled.
When universal conscription was introduced into

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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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 ".

INDEX.

>*m

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.

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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.