j* j* A WOMAN IN CANADA

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

" One of the most entertaining and individual books of
Western Travel ever written." Dally Mail.

" She makes it clear once more that the Dominion is
the land for the man who will work and the woman who
can work. ... It loses nothing by the fact that it is
informal and chatty. It is the impressionist travel book
of a shrewd, kindly observer, and for that reason it is
worth reading by the old folk at home who have heard of
Canada and never seen it, and by the young folk of Canada
who have heard of England and never seen it. It is light
reading, too." Daily Chronicle.

" A helpful, hopeful book." The Globe.

" If women are courageous and enthusiastic there is
much to encourage them in Mrs. Cran's book." Glasgow
Herald.

" We seem to have waited a long, long time for this
book . . . the patriotic Canadians will be as glad as we are to
hear what a keen and kindly and absolutely honest observer
thinks of it all. She has seen not only Canada, but also
* Canady,' not only the luxurious and well-ordered life of
the larger cities, but also the laborious and discomfortable
existence of the vast countryside which stretches to no
horizon, out of sight of the high-shouldered elevators that
are the Gods of the North-West. And what she sees she
describes with merciless accuracy, and with the easy,
lucid style that always has a real personality behind it.
There is much talk to-day of Western Canada as a field
for the labours of England's superfluous women more
especially the educated class and her book will tell them
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Morning Post.

LONDON: W. J. HAM-SMITH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

j . A WOMAN IN CANADA * j*

SOME PRESS OPINIONS (continued)

" A record of impressions which is exceedingly vigorous
in style, lively and varied in substance, and quite evidently
fair and straightforward." Scotsman.

" Vivid and lifelike. Mrs. Cran has seen, felt and
observed sanely as well as clearly." Morning Leader.

" At once a volume of very personal and vivacious
impressions de voyage, and an independent report upon
social and economic conditions in that country, especially
as they aifect women. . . . She is enthusiastic and
almost lyrical about the beauty and heart-winning power
Oi that young land and its great promise, but has much
to say about the right and wrong kind of settler. The
book deserves to be widely read, and is eminently readable."
Manchester Guardian.

" Stimulating. It should be widely read. We com-
mend it for careful perusal." The Queen.

" Imagine, then, a clever, cultivated, sympathetic woman
with Canada as her Regent Street, and all the Provinces as
her shop windows, and you can see what sort of a time you
are likely to spend with Mrs. Cran. A day with a woman
farmer at Caledonia Springs, another day with the scientific
insect hunters at the Ottawa Experimental Farms, a week
of fruit and corncakes, and maple syrup and bears and
sentiment in Quebec, a tale of fishing with Joe Eskimo at
Jackfish in Ontario, and then a wonderful succession of
studies in homelife on the Canadian Prairies. Nothing in
the literature that deals with Canada contains more fas-
cinating reading than the 60 pages of the two chapters
entitled ' The Prairies ' and ' Prairie Studies.' Here we
are shewn in a way that we can understand the life of
isolation that can still be made happy, the life of self-denial
that will surely end in comfort, the opportunities in the
remote West for women of refinement, even more than for
women of the so-called working classes." Standard Of
Empire.

LONDON : W. J. HAM-SMITH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

A WOMAN IN CANADA

BBHB

A WOMAN IN CANADA

MRS. GEORGE CRAN

WITH THIRTY-ONE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

LONDON

W. J. HAM-SMITH
1911

REPRINTED 1911

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I FOREWORD 9

II A WOMAN FARMER AND AN EXPERIMENTAL FARM 25

III IN QUEBEC ........ 52

IV FISHING ON STEEL RIVER . , . . . "J 2
V THE PRAIRIES 92

VI PRAIRIE STUDIES Il6

VII POULTRY FARMING AND MARKET GARDENING . 153

VIII THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND BRITISH COLUMBIA . 179

IX EASTWARD BOUND 208

X THE ART OF CANADA ...... 223'

XI THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT . . . 247

XII AU REVOIR , 267

M203898

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR . . Frontispiece

A LAND OF MOUNTAIN AND LAKE . Fating page 2O

AN OLD QUEBEC STREET 21

THE SETTLED EAST I OTTAWA . . 34

THE WOMAN FARMER .... 35

MY HOSTESS AT CALEDONIA SPRINGS . 40

CALEDONIA SPRINGS HOTEL . . . 4!

EXPERIMENTAL FARM AT BRANDON . 52

A TINY LOG CABIN .... 53
CATTLE BY THE POND AT CALEDONIA

SPRINGS 58

OTTO THE GUIDE AT LEANCHOIL 59

" A BIG FELLOW " .... 68

PREPARING LUNCH . . . . 69

FISHING : " LANDED ".... 84

BRINGING HOME THE MOOSE HEAD . 85

SKINNING HEAD OF MOOSE . . . 96

THE PRAIRIE ,, 97

GRAIN ELEVATORS 114

WOMEN ARE SCARCE IN THE NORTH-WEST 115

NEAR LEANCHOIL 134

INTERIOR OF A LOG CABIN 135

WHERE REAL SPORT MAY BE HAD . 152

MOOSE 153

THE FRINGE OF THE WILD ...,, 184

OUR CAMP ON MALIGNE LAKE . . 185

" MR. MUGGINS " 2O6

OUR DINNER-TABLE . 207

MOUNT ROBSON 234

THE PACIFIC PROVINCE .... 235
PINES IN HIGH WATER : KAMLOOPS LAKE,

BRITISH COLUMBIA .... 266

THE LONE SONG 267

viii

A WOMAN IN CANADA

CHAPTER I

FOREWORD

LET me beg any one who does not like " IV to
avoid this book. It is full of them.

The first time I went to Canada I spent the days
of preparation for departure in being very sorry for
myself. I could not think why I had said I would
go. There was no need for it. I wasn't going to
settle there, or invest money. I was only going on a
visit with friends, and as the date of sailing grew
near they noticed my depression. "Was I home-
sick?" "No, not yet." "Was I a bad sailor?"
" No, not specially." " What was the matter, then ? "
Under pressure of questioning the trouble burst
forth. Canada was an ugly, cold, icebergy place ; it
had miles of flat wheat; it had no flowers; it was
ugly, and I hated ugliness. Would they understand
if I was morose during my visit, and believe that I
loved them and only hated the country ?

Such a way as they teased me !

A WOMAN IN CANADA

' Yes ! they would understand indeed they
would. And if I wanted flowers very badly they
would take me to a marsh on a moor where purple
flags grew, and frogs crooned at night."

Goodness knows what idea I had of the country-
no literature I had ever read had forced an impres-
sion of beauty into my brain; it talked of so many
bushels to the acre, so many acres to the farm, so
many feet of snow to this month, so many days of
drought to this, and so on. One book left a vivid
picture of the hardships of homesteading, another
told of the political value of the country, but none
that I had ever seen talked intimately of the scenery
or of the days' happenings other than commercially.
I knew what grew there because I had seen the
Coronation Arch. Hiawatha hung in the memory
only as a jargon of interminable names cleverly
arranged in trochaics. Lamentable, horrible, unin-
telligent as it sounds, there is the fact of my ignor-
ance. It has one advantage which I make haste to
point out. I have at any rate viewed Canada
through my own eyes, no one else's. And I venture
to believe that it would strike hundreds of my fellow-
Britons as it did me, especially, perhaps, women
Britons.

I believe that the average Englishman keeps a

FOREWORD

small but warm corner of his heart for the word
"colonies." Pride of possession counts for nearly
all the warmth in that corner. When he looks there
he finds a few vague notions lying loose, just any-
how, all warm, all prized in a careless, happy way;
but none of them loved in laborious detail. The
vague notions spell vague things to him. India
generally spells, I think, " Elephants a-pilin 5 teak,"
and whisky-pegs ; Africa, diamonds and " Kaffirs " ;
Australia, sheep and cricket ; Canada, wheat and dis-
comfort. It sounds foolish and almost impossible,
but I believe that for the average Briton that is a
fairly accurate description of what the Colonies
amount to. The word " Canada " brings to his brain
pictures of Liverpool receiving vast cargoes of wheat
and distributing them over the country at a lower
price than the home farmer demands. It also arouses
dim visions of privations endured most impatiently
by sundry of his friends who have gone out to
Canada to settle, and hurried back incontinently
because the young country did not contain all the
comforts of the old. The name of Canada is to
average Englishmen an empty word as a nation
we do not realize her beauty, her power, or her proud
resentment of our ignorance of both.

If the average Englishman regards Canada as a

A WOMAN IN CANADA

vast plain of alternate snow and wheat, or else as a
speculative habitation for spare capital, never as a
beautiful, spacious home, the bulk of Canadians,
in their turn, regard England as a high-spirited ward
is liable to regard a wealthy guardian of cranky
temper a guardian whose powers of control must
terminate with the ward's maturity, and who will
probably be dearly loved from the perspective of
release ; but who, meanwhile, is to be endured, and
considerably grumbled at. The traveller from these
islands to the big Dominion is apt to start out with
the erroneous idea that his nationality will give him
prestige over there, will excuse, perhaps idealize, any
eccentricity on his part, and any ignorance of his
destination. This apprehension is inevitably subject
to many shocks, and his pride of race is violently
thrust back upon him during his sojourn in Canada.
The Canadian, generally speaking, regards the Eng-
lishman with little of his own regard for himself, and
does not share his pride in the little island home
whence he comes. The man who is proud of the
past is unlikely to find much in common with the
man who is proud of the future.

" See what we have done," cries the Englishman,
and "See what we are going to do," cries the
Canadian !

FOREWORD

Excellent prides, both of them ; in the vital energy
which impels the latter, one is prone to overlook the
element of uncertainty it contains.

" Your country is worn out ! " said a young On-
tarian to me. ' Your roads have hedges, and are
kept like park-walks; every hill is labelled
* Caution ' ; every turning has a sign-post to tell
which way to go. Your very roads nurse and pamper
the intelligence out of a man. Why, I'd soon learn
to rely on signs instead of the sun for my direction
if I lived there; and I'd forget to shoot if I had
your country ; every acre of bush has a * trespass-
board ' in it instead of something for the pot. Your
country is worn out."

The narrowness of outlook displayed in these
remarks will be derided by the superficial reader;
but there is, in fact, reason in the view taken by so
many Canadians. We are in danger of becoming a
nation of cities, an urban race unfitted to wrestle with
the wild. Only they judge us as already unfit who
are, as yet, only becoming unfit.

The population of Canada, a little less than that
of London alone, is drawn from many sources; its
prairies are tilled by Italians, Germans, Swedes,
Danes, Galicians, Doukobours and Americans, be-
sides the French and English. In British Columbia

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Asiatic labour swarms; the costly, excellent "boy"
is at once the heartburn and the godsend of the
Pacific province; he is felt to be a menace and a
necessity, and is regarded with the oddest mixture
of distrust and gratitude. That same uncertainty of
attitude, in a modified degree, obtains towards the
French element in Canada, and towards the power-
ful and yearly growing contingent from the States.
The general idea over here is that Canada is peopled
with Britons, with a certain admixture of old French
blood; that the two get on capitally, and unite in
adoring England and everything English. Never
was such folly. Canada welcomes to her shores
every man of every race who will work her soil and
obey her laws; she draws her people from every
nation, and the English settler has not proved him-
self the best man. The Italians and Galicians show
infinitely greater adaptability, greater industry,
greater patience. A certain proportion of Canada's
English settlers has, unfortunately, been drawn from
the wastrels of our upper classes, and a large propor-
tion from the poor. As yet the average decent,
hardworking, intelligent middle-class Englishman
has not made his mark on public opinion. Oddly
enough and this is a fact the Englishwoman in
Canada is everywhere welcomed and valued. In the

FOREWORD

North-West, where wives are scarce, a work of
Empire awaits the woman of breed and endurance
who will settle on the prairie homesteads and rear
their children in the best traditions of Britain.
Canada can do with citizens who put honour before
wealth; and Britain greatly needs, if she only knew
it, a loyal leaven in her greatest colony.

Will I ever forget my first sight of that lovely
country? All the elfin beauty of dusk was there to
glamour the hour; there was a smell of land warm
and piney on the breeze ; after days of brine sprayed
bitterly to the nostrils there was delight in it; all the
happy langour of green growing things, all the fruit-
ful essences of earth soothed the senses in that
breeze blowing from the land. We crowded up on
deck to lean over the waters. Overhead the moon
swung between tiny clouds like a censer sometimes
dimmed by its own smoke ; away on our left stretched
the great St. Lawrence. On the right a long patch
of indigo broke the sky-line ; in the heart of that line
sparkled Rimouski. After leaving the mails we
steamed away up the vast moonlit river, passing
between the sentinel spires that fringe her banks to
the city of spires, perched on their historic heights,
the many-towered fairy city which broke upon our
vision in the unearthly dawnlight a sight to be re-

A WOMAN IN CANADA

membered for all days, poignant with mystery, with
charm. Here I was, ushered into the " ugly icebergy
place " through the portals of a mighty sunlit river;
transfigured with emotion as we swept past the
country of Evangeline, Sunshine of Saint Eulalie,
realizing for the first time the beauty and truth of the
descriptions read so lightly in far-off school-days.
Why do people skip descriptions in books? One
can travel the world over, in an arm-chair, and know
the aspect of every land, if one only would read with
patience in the printed page. So, rebuked, enlight-
ened, did I come to Canada. For evermore her
name will spell to me a picture of mountain and
valley, of lake and river, of fruitful orchards and
quaint young townships ; it will bring to my nostrils
the smell of her, which is the smell of pine and
cedar. My ears will strain to hear again the noon-
song of the crickets and vesper of the frogs. That
is the picture of Canada as I know her now, as all
know her who love that rich and splendid land of
promise, which only awaits for the " open sesame "
of honest and ungrudging labour to pour her wealth
into the world.

That first visit, which taught me so much, was
confined to Quebec and Ontario, the big eastern

provinces which contain four of the seven great citie c

FOREWORD

in the whole Colony. Guess, then, the prospect
unfolded in a second visit which was to take me
across to the Pacific coast, over the famed prairies,
through the Rocky Mountains and British Columbia.
I should see the lonely prairie farms, should see the
world's wheat brought to harvest; should touch the
fringe of the wild, and learn from the lips of pioneers
the hardships and rewards of their courage.

Here, in this little book, I propose to set forth
a picture of Canada as I saw her; I, raw from
the Mother Country, with nothing to hope for,
nothing to gain, no one to profit, nothing to make
out of a good report and nothing to fear from ill
report. Perhaps I should say something here of
the terms of my second journey. Seeing that the
Canadian Government sent me across the country it
might seem that I was bound to speak well of it, but
as a matter of fact I do not feel handicapped by any
such idea. The Dominion Government paid my
travelling expenses, the Canadian Pacific and
Canadian Northern Railways gave me every
assistance ; but beyond these courtesies I went
unpaid, and acted heartily on the final word of
advice from official sources : " Speak the truth, we
can stand it." I wonder if it sounds too noble to

say that without such a free hand I should not have
B I7

A WOMAN IN CANADA

gone. It is true, however. It would have been too
tiresome. A certain proportion of the matter here
set forth has already appeared in article form in the
Bystander, the Daily Chronicle, the Lady, the
Crown, the Standard of Empire and Madame. My
acknowledgments are due to the editors of these
papers for their courtesy in permitting me to adapt
what was necessary.

I have in nowise endeavoured to write a travel
book nasty dowdy things they are, full of fact and
figures, written by people with tidy minds, and
packed with information and help for every emerg-
ency that can possibly arise in the career of the least
accomplished traveller, and bursting with answers to
every question that could possibly be asked by the
most intelligent ones. This is only a series of snap-
shots, offered with ragged edges unglazed, un-
mounted, unframed, rapid, disconnected reproduc-
tions of this picture and of that which burned into
the memory in the six and a half months which is all
I have ever spent in Canada. If I had spent six
and a half years in the country, if I had worked and
played, grieved and rejoiced, loved and hated on its
soil among its people, then, perhaps, I might make
some effort at presenting a coherent substantial book

of reference and analysis; but such an effort now

FOREWORD

would be an impertinence, and one which I respect
Canada too much to offer. There is a heresy buried
in that confession, a social heresy, a bad principle, a
dangerous theory ; one that would set sincerity before
polish, and do civilization a lot of damage; but it
is not my business to point it out. What I realize is
that, having travelled over one of our great Colonies,
along a track that has been trodden scores of times
before by people who can write much better than I
can, I am attempting to write of it again; Heaven
help me.

Strange the fascination that land possesses ! I
am not in the least peculiar in owning to it, countless
men and women have told me the same thing, and
a fact which is well known to all students of immi-
gration over there is that ninety per cent, of the new
settlers who put in a year or two, fail and leave in
disgust, come back. They can't help it any more
than I can now help the painful desire which catches
me by the throat as August draws near, to pace again
the deck of the out-going steamer impatient to de-
vour time, while the Marconi machine coughs out
messages to unseen vessels, spluttering blue sparks
the while; impatient to see the wild maidenhair
again upon the mountains, the little wild orchids

coloured like copper in firelight, to hear the frogs
132 19

A WOMAN IN CANADA

chant evensong, and crickets wake the day. I can
neither stay nor ignore reconstruction of the journey,
and I long to pass Belle Isle in a drenching fog with
a tireless syren to breast the gulf, and sail proudly
like a queen-swan to Rimouski in the sunset ; I long
to feel the screws shiver as we set forth again for
Quebec, leaving Rimouski an indigo line throbbing
with firefly lights; I long once more to come to
Quebec in the dawn and at that moment always in
my longing I begin to be glad, like a lover who has
come to his own. High poised against clear skies
I see once more the Camelot of Canada Quebec of
the heights and spires, grey, quaint, beautiful Quebec,
hung up between heaven and earth over her spark-
ling river ; I rattle over her stony streets in a caleche ;
I see the big grasshoppers, like butterflies, among
the chicory flowers beside the city ramparts ; I stand
in reverence before a hero's monument upon the
plains of Abraham, and in wonder before the view
at the Chateau Frontenac. In all the loved, scented
beauty of rose-time in England I feel a reiteration
of that longing to be in Canada again; I want to
linger in Ottawa, the garden-city; to see Winnipeg
again lying flat on the prairie, with the sky-line an
amher belt about her loins at sunset; to watch the

green snakes gliding in and out among the grass

An Old Quebec Street

FOREWORD

tufts; to see the log-fences and lonely wooden
shacks. It is the toll exacted from all who have
once been to Canada, unexpected but inevitable
this strange attachment. A curious feeling, not a
sentimental impulse, but a queer tugging at the
heart-strings which has its origin in emotion of some
sort. I am no musician, and so cannot describe in
the terms of the perfect Wagnerite what I mean
when I speak of the " ache " of music I mean that
feeling of suspense which catches you when a melo-
dious phrase is heard, and you know another must
follow, similar, yet not the same, a sort of answer or
completion of what went before ; and the " ache "
of music is that sensation of suspense, of waiting, of
desire which holds the ear and heart unsatisfied till
the completing phrase occurs. Any musician read-
ing this will smile because I describe a common
enough occurrence in melody without knowing its
technical term. But lovers of music, unlearned like
myself, will understand what I mean when I say that
Canada appeals to me like the first phrase in a
melody; it leaves one charmed, unsatisfied, desiring
more.

I was asked on my second journey to regard the
country from a woman's standpoint as much as pos-
sible ; to study the lives of the Englishwomen settled

A WOMAN IN CANADA

there; to form my own opinion as to their happiness,
their usefulness, their success or failure as settlers
and wives of settlers; to discover if possible in what
ways they could make money for themselves without
having to wait for menfolk to bring them or send
for them. For the Dominion Government is aware
that England is overcrowded with women, and that
her own prairie lands are crying for them by the thou-
sand. Canada wants women of breed and endur-
ance, educated, middle-class gentlewomen, and these
are not the women to come out on the off-chance of
getting married. They may be induced to come to
the country if they can farm or work in some way to
secure their absolute independence. They want,
every nice woman wants, to be free to undertake
marriage as a matter of choice, not of necessity. I
feel persuaded that if the daughters of professional
men in Great Britain could feel that there were pos-
sibilities of money-making in the Colonies for them,
as well as for men, they would go out and prosper.
They would not choose to compete in Great Britain,
where the fight is severe; and once they settled in
the North-West I believe that a large number would
ultimately throw in their lot with the bachelor farmers
of the prairie and British Columbia. Every woman

who goes out to Canada makes it easier for the other

FOREWORD

women there. I would not recommend any one to
go to the cities, they are overcrowded already; the
eastern provinces, too, are fairly settled, but there is
room for hundreds on the prairies, in Manitoba, that
is to say, and Saskatchewan and Alberta, as also
there is in British Columbia, the great province where
climatic conditions are so different from those of the
rest of Canada as to make it seem another kingdom !
Like Gaul, Canada is divided into three parts there
are the settled eastern provinces, Ontario, Quebec,
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; then the great
tract of prairie land divided into the three prov-
inces aforementioned, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta, where the flat soil is a deep black loam, a
quick fertile vegetable mould, where the wheat
grows and the ranches are; where the track of
buffalo may still be seen, where the eye may roam for
days of travelling without finding a tree or bush.
Then there is the third part of Canada, British
Columbia, which begins in the Rocky Mountains
and stretches down to the Pacific seas, where the
cedars grow to immense proportions, where all
growth is lush and rank, where snows give place to a
rainy season, where the rivers are full of salmon and
the forests full of deer. I was picking strawberries
in the open in one of the valleys of British Columbia

A WOMAN IN CANADA

last autumn, and three days later the train I was in
was snowed up in the Maple Creek blizzard such
differences of climate are to be found in that vast
continent we call Canada.

I think that elementary division of the country is
helpful in trying to picture it to oneself. First the
east settled, civilized, almost blase; then the
middle wild, flat, fertile, full of potential riches,
and even that is settling so quickly that its great
curse, the curse of loneliness, is passing away; and
last the west beautiful, luxuriant, largely unex-
ploited, heavily timbered, with gold in all its rivers
and fruit orchards in its valleys.

The climate of Canada is magnificent, extremer
in heat and cold than England, but dry and bracing.
The conditions are primitive, and of every one but
the capitalist manual labour is demanded as the first
necessity of life.

CHAPTER II

A WOMAN FARMER AND AN EXPERIMENTAL FARM

WE have sailed the stately river. Here are
Montreal, the Customs, the drunken telegraph
posts, the hum of welcome, the bustle of landing.
I make straight for the great Canadian Pacific Rail-
way building to learn directions, and am struck
with the happy atmosphere that there prevails.
One Mr. Stitt studies my letters and myself, then
makes it his business to present the staff. I learn
from one man of the picturesqueness of the Indians,
their legends, their history, he is such an enthusiast
in his study that I long for nothing so much as
to go and live among them, learn them, write of
them; but he is whisked away, and there passes
before my marvellous eyes, a succession of enthusi-
asts as interesting. The voice of wisdom speaks
from Mr. Hayter Reid, the hotel enthusiast, tell-
ing me in chosen phrases of the wonders of life
in the mountains, so that I burn to go there with-
out any more delay and spend the rest of life fish-

A WOMAN IN CANADA

ing in the lakes, hunting, trapping, riding. Then
a wheat enthusiast quarrels with them both about
the superiority of wheat growing as a pastime to
Indian lore and hotel life; as he talks I hear the
rustle of grain in the sun with the wind among it,
I yearn utterly to stand upon the prairies and lose
myself in wheat. Then comes George Ham, " The
only George Ham in the world," and he is witty and
warm, and silent and cold, all in ten seconds or so.
I understand, now I am among these men, why the
Canadian Pacific Railway is the great, successful
power it is. It is managed by picked souls, happy,
genial, brilliant souls.

Seeing it is yet early morning and I am a stranger
in the land, I ask them what I can see in the after-
noon. The Indian enthusiast wants me to go to
Caughnawaga, the Indian village, but the others
advise me to take a " round " ticket to Lachine and
shoot the rapids on the St. Lawrence. With the
rustle of the Atlantic and throb of engines still in
my ears I feel I am a little weary of water and make
demur. I ask if it is dangerous, and the enthusiasts
smile one and all. "There had never been an
accident and they had been shot thousands of
times." So I wander away to the Grand Trunk

station and take my " round " ticket. I crowd into

A WOMAN FARMER

the train with the multitude and am carried at last
into the open; it is good to feel the city behind me
and the hedgeless country all around. A large pro-
portion of the crowd gets off at Lachine, a heavy
thunderstorm comes on, and we wait on the wharf
herded uncomfortably under a tiny shelter. Pre-
sently the fat old Empress rolls up ; she is a white
boat with a curious engine which carries two exalted
iron arms in her middle; when the engine works
these arms wave up and down in a fashion that
excites in me an inexplicable pity; they look so
futile, so unintelligent, and so deplorably patient-
like a very tired woman rocking a child that will not
sleep, or a soldier heliographing to some one that
cannot see. I am not sure if all the crowd is able
to get on at Lachine, there is a great rush and I am
swept on the front of it; I find myself tumbling
over a small boy and his crushed cries make me
angry, I don't want to hurt him and the people
behind make me. I try to lift him but cannot stoop,
it is an eager crowd and the gangway is narrow.
Presently he is squeezed through the railing and
falls into the water. It must be much more com-
fortable for him than under my feet. I am swept
on deck and begin to breathe again, the boy is fished

out at once and greatly coddled and petted, he

A WOMAN IN CANADA

deserves it, poor little person, and we set out for
the rapids. The Empress has come from Ottawa,
and is fairly well loaded with luggage and pas-
sengers. All of us, who can, crowd into the bows to
see the great feat accomplished, despite the rain,
which makes an ineffable freshness in the air after
a hot, close day. It is evening; I entertain lively
hopes of seeing a brilliant river sunset as soon as
the rain ceases. Sitting on a little wooden chair in
the crowd I study the ugly blouse and untidy belt
in front of me, congratulating myself that neither
can block out my view of the sky, although they
can, and do, any hope of seeing the rapids. A man
next me begins to talk loftily of " Colonials " ; he
is an Englishman, I regret to say, with bulgy blue
eyes and a waxed moustache and shiny red cheeks;
he says he is over on a patriotic mission. I hope he
is lying. That is the type of man who spoils Eng-
land for Canadians. I get up and squeeze over to
the other side, where a rough-looking Ontarian with
kind eyes gives me his chair, telling me to climb up
on it and " look there. 35 I climb, and look. All
across the wide St. Lawrence from far green bank
to far green bank boils and fumes a line of breakers.
It seems incredible that any boat can pass across
these rocks and currents in safety. The man holds

A WOMAN FARMER

my arm to steady me, the motion of the boat is
growing rapid, everybody is craning to see, we are
just above the rapids. Mighty forces are dragging
for our lives this way and that, here a whirlpool,
there an angry scurry of waves rolling backward as
I have seen them roll at Niagara in a flux of currents.
I look up at the wheels, two men are steering, there
are two wheels ; the men are looking fixedly ahead,
a great concentration of attention in pose and glance.
An old lady near me hides her face, saying, " Oh,
who is at the helium ? " The man who had given
me his chair grips my arm tighter we curve this
way and that, intricately steered, and then we sweep
terribly, resistlessly, over the fall into the maelstrom
below. As we go I hear a crack. ... I look up,
the front wheel is flapping helplessly, the men are
looking frightened. Another man rushes forward,
he pulls the engine bell quickly, turns to the wheel,
tries it and then all of them rush away. .

They have left the bridge something is wrong.

I look at the rough man, he still has my arm, his
face is dead white ; he says, " I have four children
on board." The boat is moving horribly. Once
she hits something and slides away on a current.
I see we are in a hollow and ask, " Why is the river

scooped out like this ? " The man answers, " We

A WOMAN IN CANADA

are in the rapids, the rocks make it hollow." I see
two sailors come from below and run like monkeys
up an iron ladder; they disappear to the back of
the boat. I hear shouts, people begin to realize,
they rush to the sides and look over. ... I look at
the boats, there are not nearly enough, besides they
wouldn't be any use, there are not enough life-belts
to go round that crowd. They have reversed the
engines to hold up against the current, the patient
arms work up and down. Presently the man who
is giving the engine orders smiles palely down upon
us and signals again to the engines. We begin to
move forward, he has four men working the helm
from the back, and he gives them the direction with
his hand from the bridge. So, very slowly, we come
to Montreal. In the middle of the rapids, the steer-
ing gear had broken. For a while we have been in
deadly peril, now it is over I know it has been very
interesting.

I read a description of the Indian reserve Caugh-
nawaga in the Daily Ex-press, by Mr. Hambleton,
afterwards, and it was so picturesque that I linger to
quote part of it

A jumbled, scattered collection of houses of
wood and stone, a near neighbourhood of semi-
30

A WOMAN FARMER

wild, semi-cultivated land, a people with the
dull, dead features of a nation without an ideal
and without a future, a village in which past and
present clash in strange, eerie silence there
you have Kahnawake " near the rapids "
and shadows of men of the Five Nations.

Caughnawaga (to use the modern spelling) is
but a few miles up the river from Montreal, but
it is a leap back through two hundred and fifty
years of history without parallel, history which
tells of the gradual tightening of the white
man's grip, and the dominance of the white
man's faith. . . .

The jingling of civilizations is borne upon
you with forceful persistence the moment you
step ashore from the ferry. The main street of
the village is broad, and the quality of its sur-
face is fully equal to that of the average street
in Montreal; but the resemblance ends there.
A neat little hotel bids the visitor welcome, but
the white stranger may not make his home in
Caughnawaga. There are the same knots of
playing, laughing children, yet the call of
mother to child comes from one who passes
down the street in silent aloofness from the
present.

A WOMAN IN CANADA

As she goes by, the young squaw pulls her
black shawl more closely round the shoulders,
and from under the big straw hat dark eyes
gleam with a glitter vaguely reminiscent of the
camp-fire. . . .

The Caughnawaga of to-day is not imposing,
but the view from its shores is a delight painted
with the bold, broad stroke of the master. It
is such a scene as rivals, even if it does not
excel, that from the " look-out 5 ' on Mount
Royal. From the dim grey-blue of the moun-
tains where Ottawa and St. Lawrence join
their waters, eastward to the veil of smoke hang-
ing over the city, the scene is one of softly-
blending, ever-shifting colour, of restless indus-
try and profound peace.

Swiftly, relentlessly, the great river rushes
onward past the Indian village, eager to bring
countless machines into life ere its course be
run to the sea. Westward, where the St. Law-
rence broadens into Lake St. Louis, a horde of
panting launches dance and leap through the
waves; and there, where the waters catch the
glow of the flaming sky, diamond and ruby flash
in twinkling light the eternal presence of the
past. It is the scene which the Indian sees
32

A WOMAN FARMER

day by day from the reserve which is the white
man's gift. He loves it all, but it is to him the
water of Tantalus unattainable. It is the land
over which he once held sway.

When I got to the station the next day to start
my westward journey, a little lonely, George Ham
was there with a word to the conductor for my com-
fort, and a hand-clasp so friendly and unexpected
that it wakes a grateful glow to this day. I clamber
into the car, and could wish our English travelling
were as easy. The cars are lofty and spacious, each
seat is a separate arm-chair by the window, which
may be wheeled into any position, and is the essence
of comfort. The cars roll swiftly and very
smoothly; the windows are vast sheets of plate
glass, offering an uninterrupted view of the passing
country. The ventilating arrangements are perfect,
only the Canadian idea of ventilation is heat before
freshness, never freshness and warmth as well if you
can get it, therefore the ventilating arrangements
appeal to me as being of little avail. A handsome
carpet runs the length of the car, which is a glorified
edition of Pullman as we know him, and the only
grief I find in the whole arrangement is the per-
spective of tin bowls. One is placed by every chair,
c 33

A WOMAN IN CANADA

and some of the passengers make pestilential use of
them. A boy passes to and fro at intervals with
fruit, chocolate, or newspapers, and the porter is
ready to bring tea at any moment and brush one's
coat and boots before alighting. The train travels
steadily, pulling up at a little station now and then
with a deep contralto whistle. Near me a fellow-
passenger tells the eternal story of England's cold-
ness to her colony, Canada's patience and long-
suffering ; I listen indifferent well. Here is passing
the landscape I love : here is a belt of maples, there
a patch of golden-rod glistening in the sun, when
the train slackens I can hear the crickets sing. My
happiness is too deep to be pierced by this aged
grievance, I refuse to be plunged in thankless argu-
ment. I watch the country whirl away from our
wheels ; I watch it, and grow conscious of a certain
hunger. Something is not there that I love, and I do
not know what it is. We pass field after field of maize,
buckwheat, oats and pasture. The maize, always
called corn here, is infinitely graceful. Its leaves hang
from tall stalks like satin streamers of green ribbon ;
on top floats a plume of pale floss silk, tipped with
brown. The buckwheat grows thick and short; it
waves its tiny flowers in the wind, and sheds a
perfume more fragrant and delicious than can be

C3
LU

T .' V t ** "

A WOMAN FARMER

imagined. Every farm, as we pass it, has wooden
barns in proportion to its size and success. The
fields are divided by log fences, which the cattle
destroy with their horns; on the richer farms wire
fences are used, more useful and lasting if less
picturesque. I look at them idly. Suddenly I know
what I miss. It is the snug hedges of England,
where ragged robins are blooming now, and where
soon the hips and haws will shine bright red; the
hedges that grow so thick and high that the lanes
run like little damp avenues between. This country
is vaster, less closely partitioned. Over each small
station that we pass is clearly written its name, the
number of miles travelled since we left Montreal,
and the number yet to be run before we reach Ottawa.
I am bound for a farm of six hundred acres managed
by a woman. I have never known a woman farmer
before, and am not sure what to expect.

The train pulls up at Caledonia Springs, and my
hostess runs to meet me. I look at her with curiosity
which becomes interest; she has a knowledgable
face, and wears middle-age with that dignity which
comes of self-trust, moreover she is beautiful and
dresses becomingly. I am at ease in her company,
and she has the manner of the world ; as she enter-
tains me I realize that she has travelled far and
C2 35

A WOMAN IN CANADA

remembered much, a woman whose brain has not
yet ceased to grow, who has the charm of tmdis-
played experience in conversation.

After lunch we walk about the farm she talks to
herself rather than to me^ her enthusiasm is too great
to wait for questions.

" Come to the corn patch, I don't think any one
has a better crop," and we walk up the cart track,
with the grasshoppers flying before our feet. On
every side there are signs of careful farming here
and there heaps of compost, the ditches have been
cleaned, there are incredibly few weeds. Through
the wire gate we pass into the " corn patch," there
are sixteen acres of it and it looks like a young
forest ; under the tall spikes of feathery bloom and
green ribbon leaves we lose the sun and sky. It is
cool and fresh among the corn.

" It must average eight or nine feet," she says,
"and this is only the 25th of August. It will grow
much more yet, when the grain is nearly glazed it
will be cut for silage."

I am looking at the fat ears on the thick stalks,
each one tufted with a plume of pinky-green floss
silk turning brown. Each stalk has many ears, we
have no maize in England and this is the first time
I have seen it growing close.

A WOMAN FARMER

" What is silage ? " I ask. My ignorance weighs
upon me. " It is the same to this as hay is to grass,"
she answers. The whole stalk is cut into strips,
ears and all, and dried. The stalks are tender and
full of sugar. It is excellent for milch cows through
the winter months; nothing gives such a yield of
milk it smells delicious when it is cured. " Come
and see my alfalfa I was told I could never grow
it here, but I have six acres, next year I shall have
twenty. It is the best green fodder for cattle, and
ought to yield four crops in the year. It is sown
with a nurse-crop of barley or oats, next year it will
grow by itself."

We look at the alfalfa, which I recognize as
Lucerne grass, it shows bravely green among the
oat stubble ; I wonder at the yield on this hard clay
soil and say so.

"After each crop I water the fields with liquid
manure, that is how it is; I am making a very big
liquid manure pit with pumps and special tanks for
carrying it round; I use the peat which overlies all
the-nnreclaimed part of the farm for litter in the
stables and byres and piggery. It is a perfect
deodorizer and retains the liquid manure, making
a very valuable dressing."

I am astonished this rich and fertile land looks

A WOMAN IN CANADA

like anything but peat, but she points to the far
distance where a wide belt of smoke hangs in the
air, blotting out the horizon; for a long time I had
been idly admiring its beautiful blue when it drifted
against the green background of a grove of pines-
inexperience having failed to grasp the activity it
meant.

"There is more being reclaimed. The men are
harrowing the fire into the soil, sometimes the peat
is so deep that all the winter snows do not put it out ;
it smoulders, it never flames come and see."

We walk on and on, and presently I see a wonder-
ful picture. Up against pines and sky is the blue-
white smoke, half hidden in it is a team of bay
horses, through it comes the guiding cry of the man
who drives without a whip, beyond is barren land if
one could only see it, back where we have come lie
the rich fields hot with the August sun, in the dis-
tance is the dark irregular line of the Laurentian
Mountains. My companion speaks almost passion-
ately, " It is an indescribable joy, this turning of the
wild into fertile plains, I can never have enough of
it, I do not grudge one second of the work, hard
and exacting as it is, I am repaid a thousandfold
when my days and weeks of anxious care are borne
into blossom like this. When the peat is burned

A WOMAN FARMER

out, the soil has to be drained, after which there is
none more productive; in two years I have tile-
drained forty acres and reclaimed forty-five or fifty
as well." . . .

She talks eagerly, too fast for me to remember
half; chiefly I gather the knowledge that she is
wholly happy in her life, warm and proud in its
promise and results. I carry in my mind the picture
of that cultured woman, transplanted from the hectic
life of Paris and London to this healthy, busy land,
and my heart sings with praise of her and love of
her courage.

We walk back, past buckwheat just off bloom;
past a heavy crop of oats in shock with a fine catch
of clover underneath, past fields of aftermath richer
than many a first crop in the old country, past celery,
asparagus and melon-patch to the chicken-runs and
bee-butts. Looking at these last, standing near
thirty acres of clover in bloom, I know where came
the fragrant honey which has already pleased me so
much I only know one kind with a better flavour,
and that is the heather honey near Dartmoor in
Devonshire. The chickens are pure-bred, of differ-
ent strains, and, in fact, I found my hostess was as
particular about her stock as about her fields; a
herd of splendid cows come lowing out of the byre

A WOMAN IN CANADA

as we approach, thoroughbred Ayr shires, with some
crossed Jersey for dairy purposes. Inside we find
the bull, a sturdy rascal, long and flat of back, short
in the legs, a fine Ayrshire. He suffers my admira-
tion with perfect unconcern, and we pass on to look
at the silo, and the bins of food.

" Here are the scales I have all the food in
winter weighed and noted. I know how much each
cow eats and the cost of it ; her daily yield of milk
is weighed and tested every ten days to find the
amount of butter-fat to every pound of milk she
gives, every cow is numbered, and each one that
proves unlucrative is weeded out and a new selec-
tion made in her place." We got into the dairy, a
model of cleanliness and thrifty management but
I strike at the " root " fields and am too tired to even
look at the piggeries, though I love pigs. Truth to
tell, I am a little dazed, and I want to go indoors
and write away my bewilderment.

In my imagination swim two pictures, harrying
me with positive discomfort. I see all the clever,
good-looking women I know in London, scores of
them, wearing their futile lives away on the social
treadmill while here is such a life to be led in such
a country. What one woman has done others may

do. I wonder why they lack courage? It is a

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A WOMAN FARMER

wonder, not quite new-born, but growing stronger
with everything I see.

Caledonia Springs fills me with enthusiasm for
farming, and I go next to Ottawa to see the head of
the Experimental Farms, and learn what help the
Dominion Government extends to its settling
farmers. And when I reach Ottawa what a charm-
ing city it is ; beautifully spaced, built like a garden
city on the banks of two rivers, with fair streets,
well kept, linked by an excellent tram service.
Hanging over all the pretty houses, with their
verandahs and lawns, are the quaint, primitive tele-
graph poles, leaning drunkenly in every direction,
filling the alien heart with apprehension lest they
fall and devour the passer-by. Rockliffe Park,
which towers along the edge of the Ottawa River, is
a splendid public way, romantic and discreetly wild.
An air of the same picturesque savagery lurks in
the names, about the beautiful city, the Rideau Falls
like a curtain of pale water, the Chaudiere, the boil-
ing kettle, Lake Deschenes, edged with thick woods,
the lake of pines.

I wander about the town and like it. I like the
lawns round every house, that lie open and airy to
the pavement edge, unfenced, unhedged. I like the
perspective of roofs, "tiled" with painted wooden

A WOMAN IN CANADA

shingles, and oddly barren to a London eye of
chimney pots. I like the hospitable hearths that
offer me courteous welcome. I feel I am in a land
of distinctive character, not one which apes a civil-
ization it cannot yet afford; it has the dignity of
hard-won prosperity, and than that there is no
greater in the world. I am taken to see the Exhibi-
tion by earnest friends, who strive in every way to
rub the gloss off my English ignorance of Canada
and its resources, till I grow so weary with admiring
that we leave the vegetables, poultry, pigs and the
rest and walk back in the cool evening by the
Driveway, the most charming feature of Ottawa; it
is one of the things which I shall remember best
when I return to grey London, with its perspective
of young trees turning red and yellow, as I have
seen it so often in the evening before the stars had
driven away the sunset. I shall remember it because
the first night I arrived I sat out on the verandah of
my hostess's pretty house, and looked over the
Driveway to the shining water wondering at the
beauty of everything. It all seemed so serene and
nobly planned, so like a garden that played at being
a city, under the glamour of the sunset. That first
admiration has proved to be one of the few things
in life I am permitted to retain unspoiled ; neither

A WOMAN FARMER

daylight nor sunset, moonlight nor starlight has
made me lose or modify my first keen pleasure in
beautiful Ottawa.

I never appreciated the vastness of Canada until
I went to inspect the Experimental Farm at Ottawa.
Then I realized, almost with violence, the great area
of our colony, for here was a very large farm run
with an expensive staff for purely experimental
reasons; an enterprise which must involve a con-
siderable yearly outlay, which yet is continual!)
justified by the excellence of its work and the
certainty of its usefulness. The farm at the official
capital is the head farm of the system, the under
farms scattered about the Dominion are demonstra-
tive rather than tutelary. The Government supports
nine of them altogether, for besides this one there is
one in Nova Scotia for the three maritime provinces,
two in Saskatchewan, two in Alberta, one in Mani-
toba, one in British Columbia, and one at Lethbridge
for irrigation and dry farming experiments. Here
the farmers send their problems and difficulties ; here
the anxious settler sends his drinking water for
analysis; here the resources of the country are
weighed, considered and reported upon by skilled
experts. I am taken through one or two depart-
ments in detail, and learn in this way some of the

A WOMAN IN CANADA

work done by the farm. A very interesting hour was
that I spent in the company of Dr. Charles Saunders,
who is the cereal expert ; he is at present working to
discover the best grain for the west provinces.
There are new sections of the country continually
being opened up which are not thoroughly under-
stood, for these he breeds and tests grains untiringly.
So much of the prosperity of Canada depends on
her grain export that it is of the first importance that
the highest standard be maintained. The price of
wheat in Canada is the price of wheat in Liverpool,
less the cost of getting it there, and the best quality
only must find its way to Liverpool unless prices are
to drop. " Dr. Charles " has his own flour-mill on
the farm, and when he has bred a new variety of
wheat he proceeds to grind and bake it, so that he
may be sure of its goodness or badness from every
point of view. The patience needed for his work
is extraordinary; it takes from three to six years to
establish a type, provided he does not observe more
than half-a-dozen different characters. From the
baker's point of view the best wheat is that which
possesses the power to make a big loaf, chiefly con-
sisting of air, a large percentage of water, and very
little flour. To combine these excellent qualities
with a wheat as near as possible to the " Red Fife,"

A WOMAN FARMER

which is the standard wheat, but one which will
ripen earlier is what " Dr. Charles " is now trying
for. In barley the principal problem is to get stiff
straw, and in oats to get one that will thrash out
clean from the hull. In fact, he is aiming at getting
hull-less oats. When a new type is secured that pro-
mises well, small bags of the grain for seeding pur-
poses are sent out free of charge to the farmers.
Some of the best results have been obtained from
crosses with the wheat from India.

From the austere man who melts into enthusiasm
directly he touches his grain specimens I am taken
to see Dr. Fletcher, the entomologist, and the vital
importance of his branch of work in a fruit and
corn growing country even my urban intelligence
can detect. Here battle is waged against parasites,
blight, locusts, and every imagined insect or grub
which destroys or harms useful products. Like his
fellow-workers, Dr. Fletcher is heart and soul in his
work. " Here/' he says, " is a most useful beast ;
this is the parasite of the wheat aphis, which is the
great plague of wheat; the food supply is too
irregular for us to cultivate it, as fortunately the
wheat aphis does not appear every season, but the
knowledge of this parasite is a valuable factor in
allaying anxiety. A farmer distracted with fear sent

A WOMAN IN CANADA

us samples of grain the other day which were
obviously infected with dreaded plague. On close
examination we found our friend and ally, the
parasite, also in possession, and we were able to
assure him his crop was perfectly safe." As he
talks the Doctor shows me creature after creature of
every degree of grub hideousness, from the pink-
horned ash-tree sphinx to the loathsome vineyard
caterpillar. " It is our business/' he explains, " to
become aware of the time of danger to each crop
from each grub." l

I leave him looking at his lunar moths, absorbed
and content. I think the happiest men and women
in the world are the workers who love their work.

Dr. Saunders, senior, is waiting for me, dressed
all in furs like a woolly bear, with humorous, gentle
eyes. He is taking me to the apple-house, and tells
me on the way that his cross apples are increasing
in size. He is trying to breed out an apple that will
stand the north-western cold. It is being tried with
a cross of the hardy little crab-apple variety, and
results are promising well. One variety, indeed,
grew double as big this year, which is highly satis-
factory; he tells me too that one or two trees lived

1 Since that visit Dr. Fletcher has died. The work of this
famous entomologist has been of inestimable value to Canada.

A WOMAN FARMER

through the winter at Indian Head, and he will have
them grafted on stock and tested as soon as pos-
sible. We arrive at the apple-house, and I spend
half-an-hour learning names and habits of countless
fine established varieties of Canadian apples.
" Winter Rose/ 5 with its mauve bloom ; " Winter St.
Lawrence," streaked like a Provence rose;
" Fameuse," a little dry but a good traveller, and
one a dream of all good in an apple red and
shiny, white of flesh, embarrassingly juicy, with a
fine aroma and full, rich flavour. I ask its name and
learn it is the " Red Mackintosh." I shall always
think of that apple as the ideal.

Then we pass on to glance at the big Clydes and
the grades with Percheron blood in them, they have
just come into the stables and each teamster is
grooming his own team. We pass into Babel and
out again after a glimpse at the stout hogs. During
twelve or fourteen years the farm has bred up the
length of body in swine above the standard, and
now they sell one hundred and fifty to two hundred
pigs a year for breeding only. The " Improved Large
Yorkshire " are the hardiest and best liked, though
from a purely aesthetic point of view I confess to a
preference for the chubby Berkshires and tawny
Tamworths. In the byre I learn a new thing. I

A WOMAN IN CANADA

thought I knew every breed of cattle in the British
Empire, but here is one I never heard of, the
" Canadians." They are a distinct variety, bred
from the Normandy cattle, imported by the first
settlers two hundred years ago. There is a look of
Jersey in the black muzzles and points, but they are
bigger and darker; there is a good deal of red in
their tone; here and there, but seldom, a patch of
grey-white; they are hardy and have a heavy coat.
They are bigger than the Ayrshires, yielding milk
of the Ayrshire type, but richer and greater in
quantity. Unlike the Ayrshires they are built on
the dairy model. Herds of pure Ayrshires and
Guernseys make the byre a deeply interesting de-
partment. I learn of the experiments in feed con-
ducted to discover which gives the greatest yield of
milk; experiments of feed on the steers to discover
the quickest and most profitable methods of fatten-
ing. Dr. Saunders drives me round the arboretum
where experiments are conducted on the growth,
habit and use of trees and where hedges are grown
in every sort of material ; they are wanted for wind-
breaks in the West. And so it is in every depart-
ment, the experts are engaged in solving the riddles
of the settlers, in making it easy to obtain the best
results from the land, and the farmers receive all

A WOMAN FARMER

the benefits of the experimental farms free of charge.
I leave, deeply conscious that in such men and such
work lie the real strength and the great future of
Canada. In this tireless research is hidden rewards
beyond the dreams of noisy oratory or bubble fame ;
rewards which descend on children's children and
benefit nations. The agricultural education of
Canada is a thing to rejoice in flie Dominion
Government has webbed its people in a vast col-
legiate system. It begins with the rural schools,
dictated by the eminent educationalist Professor
James Robertson. He set it forth that " any system
of education which aims at, or proposes to help the
people who work on the farms, must be a system
that will help the elementary schools, where the
future men and women of the farm will get their
formal education."

The rural schools are fast giving place to the
consolidated schools, where agriculture is a promi-
nent study. To supply qualified teachers for this
reform in education, Sir William MacDonald pro-
vided the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph
with two institutions for the special purpose of edu-
cating teachers. In nearly every province is to be
found a large Agricultural College of which the one

at Guelph is the chief. The Farmers' Institute
D 49

A WOMAN IN CANADA

and the Experimental Farms just described will give
help in the vast network of agricultural education
which overspreads Canada.

The same day that I see the Experimental Farm
my friends, zealous for my education, take me from
the farm to a great timber-yard, but only a haze
of impressions is left on a brain already worn with
wonder ! It is a visit to be taken seriously, for
timber has made much of the wealth in Canada.
First, we go through a paper factory, where wood is
made into paper, and we acquire a fogged picture
of whirling wheels and relentless energy, of sawdust,
pulp, and noise incoherent, but very impressive.
From that into the timber-yard is like going from
the hot room to the hottest in a Turkish bath. Here
a demoniacal energy and intelligence possesses
everything. The tree-trunks, rushing down the
water-slides, toil through a succession of frantic
toilettes, which finally leave of them only sawdust,
match-wood or planks. We stand, fascinated,
watching iron hands of fiendish cunning seize the
great trees, and arrange them before the terrible
whirling blades that wait to devour; we see the
trolley holding the tree pass up and down before the
saw, and with every run a plank is cut as easily and
neatly as if it were bread.

A WOMAN FARMER

Big saws, little saws, in fact, all kinds of saws
there are ; all whirling, all noisy, all ready to devour
the men who work them as readily as the sweet-
smelling wood, which will never bear green leaves
again or grow towards the sun. Sick and dizzy with
the clatter, we pass over to the Chaudiere Falls,
which appear as a very Niagara to an English eye ;
a chaos of wild waters pouring eternally over the
rocks, and making a picturesque landmark for
visitors to Parliament Hill. We stand upon a wet,
worn plank that sways unpleasantly beneath the
feet, and get headaches with the noise of the Falls
and the nervous excitement of all we have seen in
the lumber-yard.

Beyond the city rise the Laurentian Mountains.
They are pointed out on the way back, silhouetted
against an amethyst sky. I, for one, look at them
with interest. I am going to them, to stay in a
little wooden house, with a butter-nut tree near by,
where the blue-birds build in spring. I shall stand
among the pines and hear the cow-bells ring when
the cattle come down the valley at milking-time.
I look, a little wistfully ; cities are good, but green
aisles are better, and silence best of all.

D 2

CHAPTER III

IN QUEBEC

THERE are little pink clouds round the moon,
which is as yet only a silver rim. On either side of
the rough road stretches rich land, heavy with corn
and pasture. We are riding into the West. Up
against the crimson sky rises the bold outline of
King's Mountain : that is where I am going, for a
week among the cedars and the pines.

I am looking forward to these next few days with
unfeigned joy, for they are to be spent with people
whom I know, in their country home; out of the
frigidities of officialdom into the warm heart of
friends. I must pause here and now to explain away
a carping sound in that phrase " frigidities of official-
dom," for there never were in all the world kinder
officials than those over here. Wherever I go I am
met with leniency, with abundant courtesy, with a
concentrated essence of attention. Only all the
officials of all time cannot offer, with all their
welcomes pressed together, one tithe of the joy

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Q.
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IN QUEBEC

to be gathered from the clasp of the hand of a
friend.

The road is very rough; where it is not inches
deep in dust it is jagged with rocky stones bedded
in the earth; or, more treacherous still, lying loose.
.We ride on a cautious rein; where we can find a
stretch of grass we canter, and the horses sniff
greedily at the piney wind.

We pass a tiny log-cabin : it looks old and bat-
tered. All round it is land that bears signs of
arduous toil well rewarded ; the very fences are made
of tree-roots, beyond the ploughed land the bush
grows thick. The farmers who ride with me rein
up and point, saying, "There is the log hut of a
settler." I look, deeply stirred.

Here came a brave man into the virgin woods;
here is the very cabin he built with infinite labour of
trees he himself cut down; the interstices of it he
caulked with moss or oakum, and then caked with
mud to stand the weather. The tiny garden is the
first clearing he made, and this fruitful land round
his rough homestead is the kingdom he has carved
himself. The broad fields that shine so fair under
the westering sun were once thick bush; every inch
has been won by earnest labour; each great root
in the fence of roots means an achievement of worth,

A WOMAN IN CANADA

for after the trees are felled there are the roots to be
taken out before the land can be ploughed, a very
troublesome job. I wonder if some loved woman
came with him to his work; if she helped him
gladly, and felt with him the primal joy of good
land earned by toil. I wonder if she stood with
him and watched the oats and corn come to harvest,
and if they had children who were happy in their
heritage. Or I wonder if he worked alone without
a mate !

I turn and glance furtively at my companions;
they ride straight on, the little log hut does not rouse
them to any great interest. It spells work and re-
ward all life here spells that, and they take both
for granted. The tiller of the soil owns the soil,
and the harder he works the better he is repaid.
The blood of pioneers runs in the veins of these
men, and they would not understand if I told them
how some savage instinct in me thrills and is pleased
with the order of their lives. I remember the squalor,
disease and alcoholism of English cities, and I look
at these narrow-minded, broad-chested, hard-work-
ing men with unstinted respect. Not entire admira-
tion, I admit, for the cultured brain is yet to come
the love of beauty in all its forms lies dormant.
[When they find time to tend their brains as well as

IN QUEBEC

they do their farms and factories, they will make a
splendid race.

The road winds on; now we begin to climb out
of the valley; a scarlet tanager flies across our path
like a patch of the sunset ; the air, which has vibrated
all day with the cry of grasshoppers, grows moment-
arily still. Very soon the crickets and frogs will
sing evensong, but for a little space there seems a
lull. The light is growing quickly less; there are
no twilights to speak of at this time of year; night
descends like a drop-scene and hides the beautiful
stage of the world. A cat-bird mews from the bush ;
the sumac-trees, with their chocolate plumes grown
eerily black, look like sentinel hearses; the Michael-
mas daisies, which have hung their pale purple mist
beside our path all the time, begin to glower, ghostly
wan; the evening primrose distils fine essences; our
horses sniff the end of their journey and toss their
heads. We pass a wayfarer; he is lighting the lan-
tern which will be his only street-lamp; we are on
the mountain road, away on our right twinkle a few
lights. A star glitters ahead of us ; it grows bigger ;
it is a star bowered in trees. The farmers, in whose
care I have ridden, point to it : " There is the house."

A few more moments and I am at a wooden house,
built on piles among maple-trees. A happy voice

A WOMAN IN CANADA

breaks upon my ears : " We thought you were never
coming. 55 I pass through the wire-netting doors to a
wonderful supper of fruit, corn-cakes and maple
syrup; then I sleep gloriously in the mountain air.

It is hard to understand how people suffer starva-
tion in England when there is this great Colony
crying for clever, industrious workers. We walk out
in the bright morning sunshine, and wild raspberries
are brushed to the earth by our skirts as we pass, the
crab-apple tree is bowed down with its load of fruit ;
the beech-nuts and the butter-nut trees give proof of
their plenty in the chattering of squirrel and chip-
munk; the stone we stumble over is a beautiful
green-and-pink thing of crystals; it is phosphate-
invaluable for manure ; near it lies a little sheet of
yellow glass. I pick it up. " It looks like the talc
they face some of the motor veils with in the old
country/ 5 I muse. " It is mica, 55 answers my pretty
hostess; "there seems to be a vein of it wherever
that pink rock lies. The ground is full of it. 55

One day we go to the top of King's Mountain,
and look across the Ottawa River to the miles of
cornland and pasture, wrested from luxuriant bush
which gives such a pleasing aspect to Canadian
scenery. Away on our left the Parliament Build-
ings brood over the capital city. We can dimly see

IN QUEBEC

them through a blue haze of smoke; there on the
flank of the mountain lies a pretty mere, shaped
like a tennis racket, and dotted with boats and boat-
houses. On the way down we meet a young man
and woman of such typical beauty that I am roused
to interest. She is a supple, well-built creature, with
red-brown hair drawn demurely back Pompadour-
wise from her brow ; her eyes are gentle and set far
apart ; her mouth is compassionate ; the man beside
her is tall and slim, with the long, dark face and
stormy eyes which go in this country with a trace of
Indian blood. He is extraordinarily handsome ; they
make a very pleasant pair. They walk up the long
green aisle of trees, and the girl carries a large bunch
of maidenhair and wild orchids, which she had
gathered on the way up the mountain. " They look
like a bridal pair coming to some primeval altar," I
say. " Are they betrothed ? " My hostess looks at
them kindly. " No, poor children, they would like
to be, but her people will not permit it, as he is a
Roman Catholic." I am saddened by this glimpse
of strong cross-currents in the seeming even flow of
the country life; and I realize again with force how
powerful is the French-Canadian element. The
shores of the Ottawa River beyond Lake Deschenes
are lined with rich homesteads, owned by Mac-

57,

A WOMAN IN CANADA

donalds and Macgregors and every kind of Mac,
who are all Roman Catholics, and only speak
French !

Such a housewife as Nan is, to be sure ! " A place
for everything, and everything in its place " is never
spoken, but always practised. After a day or two I
myself develop strange leanings to order, and am
pleased beyond expression to find a match with
its head off under the upturned glass on my wash-
stand. I tidy it up neatly, wondering at Meg; I
remember having spied it before and leaving it for
Meg or Aunt Phoebe to spread their passionate tidi-
ness upon. At lunch I am swept by a domestic
monsoon.

" Phoebe dear, you must have dusted it off."
" I don't think so, my dear, no, I don't think so."
Meg looks at slim little old Phoebe with pity. The
quavering voice repeats denial. Such a musical old
voice, sweet and tremulous; it belongs to the ivory
face and beautiful hair. I will not mind being old
if I can have such soft white hair, all garnered into a
silken knob.

" No, I saw it and left it. I am sure I did. But

my memory is going. I don't think I dusted it off."

"It" proves to be the match. A housewifely

device of Nan's to drain the tooth-glass dry. I

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Otto the Guide at Leanchoil

IN QUEBEC

behead another and put it back under the rim of my
glass, full of a remorseful knowledge that any
attempt to tidy in this household is painting the
lily, perfuming the rose.

They work unostentatiously but ceaselessly, these
two dear women, at the daily grind of cooking, wash-
ing up, dusting, sweeping. Servants are hard to get in
Canada, and when found very expensive, ill-trained
and independent. Every clever good-looking woman
who comes over marries almost at once. The wives
of Canada seem to take it for granted that they shall
be mistress and servant in one, and very excellently
they do their work. The days wear by in peaceful,
happy dreaming. I sit beneath the maple-tree where
cat-birds mew and squirrels flash from bough to
bough, trying to unravel a tangle of notes and
plan a more definite method of record for the rest
of my journey. Meg and Phoebe slip noiselessly
about the house, and at eventide, with a great hub-
bub of rejoicing, we go along the road to meet
Gaston, who comes in every day from his office.
"Has he brought the can of maple syrup," we
wonder, " and has he a letter from Guy " the singer
son beloved and only, in New York.

After dinner we all wander round the moor look-
ing at the blue of the jumper bushes, laughing when

A WOMAN IN CANADA

we pass the little marsh where I was to be taken to
see the flags blooming if I were not satisfied with
the flowers in Canada ! There are no flags now,
those are all over, but the frogs croon pleasantly, and
a wealth of later flowers ridicules my old complaint.
We wander away into the bush and look at a neigh-
bouring farmer's mica mine ; he has probably found
a fortune on his land, the land he has been tilling,
and his fathers before him, content to make a modest
livelihood. He is not at all hysterical about the
discovered ore ; he works it, with his sons to help, in
odd hours, and not on an extensive scale. In be-
tween the work necessary to keep the established farm
in good working order they blast away the pink stone,
and take out the shining layers of crackling stuff.
Even working so, at such comparatively trifling cost
of time, they took out a load last week which sold for
1700 dollars (340). It is a sane and sensible way
to make the most of the property. If the mica fails
there is the farm, but if the vein is as rich as it
promises there will be the accumulated money gained
by this slow work to finance bigger operations by
and by. We stand at the edge of the pit and look
down at its glistening sides. There is great silence
in the bush, no one is at work here to-day; Gaston
is in his happy hunting mood, and chatters delight-

IN QUEBEC

fully of his adventures with moose and caribou.
While I listen I handle his gun with reverence ; he
has it for sure it is early, but bears have been
known to come down earlier from the mountains.
As we go back through the sudden dusk with Aunt
Phoebe flitting like a pale night moth before us, I
wonder how I can ever tell in whatsoever words the
beauty of this lovely country, the romantic simplicity
of its life.

There is a little sadness in my wondering. To-
morrow is Saturday, and on Monday I take the west-
ward track of my journey. I hate to leave, and tell
them so. Gaston cheers me up by saying Saturday is
a holiday, so he will not go into the city to-morrow,
and promising to take me for a walk.

:< To-morrow." Gaston is in his tiresome mood, or
at least Meg says he is. He wanders about the kitchen
talking politics, and she says they are no relation to
jam. I am trying to write on the verandah; the
" Conditions of Canada from a Woman's Point of
View" mingle with the sounds that creep through
the wire-netted door. Gaston is dogmatizing about
the " communal assets," whatever they are, and Meg
is punctuating his theories with " two Ibs." " three
Ibs."- -" how many pounds will three times three-
quarters make? " As his voice sinks into a judicial

A WOMAN IN CANADA

drone I hear her declare in exasperation that she has
forgotten how much sugar is already in the pot. A
thrill of sympathy urges me into the fray.

"Take me for that walk, Gaston," I beg. "Let
us see if Dandy's apples are fit to pick ! "

We leave Meg troubled, like Martha, about many
things, and start forth on the mountain road. With
our faces to the sunset he forgets politics and talks
delightfully about golden orioles, scarlet tanagers,
cherry-birds and brown threshers never was such
an observer of the quiet, sweet ways of Nature,
never was a man less inclined to speak of what he
knows. We dawdle along, stopping now and then
to " pop " the seed-vessels of the wild orchids, or
coax a squirrel to chatter from his leafy porch. We
are going to admire Dandy's orchard, the best in the
country-side, I am told, and when I see it I can well
believe it an apple-orchard in the spring is a lovely
sight indeed, but it has its merits in the autumn. As
we draw near Jack spies a tuft of hair in a barbed
wire fence, and thereupon sets up such a frantic
whimpering that his master guesses he has smelt
bear.

" It must be pretty fresh," he adds, watching the
antics of the dog, who is sniffing round in circles
and finally races up the road. We examine the tuft,

and he says it's bear all right

IN QUEBEC

"I promised to send two wire-haired fox terriers
to Otto the guide at Leanchoil," I say, brooding over
the scraggy hair. " That's the place for sport ! I
can't think why people don't come out to Canada
every year and get real shooting, instead of hiring a
moor and playing at it in Scotland. Otto wants big-
dogs; he is going to train them for bear-tracking I
don't know if I shall find him what he wants."

Gaston snorts disapproval.

"We would be much wiser to get beagles like
Jack. He is the kind for bear ! "

My respect for the little busybody yapping in the
far distance goes up with a leap.

"What's his measure?" I ask.

" He's fifteen inches; too big for show, but splen-
did for work. He has no "

Suddenly Gaston falls on hands and knees, and
grovels ecstatically over the soft mud.

-" By Jove ! he's a big fellow. Look here."

I also grovel, and suffer an indescribable thrill
at the sight of the big fresh spoor. For the first time
in my life I am close to bear; the mark is exactly
like the sketches that wander about the margins of
Seton-Thompson's book in my library in London.
I would know it anywhere the flat heel, the break,
the spread claws further on. We measure with a
stick, and Gaston says it's a good ten inches. We

A WOMAN IN CANADA

notch the stick to verify the measurement later, and
I listen with all the reverence of green inexperience
while Gaston begins Sherlock-Holmesy descriptions
of the doings of the bear within the last few hours.
His keen eyes are shining, his interest is so keenly
centred on the spoor that when Dandy hails us from
the orchard, our goal for so long, he starts like a
frightened child !

" Here, you ! " says the voice, " come and help
drive. Have you a gun, Gaston? The dog is on
the track of that big fellow."

Gaston starts at a run so do I up the road, into
the orchard, with the grasshoppers flying tempest-
uously before our feet, crushing sweet odours from
juniper and wild asters in our way; Dandy has his
'303, and is full of sympathy when he 'sees our empty
hands. He offers it to Gaston, who magnanimously
says he will beat, babbling tales of the damage his
orchard has lately sustained from the big fellow.
We try to get another gun, but only find a single shot
'22 which Gaston sniffs at, but which I thankfully
carry in a pathetic belief that even a pop-gun were
better than nothing. Away in the bush Jack is giv-
ing tongue, and his deep note is so like the familiar
sound of an English foxhound that I have a mental
picture of a harried bear scudding across country

IN QUEBEC

with a pack of one beagle scudding in the rear, and
ourselves, a field of three, scudding a long way
behind. A ridiculous picture. It jostles in my
imagination as I run beside Dandy, and I feel I
would hardly be surprised to see the bush open out,
to find this heavy going yield to the satin smooth-
ness of Doctor's stride over the heather and furze
and bracken of far-away Devonshire ! We are near-
ing the sound suddenly I realize that this moment
means neither heather nor fox, but bush and bear.
... I look at Dandy; he is quite happy, peering
earnestly in every direction, and listening atten-
tively; Jack is kicking up a fearful fuss somewhere
close I stare in the direction of the sound, and am
all at once unceremoniously tugged to the ground.

" Hide ! Quick ! "

We crouch behind a shrub Dandy examines his
gun, and I curse the nasty feeling, like toothache,
which pervades the hiatus between ribs and hips.

" See where he is ? " says my companion.
Cautiously I look ahead. There is a big black bear
shambling away; Jack, in a state of violent excite-
ment, is making occasional darts at his quarters ;
every now and then the bear stands up and lays back
his little ears, inviting the enemy to " come on " with

a snarling growl and an ugly display of teeth. As
E 65

A WOMAN IN CANADA

he gets away we come out of hiding and follow on.
I begin to realize the plan of campaign; Gaston has
gone round to head the bear back to us and Jack's
importance in the game is great. The gallant little
chap knows perfectly well what he is about, harrying
and delaying the big brute, whose one idea is to
shake off this tiresome pestilence at his heels and
retire up the mountain to digest his stolen apples.
With a marvellous regard for opportunity and dis-
tance, Jack snaps again and again between knee and
heel, leaping back three or four feet to safety after
each bite ; my blood warms with admiration this is
the kind of dog for Otto the guide at Leanchoil !
Suddenly we duck again behind a bush. The bear is
coming our way, he has seen Gaston. Dandy takes
the little '22 from me roughly and presses his gun
into my scared hands.

" Wait till he gets to the clear place and rears
then shoot straight take a fine sight."

The burly mass crushing towards us through the
undergrowth swims for a second in a haze of terror-
then he rears ; mechanically I aim, mechanically fire
and then push the gun back to Dandy. The bear
tosses his head as though he had been flicked in the
face by a whip, and then puts it down to the ground
and turns a complete somersault, just as I have seen

IN QUEBEC

his performing brothers do in circuses. For one
swelling instant I fancy I have killed him then he
comes straight for us, swift and wicked. At his heels
is Jack the indefatigable. In frank terror I turn to
flee he rears again, bleeding and furious. A ping
and a thud the soft welcome thud of stricken flesh
and he kneels over slowly, grudgingly. Dandy,
the wary old hunter, cool and deadly steady, has
given him the straight shot.

Gaston comes up and tells his adventures over the
corpse, then we tell ours, Dandy politely offering
me the skin, which I refuse with a heartache I know
very well I have not earned it I neither found, nor
drove, nor killed him. Besides, it is a very poor
skin. By and by we drag him head foremost to the
edge of the bush (not a light task, as he must weigh
300 Ibs.), and there we leave him for Dandy to fetch
with a horse and cart.

The sun is sinking behind the mountain as we
turn towards home ; Jack trots after us with wagging
tail and weary lolling tongue. As we draw near we
see Meg smiling on the verandah, and in the lighted
kitchen behind her stand pots of jam in rows and
rows to cool.

* * * * * *

I was talking about Gaston's bear to some one on

E2 67

A WOMAN IN CANADA

the tram one day, and he said he had heard a much
finer bear story from a friend in British Columbia
which I privately thought very possible and he
said his friend's letter was worth having. He sent
me a copy, and I reproduce it. Here, then, are two
bear stories, one in English fashion, one in trans-
atlantic

"Well, Mac, the white ducks are quite plentiful
at present, we have four for dinner; the geese and
mallards are all gone. The clams are quite plentiful
too, so you see we are living on the best. But what
I want to tell you is that you are not a judge of swift
bears any more. Alfred and I killed one the other
day that was so swift that high velocity is a slow
word compared to that bear. I think this one is a
new breed that you never studied about.

' You see the kid and I were out gathering a few
white fellows at the head, and managed to get a few,
when the kid spied Mr. Bear, and said, ' See the
little bear ? ' so we rowed up to the shore, and brave
as a lamb I gets out of the boat and walks up to
Mr. Bruin and lets him have it a couple of times in
the face ; it was then that he realized that something
was going to be doing, it did not take long either.

" Well, he started in my direction, and I had the

same idea as he had, and I started in the same direc-

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IN QUEBEC

tion (no chance for an argument), but I was a little
ahead, and when I started I was on the level, so I
had no trouble in keeping the lead, because every
time Fd look back he was just crawling out of one of
the tracks I made, and that would give me a chance
to shoot again and go on (brave boy). When we
got pretty close to the water with the race, the kid
saw things were getting interesting for yours truly,
and thought he'd make a flank movement on the
enemy; so on he came with the (hoolet) run and
'22 rifle in hand, and took deliberate aim and potted
Mr. Bear square in the eye and knocked it out (good
shot, eh !).

"Well, the bear could only see on one side, and
he started to circle (this is where the speed is); when
he commenced to go around we could see one bear,
after a while two bears appeared, then three bears,
and after a while they looked like one big long bear.

" Well, at first when he began to circle it was quite
a job to hit him because we had to shoot at the single
bear.

" But after he looked like one long bear all we had
to do was to shoot at the circle, and the shot that
missed him on the near side he was always surely
around on time to catch it on the other (you see, I
was using the shot-gun and fine shot). Sometimes he

A WOMAN IN CANADA

had to side-step to keep from running himself
down.

"Well, after he ran for a while the circle had a
gap in it that showed the weight of shot was begin-
ning to tell, because we certainly poured it into him ;
and when he died we were unable to take him home
that night, so the next morning the three of us went
after him, and were just able to move him, and
thought that too much work and left him ; and when
the tide came in we took the gasoline launch Queen
up and run her nose in the mud and hitched the
little anchor chain on him, which was plenty strong
enough, and then we started the gypsy to work and
hauled him in and took him out to deep water. Then
to skin him we were going to hang him on one of
the davits, but when the weight came on the boat she
listed till the guard-rail dipped water.

" Well, to take the hide off the son-of-a-gun we had
to use a cold chisel and tin shears on account of so
much lead in him. He's nice and tender to eat, but
all the meat has got to be fried to get the lead melted
out of it, and at one frying of meat enough lead is
melted to make a jig-hook (you wouldn't have to
burn your fingers now melting lead).

" He was very fat, but the fat is very heavy on the

stomach because there is so much lead mixed in it.

IN QUEBEC

"Alfred has grown so much since he made the
famous shot that the other day he was going to take
a swim, but couldn't find deep enough water in Port
Neville Harbour to float him.

ff Well, Mac, if I were to tell anybody else about
that bear they'd think I was lying, but you know me
too well to even stop to think.

" I'll tell you more about the bear when I come
home; give me more time to think,

" Your old, etc. 5 '
# * * * * *

I like that bear story.

CHAPTER IV

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

I AM trying to do two things at once, and doing
neither well. One eye is fixed on the end of the
avenue watching for " Jimmy's " cart to appear, and
the other is entertained with the impudence of a chip-
munk which is gambolling at my very feet, having
made up his mind, after a good deal of soul-search-
ing, that I am a harmless by-product of literature,
and in no way designed for his discomfiture. My
host and hostess are down at the well; last week
they had it cleaned, and in the process traces of
copper and mica were discovered; every day, since
then, they have made a pilgrimage to the well, hunt-
ing among the debris for fair-sized samples to be
sent away for analysis. I know what they are saying,
though I cannot hear them dear things ! He is tell-
ing her of the good time he will give her if they find
ore in their land, and she is saying he could not give
her a better one if they had a million dollars a
minute. They have been married twenty-seven

years, and still have the hearts of children. The cat-

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

bird mews on from the maple overhead, down the
valley the cow-bells tinkle the world glows so still
and fair in this dewy morning-tide that if it were not
selfish I could wish they would find no mica, and live
their Arcadian life for ever in this happy little wooden
house on the mountains. But the soil is full of phos-
phates they may easily find their mica; Canada
is teeming with undiscovered riches, and the ro-
mances of sudden wealth are very common.

I see the pair-horse rig coming, heralded by a
vast column of dust; there has been no rain for two
weeks, and very little before that, so the heavens
and earth and very brooks seem to have turned to
dust. The chipmunk scuttles frantically into his
underground nest, the geologists rush up from the
well, and I kiss them with fervent good-bye. I
scramble into the seat with luggage like a barricade
around me, and set forth in the pillar of dust for
Ottawa. I am going to catch the midday western
train, and I am curious both as to the pleasures or
otherwise of a long train journey in this country.
We arrive at the Central Station far too early, and I
spend the best part of a very hot hour studying a
poster issued by the Canadian Pacific Railway offer-
ing special rates to harvesters, and stating that
25,000 are needed on the western wheatfields. Yet I

A WOMAN IN CANADA

know perfectly well that next winter in the London
dailies will be raised the usual " Emigrant's Bitter
Cry," engineered by the trade-unionists to keep men
from coming out and making labour cheaper. We
shall read of the destitution and suffering of Eng-
lishmen in Canadian cities who have been lured out
by big promises and failed to get work on landing;
we shall be told of this starving case and that starv-
ing case, but not of the existence of this poster, nor
of the high wages men can earn who are willing to
work on the land.

The English emigrant seems to be generally an
urban, and it appears to me that the worker in cities
for the needs of cities is likely to be idle in a land
where cities hardly exist. If the skilled worker in
cities goes out to a land of few and small cities, pre-
pared to dig trenches in the streets rather than turn
himself back to the soil, the mother of health and
giver of wealth, he has small right to a hearing when
he utters his " bitter cry." The point should be not
to ventilate the failure of the unfitted who have gone
to a new country and refused to adapt themselves to
its needs (though that is deplorable enough), but to
insist widely and tirelessly on the kind of immigrant
likely to succeed in Canada. Here is this magnifi-
cent colony of ours, this land of wood and water,

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

mountain and plain, crying for hands to gather the
wealth from its thousands of miles of fruit-bearing,
ore-bearing, wheat-bearing, lumber-bearing soil, and
here are the few hundreds of town-bred and trained
men who, when they are put on the farms, will not
stay there, raising the " Emigrant's Bitter Cry." It
gives one to weep ! It affects the mental attitude of
the Canadians to the mother country; they are
beginning to judge of England by the men she
sends out who "will not stay on the farms."

I have succeeded in growing very interested in
the whole social problem that surges between this
green poster and the "hunger-marchers" I saw just
before I left England, in Surrey en route for Lon-
don interested in the problems of the noise and
fuss they raise in the demand for work, and the
scorn the bitter, hideous scorn with which they
are regarded as workers here when they do come
out when the clang of a great bell tells me the
Winnipeg train is coming, and I hurry off to " check "
my baggage. Canada is far ahead of us in luggage
arrangements, and behind us in her telegraph
system; but I am wandering. There is so much to
say about everything that I keep forgetting what I
meant to say when I began the chapter.

1 find my " sleeper," booked two days ago because

A WOMAN IN CANADA

of the press of travel, and start forth on the journey.
The first day proves almost unbearable by reason
of the heat and dust; the windows have to be kept
shut because the dust penetrates and defiles every-
thing ; the platform at the rear of the train is quickly
deserted by even the most ardent lover of air, for
it is impossible to be cooled by a draught which is
laden with sand and coal-cinders. But with evening
comes comfort; the stifling heat abates, the green
world moving past our windows begins to glow with
the tender lights of a brilliant sunset which has
merged into dusk the short, quick dusk of these
latitudes overhead swings a young moon, and life
renews itself in our veins. After dinner the car is
transformed into a dormitory with a long green lane
in the middle between the discreet curtains which
give a sort of privacy to sleep. I make for my
number, and am greatly perplexed at the way all
books and writing materials, not to mention the
necessary dressing-case, have disappeared. I find
them at last stored neatly in odd corners, and then
discover a big paper bag hanging by the window,
taking a lot of room and nothing whatever to do
with me. I hunt for the nigger conductor and deliver
it back to him with offensive honesty. He is very
nice about it. It contains my hat ! The bags are pro-

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

vided by a kindly Company to save them from the
ravages of dust. My sleeping berth proves luxur-
ious, and I am rocked into instantaneous delicious
slumber by the easy motion of the train.

In the morning I learn for the first time in my
life the real fascination of train travelling. Rain
in the night has laid all dust, a brilliant breeze scuds
by, we are nearing the shores of Lake Superior, the
country is wonderful in its wild beauty; here are
mountains clothed in pine and cedar like Pisgah's
self, here a deep ravine with a clear bright river
swirling through, there a lake fringed with rushes,
here a patch of meadowsweet, here a crag green with
ferns, there a pool so deeply, clearly brown that one
smells peat only to look at it !

Everything pleases, even the blue glass in-
sulators on the telegraph posts are one with the
landscape, though I privately entertain a great con-
tempt for telegrams in Canada. I keep the rear plat-
form despite the breeze which is growing chilly ; we
draw up at intervals and perform, I suppose, some
engineering duties at such times. At one I watch
the patient faces of innumerable oxen on a cattle
train bound east; they seem at peace with their
estate and unsuspicious of the future; at another I
am entertained to see a couple of platelayers making

77.

A WOMAN IN CANADA

a hearty dessert on wild raspberries gathered by
the track. At last a stoppage comes, when it is borne
in on me that I have been looking at freight-car
10,670 for a very long time I know its "inside
length" is 32 feet 6 inches, its "inside width" is 8
feet, its " inside height " 6 feet 4 inches ; I know its
" capy." is 40,000 Ibs., its " tare " 27,000 Ibs. ; I know
it has 7 rungs on its iron ladder, and I know the
exact shape of the little iron pocket for an address
label. It strikes me we are staying a very long time
at this wooden house which pretends to be the station
of a township, and is really only a lonely little house
in the bush where the single rail doubles for a few
hundred yards. I learn in due course that there has
been a freight collision ahead of us, and that we
have to wait until the line is cleared also that it
may take all night. We get off and walk about,
some of us climb below the track and come back
laden with sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, which
make a brilliant display on the dining-tables. We are
delayed ten hours over that little mishap ; and I am
glad indeed to hear next morning that this is Lake
Superior, and we are making good time for Winni-
peg. As I look at the splendid bays with big billows
breaking on a rocky coast, it takes me several minutes
to realize that these are the shores of an inland lake,

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

that the dark waves curling and breaking over rocks
are fresh-water waves, that all the wide expanse of
white-crested water out to the far horizon is not in-
deed the sea. If I had happened on this scene sud-
denly without knowing how I got there, I would
have thought I was at Bude or Penzance or Scilly,
but never on the border of Lake Superior.

I am sitting by the big window watching the young
moon that swings overhead when we draw up at Jack
Fish I look at her wondering if I have ever seen
her so wild and shy in little trim-hedged garden
England when a noisy merry party of sunburnt
fishermen board the car. A young boy, a tall, white-
lashed, red-headed athlete, and a burly middle-aged
man with the interesting guarded face of the man of
the world who has grown, despite himself, into a
philosopher. They are very particular about some
snow-shoes they have brought with them, and talk to
the conductor about them. He examines them
minutely with deep interest. Later on, when it is
too dark to watch the passing landscape, the con-
ductor asks me if I would like to hear the tale of a
fishing trip, which, of course, I say I would, and
thank him for troubling about me. The white-
lashed athlete then comes and sits with me for an
hour or so, telling me a camping tale that makes me

A WOMAN IN CANADA

envious beyond belief. His graphic slow method !
I wish I could reproduce it; and the pale light of
his lashes as he sometimes lifted his eyes heavily
to find if I were bored or interested. Here is his
story, nearly in his own words

" The Doctor and the Young 'un and I have been
fishing Mountain Lake where Steel River flows out
of the lake ; we had four Indians as guides, a squaw
to cook for us, two canoes a big and a little and
five tents. The lake is deep set among the moun-
tains, with a sort of under-radiance glowing from its
waters. We were too late for more than fixing up
camp when we arrived at Mountain Lake, and we
sat watching the Indians make camp preparations
while the Doctor gave us long dissertations on any
and every variety of fly, telling us we would have
been wise to bring some more Montreals, and that
Red Palmers were not going to help us any. He
thinks he knows a lot about flies. The air was aro-
matic with the perfume of balsam, for the Indians
cut down young balsam saplings about fifteen feet
high, and make of the flat, scented boughs mattresses
more springy and comfortable than any you have
ever slept on, I'll bet. I asked the Doctor what
country lay beyond us, and he said no man knows.
Only one man, an old French-Canadian trapper, had

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

been known to go so far, and he had never been
heard of since. We speculated as to his fate, and
then Joe Eskimo, our head guide and interpreter,
was called and questioned. He said the Trapper
went away from Jack Fish two years ago to find the
falls which tradition places away up Steel River;
he was a ' very strong man, and very ignorant in all
but matters of his trade, could not read or write,
or even tell the time by the clock/ this from Joe,
with a ridiculous gleam of superiority in his harsh
eyes.

" On the morrow, and for the four following days
we fished up and down stream; we learned the
Young J un and I for the first time in our life, what
is it to have a perfect river, perfect weather, perfect
sport. We learned, too, that the Doctor was right;
the purple fly was best. We landed enough speckled
trout daily to feed the eight of us three times a day
(it was the only meat we had), splendid fellows they
were, anything from two to seven pounds. We got
another variety, too, which I believe in my heart
were rainbow trout, but the Doctor was very obstinate
about it; he said they were steel-head salmon, and
that a lot of them have been put in Lake Superior;
he says he once caught two in Current River, and
he knows. But I still think they were rainbow.

F Si

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Late on the fifth day we were waiting for the Young
'un, who as usual was last to finish as he was always
first to begin I never met any one in my life so
silent or so keen ; I remember how the light was on
his hair, and how the curious faint trouty smell
floated up from the creel ; the two impressions were
hovering idly in my mind, jostling each other incon-
gruously, when the Doctor turned to us sharply

" ' Say, are you game to go up Steel River to-
morrow ? '

"We thought it over. It was in the nature of
exploring, this was strange country that no man knew.
When we said we would he went off to talk it over
with Joe Eskimo, who was perfectly certain to agree
to anything that might mean ' two fingers/ These
Indians are extraordinary; they are not allowed to
buy whisky, but they will work harder and longer
for a single tot than your British workman will shout
for work and that is saying much. There is no
limit to what you can ask of them if they see ' two
fingers ' at the end of the day."

I sit back in the cushioned seat wondering at the
story, at the teller, at his detail, his phlegm, his assur-
ance. The Young 'un is fidgeting, and every now
and then correcting some trifling inaccuracy. They

seem like men who are unused to describing and fear

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

to mis-state. The voice drones on, level, uninspiring;
I take to watching the speaker and the Young 'un,
and wondering if the Doctor ever got bored on the
fishing trip. It is good to have some one to speak
to, however, and I am less critical than grateful,
although the narrative bids fair to lack interest.

" So we broke camp next morning and began to
paddle up the river, which lies, I believe, about 150
miles east of Port Arthur. There was an Indian at
the bow and stern of each boat, and we were making
good way when we were stopped by a long jamb
about two miles up; it was a fine accumulation of
years, and there was nothing for it but to portage
round. The Indians do the work in portaging; they
take a pack-strap across the forehead, so arrang-
ing that they carry nearly the whole weight on the
neck; they will take in that way 300 to 400 Ibs.
apiece. We blazed a trail as we went, for the bush
was virgin ; only once all the way did we see second
growth, where had been a bush fire. The trees were
fine, mostly evergreens, spruce, hemlock, balsam,
tamarack, poplar and balm of Gilead on the river-
bank in the sand was the track of countless game;
the Doctor sat in judgment on us while we diagnosed
the marks without help from the guides. At last he

told us that the big print like that of an enlarged
F2 83

A WOMAN IN CANADA

ox meant moose (it is an especially easy one be-
cause a moose bends down in the fetlocks and leaves
the print of his dew-claw) having learned so much
we were then able to surmise that the mark as long
but narrower meant caribou, and the little one, more
like a goat, meant red deer; bear, too, was there, we
saw bear-marks on the trees sometimes six feet high,
and we saw tracks of fox and beaver and wolves in
plenty.

' If we were on a hunting trip now/ said the
Doctor, * we would have a splendid time ; but we
aren't. We had better do what we came for, as there
are only two guns among the lot of us/

" I did get a shot in spite of this wisdom, but that
was only by luck. After negotiating that wearisome
jamb and encountering a belated mosquito in the
woods, we travelled up-stream and met the finest
sport of our trip. The trout were not so many,
perhaps, as lower down, but beauties, so large and
so game. We got out on the rocks, and the wide
river gave us an easy sweep; once we stopped our
work to watch the Young 'un, who had forty minutes'
grand struggle with a little chap; three times he
leaped a good five feet like a flexible bar of silver,
and as many times he shot off forty feet or so while
he held him, to our indescribable excitement, for his

03
O
I

'bD

"51
CD

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

line was getting short. It was a lesson to watch him,
so slim and cool out there on the rock, playing that
angry little fish he never got excited, always kept
cool."

At this panegyric I survey the Young 'un. He
betrays no embarrassment. The story chants on.

" We were infinitely more elated than he when at
last he brought to land a shiny, speckly, broken-
hearted little three-pounder. The river winds there
like the coils in a motor engine ! We told each
other that we would camp by the granite bluff that
looked about half-a-mile off, but we went on and on,
it never got nearer, and after the Doctor declared
we had done ten miles and we were roused to say
fifteen, the bluff was still ' a quarter of a mile ' away.

" Early next morning we set off in the canoes
determined to locate that rock before we started to
fish the wind blew fresh and chill in our faces; I
was sitting in the big canoe just behind the bow
Indian, and mounting guard over the shot-gun and
rifle that made our modest equipment. As we turned
a bend in the river I saw the bow's hand reach to
the guns; he touched the shot-gun his eyes were
fixed ahead and I instantly took the rifle and
looked round. Quite close a big bull moose was
running up the bank, evidently he had heard our

A WOMAN IN CANADA

voices, for the Doctor, as usual, was making a lot
of noise, but had been unable to fix us because the
wind was blowing away from him. Some one
shouted c Get him in the head/ and I promptly shot
over him, a dowdy thing to do ; at the unusual sound
he stopped dead, and I sent the next bullet straight.
He toppled into the water, and the swift current
caught him, kicking vigorously, whirling him towards
our canoe ; we were horribly scared, for he weighed
about a thousand pounds, but he passed with six
feet to spare, and sank almost at once in a deep
pool. The Indians said he would not rise for two
or three days, but presently Joe Eskimo shouted
from the small canoe, which was behind, that they
had got him they towed him to shore, where he was
skinned in due course, and the guides feasted riot-
ously on moose-steak. The Doctor pretended he
liked it better than trout, of which, to tell the truth,
we were all getting a little sick, but I think I would
sooner eat warm indiarubber myself. It might be
better if it were hung a while, but there's no know-
ing. After that it began to rain; we proceeded a
little less noisily, and at last passed the bluff with
which we had been playing hide-and-seek. The
thought of our warm blankets securely travelling in
the waterproof sheets consoled us as we sat shiver-

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

ing in the wet, thinking how presently we would be
snug and warm and laughing again. Suddenly the
bow Indian turned round with a cross click in his
throat; we looked ahead another log jamb. The
sight sapped our energies, we could never portage
all round that in the rain, so said we would just
camp there. We drew into the gravel bank, and as
we grew near I saw a decrepit canoe close to the
debris, turned upside down. I pointed it out; the
Doctor and Joe went to look at it, and then Joe said
he knew it; it belonged to the trapper who went
away two years ago. We were all very interested,
and wondered if we could find the man; he would
be full of information about the country by this time.

" Presently we saw a trail in the bush, and with
one accord we followed it for about a hundred yards
into the wilderness; there we saw a little clearing,
and in the middle a log hut."

I sit up, the Young 'un has stopped fidgeting, I
feet at last we are near drama, and applaud to
myself the strange method of delivery, so reserved,
so aware. The white eye-lashes do not lift, the
voice drones along

" By the edge of the clearing was a pit, where he
had dug the clay to caulk the seams of his hut and
make it watertight. We advanced soberly; he did

A WOMAN IN CANADA

not expect callers, and might be morose. The lonely
life of a trapper develops strange characteristics.
The door was open and the little room looked
empty, but we knocked civilly. There was no answer,
and the Doctor stepped in, followed by Joe Eskimo
they had to step down into the shack, and they
reported no one there. The place was so dark we
had to send Joe for a candle. Evidently the trapper
had moved farther on. We peered about; there
was his bed in one corner, I stumbled over a pair
of snow-shoes, and then Joe came in with a candle,
showing how low the roof was and how bare the
place ; there was no food anywhere, but there was an
old gun in one corner. As we grew used to the
dancing candlelight we saw that a tam-o'-shanter
peered over the blankets on the bed. . . . The
Doctor pulled back the clothes and said, ' Here, Joe,
we'd better bury this. 5

" There is nothing there but a skeleton. Some-
thing finished him starvation or scurvy. We took
blankets and all ; there were eight pairs, so he must
have died in cold weather. When we lifted him,
tam-o'-shanter and skull fell back. We buried him
in the pit he dug himself."

With true dramatic instinct he makes to go at

this point, but I am curious and interested, and try

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

to keep him, questioning. He will not stay, he goes
to the smoking-room to join the Doctor, and the
Young 'un tells me the rest of the story.

" Presently Joe came back to the river looking
very business-like he had brought the gun, and
treated it gingerly, so we guessed it was loaded. It
was a breech-loader, an old, old Enfield. He tied
it to a tree and fixed on to it a long piece of rope,
then he went as far as he could and let it off. It
did not burst, and we laughed at his elaborate pre-
cautions. It made him very cross. By and by we
were all at the river-side again in the pouring rain
the Doctor had the old trapper's snow-shoes with
him they were of martin-hide, and the right heel-
place was neatly darned with string so white that
they were evidently never worn after. I guess we
didn't want to camp there with that poor devil only
just getting a taste of mother earth, so we had to
portage round that jamb after all. Presently it
stopped raining, and we tramped on less miserably.
We tramped arid paddled several miles before, ex-
hausted, we camped at last. And then we could not
sleep. We lay thinking thinking of how the
moon would shine on a new grave of how this hot
gush of pity was all too late to help him and then
through the night came a fearful sound our flesh

A WOMAN IN CANADA

crept, our blood ran cold a noise like hounds bay-
ing to the moon, only something shriller here was
the trapper's dirge, the howling of wolves made a
fitter keening than any of our civilized imaginings
could have given him."

We talk over the unlucky trapper, and I look at
the snow-shoes, musing on his lonely life, wondering
how he died, what had been his last thoughts alone
in that untrodden wild; what strange beasts had
borne him strange companionship in his long sleep.
I ask if they found the Falls.

61 Oh yes! we found them five days later. They
are about fifty miles up Steel River from Mountain
Lake. They are about a hundred feet wide and
thirty-five feet high, in a gorge with thick bush all
round; the river falls beautifully over granite. We
named them Trapper's Falls, and I hope they'll be
called that when they come to be put on maps. After
all, why shouldn't we name them? We found them.
It took us a very short time to come back, the cur-
rents are so strong, and the Indians managed the
canoes so beautifully. And if any one doesn't be-
lieve this let him go the same trip. When he reaches
the log jamb beyond the granite bluff he'll see the
trail the trapper cut into the wilderness."

He gives me their address in Chicago and says he

FISHING ON STEEL RIVER

will send photographs. They get off the train in
the night, and I can ask no more questions. I betake
myself to the end of the car and watch the landscape,
happy in its moving beauty, though no more genial
fellow-travellers come to tell me dramatic tales in
cold, level voices that stop at the most exciting
moment and refuse to talk any more.

CHAPTER V

THE PRAIRIES

ONTARIO, with its rocks and rivers, lakes and
ravines, merges into the flats of Manitoba, and I find
myself one evening, after days and nights of travel-
ling, standing on the rear platform of the train look-
ing at pasture-land and wheat-land, at rich farms on
black soil, and I know that my eyes at last are look-
ing on the prairie lands, the wheat-lands of the world.

Beside the interest of the farms and the lives of
the farmers' wives, which I am to learn on the
prairies, I feel that Winnipeg is nothing. Yet her
spell falls on me before I leave; great rich metro-
polis of the West, where one tastes for the first time
the unforgettable sweetness of Western hospitality.

An old Englishman and an old successful settler,
one Mr. Larcombe, comes to fetch me from Winnipeg
to spend a week on his farm, which is eight hours by
train away from the city. For hours and hours after
we leave Winnipeg the train jogs through a golden

desert, gold skies hot and hard, golden stubble piti-

THE PRAIRIES

lessly reflecting the glare, gold stocks of wheat piled
in golden perspective unbroken plains of gold.

I look out at the little wooden house, at the shallow
creeks and occasional bluffs of maple that have been
planted for wind-breaks. When we come to grass
instead of grain, the eye revels in its motion, grateful
for a change from the yellow stubble. I had imag-
ined the prairie dull and lifeless, but this short-flow-
ing grass, that wimples in the wind like a coolie's
coat, is full of motion and grace. There is no mono-
tony in it, any more than there is monotony in the
flowing of a river. We pass the greatly advertised
Portage Plains, where they first found wheat would
grow on the prairie. Twenty years ago this was the
first place to build a grist mill ; in these days farmers
would come on a five days' journey from home to
get their wheat ground, and would take the flour
back, baking their bannocks by the way, and hoisting
their carts out of the sloughs in the road as a matter
of course, a ten days' journey in all ! Those historic
acres are fat and smiling enough now, and the roads
are firm. A man at the other end of the car is read-
ing aloud to his wife in a sing-song voice; nobody
notices him.

On and on through the golden plains till at last
the landscape breaks into bluff and scrub, it swells

A WOMAN IN CANADA

gently and dips here and there the change is very
grateful to the vision aching at the interminable flats.
The train draws up at Birtle, and I am driven away
to my host's farm in a " rig." He was a Devonshire
man originally, and instinct or old association has
made him settle on a beautiful wooded and undulat-
ing part of the prairie. We drive with a wild wind
clean on the face, away in the whispering bush blue
jays are calling. After welcome, and tea, I go out on
to the farm. Sunset fading has given place to moon-
light; from the corral a gentle swish-swish of milk
foaming into the pails; by the side of the trail the
wolf-willow shines ghostly grey. Interested and
weary I wander from byre to house watching my
host's daughters take the milk to the separator,
watching their healthy faces, wondering why the
prairies are empty of women. The pastoral life,
clean and fresh and sweet, has its appeals to some
women surely.

When I come down to breakfast at eight the next
morning I realize with shame that I am the last,
very one else has been up some hours; outside
" Billy " is hitched to the rig I am to be " driven
round," it appears, and Billy turns upon me a festive
eye. He knows better than I do what a drive round
means. He is the most embroidered three-year-old

THE PRAIRIES

I have ever seen ; his chest and quarters have learned
too nearly the manners of wire-netting fences.

We take the trail and drive on for fifteen miles or
so between green belts of bush, between aisles of
Michaelmas daisies, with gophers and brilliant
snakes scudding out of our path, and the wild hawk
hovering overhead. We pass numberless acres of
wheat, but thirty to thirty-five per cent, of the land in
this district is lying dormant, and I ask why. It
appears that the greater number of land-seekers who
come to the West take the main line trains to Bran-
don, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and through to
the Coast, ignoring or never hearing of this district,
to the great disgust of the loyal Birtleites, who say
that they have an excellent train daily each way to
Winnipeg, which is a big consuming centre. It
seems such a just grievance that I hasten to ventilate
it, and hope the empty acres near Birtle will be
quickly peopled in consequence. It would be a splen-
did place for poultry farming ; half-a-million dollars
went to Ontario last Christmas for poultry ; and it is
an ideal situation and soil for market gardening.
This by the way. We are seeking " Willie's farm."
All the trails seem alike, and they have a fatal
regularity; I sit stiffly erect in the tiny seat, which
looks to my European eyes so totally out of propor-

A WOMAN IN CANADA

tion to the big spidery wheels. I rejoice in the vast
distances, in the intimate way that human life presses
here on to the very breast of Nature. I wonder why
more Englishwomen do not come out instead of
leading the crowded, hopeless lives they do in the
old country. " Billy " flicks his long tail joyously
over his tattered hide in answer to my thoughts.
:< They won't come," he seems to say ; " they will
not get up and milk the cows while the dew is on the
golden-rod ; they will not bake bread for their men,
or cook the moose-steak and wild duck and prairie
chicken. Your women will not come, for they love
the life of cities, the typewriters, the ledgers, the
proof-sheets, the palette and the stage. They do not
want this life ! " Billy's contemptuous flick is as-
suming in my eyes the proportions of a harsh judge
who unfortunately has right on his side. I glance
furtively at the man beside me. He is a burly Mani-
toban farmer, who began life in England as a farm-
lad at ninepence a week. Ninepence ! Now he is
rich in house and land and cattle, in pigs and horses
and poultry and money. But he has never hankered
for cities, or got up at eight, or shirked an hour's
work, I am sure. All England seems smitten and
scorned as this man's life talks to me in every line
of his shrewd, strong, weather-beaten face from his

bfl

CL
0)

THE PRAIRIES

hard strong hands, in his air of self-trust. Toil
speaks, toil ungrudged and unremitting, but splen-
didly rewarded. I feel that he is the exception, not
the rule, among my countrymen; and there burns
in me a kind of national shame the same hateful
thing that scorches one in the Canadian cities where
obtains the legend on business houses, " No Eng-
lishmen need apply."

Here is "Willie's farm." They have begun
threshing; out on the golden plain stands a mon-
ster of iron and steel with two funnels; from one
funnel blows straw, from the other pours grain into
a large granary. The engines whizz and whirl, an
endless procession of wains piled with golden stooks
pass before the monster, delivering into its jaws each
its golden burden, and as they empty they pass to
the fields to gather more. (A "field" may be a
mile long, but that is beside the point.) The heap of
straw away on the stubble is piling higher with every
moment ; the smaller pile of grain is growing, every
inch higher means money, money means more land,
more grain, more money. I watch the grain stream
rattling out of the funnel with fascinated eyes.
Every two or three seconds there is a clatter up
above where the automatic weigher releases 30 Ibs.,

then the brown stream of grain rushes down to join
G 97

A WOMAN IN CANADA

the rest. "Willie" also watches for a minute or
so, but he shows no excitement; he is used to hear-
ing the world's bread rattle in his granaries; his only
interest seems at the moment to be focussed on the
grade of his crops, he hopes for a " No. i, Northern,"
and my companion in the rig, who has been critically
examining a handful, votes it to be a "good No. 2."
A fair-haired, blue-eyed giant comes up holding out
a horny hand : " You'm from t'ould country, miss,
they tell me; how's she get'n' on?"

" She's very well, thank you," I answer. " How
do you like Canada ? "

He smiles. " None too bad, none too bad." Later
I learn that he is a "worker " and is sure to get on;
any man or woman who will work here can make
money.

And here and now I would like to say this, that
the unsuccessful immigrant in Canada is the man
who will not work. Those who will stay on the
land, and work, cannot help getting on. I do not
care who tells me in the future that he has failed out
here, I shall know him for a shirker. There are
millions of acres yet to be tilled, thousands of
farmers who will pay well for work, who are crying
for labour. I can well conceive that to the spoiled
child of teeming cities, the " skilled worker," accus-

THE PRAIRIES

tomed to music-halls and gin-palaces, these wide,
unbroken plains of waving wheat are eminently dis-
tasteful. The artisan, accustomed to his beer and
his grievance, inured from youth to the daily impact
of thousands of lives upon his own life, may well
feel lonely in the bush or on the prairie, but if he
is not prepared to adjust himself to his new con-
ditions and work honestly for the reward which is
bound to come, he is better away. Canada has no
use for him. If he cannot still his craving for the
noise and light and artificial life of cities, let him
stay in England where our older civilization permits
of these luxuries.

We get into the rig again, but not till I have
searched out the giant and fervently wished him
luck, aye, and pressed his rough hand with a warmer
heart than he would guess, for he is an Englishman
who will not make the name of his country to stink
in the nostrils of the land of his adoption. Off we
go under the wide blue skies through miles of wheat,
miles of scrub and bush, miles of virgin prairie
damascened with purple daisies and golden-rod to
Foxwarren, an ambitious little township, very pros-
perous and proud of itself, where I learn the secrets
of a wheat elevator. I see the wagon-load of

threshed grain driven on to the " dump," I see the
02 99

A WOMAN IN CANADA

wagon tip backwards, pouring its load into the
" pit," from whence it is " elevated " in little buckets
on the dredge system, into the cleaner, where poor
grain, alien seeds and all dust are blown away.
Thence it passes, purified for market, into a hopper
and is weighed. Finally it is elevated again and
dumped into "bends," or railway cars, for trans-
portation. The " bend " is a receptacle in which a
farmer may store his wheat from the close of naviga-
tion till the spring, unless he prefers to sell it out-
right to the Elevator Company. The waste from
the cleaning process averages from one to one and a
half per cent., and the farmers take it all back for
hog and chicken food. It proves an interesting
visit; I had seen the ugly elevators constantly on
the prairies, and thought them an eyesore to be re-
gretted. After this they mean to me thousands of
bushels of grain, the harvest of the year, the farmer's
glory.

We go into a homestead for tea. The farmer's
wife is a busy, rather silent woman with four chil-
dren ; her face is nice to look at with its harsh mouth
and gentle eyes. That mouth looks as though it had
tasted trouble and found it bitter; her eyes, a little
tired, but so kind, look as though she has much love

in her life. " It's rather a busy time just at harvest/'

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THE PRAIRIES

she says; "you must please excuse if you find things
rough."

" I should think you are always busy," I reply.

" Yes," she says, " when it's not cooking it's wash-
ing; when washing's done there's ironing, and what
with the housework and children and sewing and
dairy and all, I have no time to spare."

"Do you do all that without help?" I ask,
marvelling.

"Yes," she says, "there's no help to be got out
West; I could keep a girl, too, if there was one to
be had. She would soon pay for herself out of the
extra butter I would be able to make. I have to
keep the cows down small now, but I like a big herd.
I had a girl once from the old country, but she
married in a month. They always get married."
She sighs, and I am silent. I know she has touched
on one of the great problems of the West the
dearth of female labour.

Back to Mr. Larcombe's farm across twenty-five
miles of prairie, purple and gold, with the warm,
wild wind on our faces and the wild hawk overhead.
From there I wander over many hundreds of miles
of prairie, by rail and rig, through many weeks,
watching, noting, questioning the conditions of life

which British women are so loath to accept, appar-

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

ently, since they are so scarce. I sketch people and
places as I find them, generally at the time and on
the spot. Before I go on with the prairie studies I
think I will quote an article, " to be continued," which
appeared in a certain T. P.'s Weekly, by " A Trans-
planted Englishwoman/' Here it is

" Frances " spoke truly in a recent article
when she said that no girl should go to the
Colonies without having some idea of the con-
ditions of life she will find there. I would,
however, suggest that a cheaper and more prac-
tical method of gaining experience than by
taking a course at Swanley College could be
had by spending three months as a working
member of the household of an English or
Scotch agricultural labourer. Provided choice
is made of a cottage many miles away from
towns and villages, where the wife has to make
her own bread and see to a few animals, I think
most of the conditions of colonial life (I speak
of Canada) can be experienced. These condi-
tions can be roughly summed up as discomfort,
inconvenience, and " doing without/' Every
labourer's wife is well inured to these condi-
tions, and for this reason I would never have
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the slightest hesitation in advising a working-
class woman to go to the Colonies, whereas I
cannot think of one middle-class woman of my
acquaintance at home whom I would care to
bring out here that is, to live as wife, sister, or
daughter on a homestead.

People at home talk vaguely of " roughing it
in Canada/ 5 That sounds somewhat romantic,
and calls up visions of cowgirls flying across the
prairie on horseback, picturesque in wide-
brimmed hats and loosely-knotted neck-scarfs
red for choice. I will endeavour to put into
cold, unromantic words what "roughing it"
really means for the middle-class woman. Let
us first take the house prepared for her by her
male relative. It is of logs, and looks somewhat
picturesque in a painting. As a matter of fact,
dirt appears to her especially if she arrives in
spring to be its most prominent feature. Mud
is ankle deep, and the cow and chickens are
wandering around the back door, adding to the
filth there accumulated.

In time, of course, there will be added a
fence, but at present the male relative has so
many things to do. The spaces between the

logs are chinked with moss, and then plastered
103

A WOMAN IN CANADA

with a clay-and-sand cement which at intervals
cracks and drops off in bits, having to be done
each autumn. Inside the bare logs have been
covered with building-paper the colour of a
grocer's sugar-bag, yellowish-white tacked on
in somewhat unsightly fashion. Flies and
spiders find a cosy home in the moss behind the
paper, and frequently there are worse things.
The roofing of the house is of boards and tar-
paper, and by the second summer it begins to
leak, so that whenever it rains it is necessary
to put pots and pans under the drips. The most
unpleasant places for these drips are the stove
and the beds. On the prairie, where the houses
are frequently roofed with sods, the drips con-
sist of liquid mud. Of course, in the fulness of
time the male relative will get the house
shingled, but he has so many things to do.

The floor, of course, is bare, the boards are
unplaned.and uneven, and there are large gaps
between them in places. The native Canadian
drudge laboriously scrubs her floor, but no sane
woman who can scrape up a dollar wherewith
to buy floor-paint need do this. A painted floor
is easily cleaned with mop or wash-cloth. The

house generally consists, for the first few years,
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THE PRAIRIES

of one large room, a part of it partitioned or
curtained off for a bedroom. An Englishman
will generally stand out for a board partition,
for it is unpleasant to be having a bath or lying
ill in bed with nothing but a curtain between
one and the living-room, which is practically
open to any passer-by who calls at the door.
There is a door on each side of the living-room
no passage or porch between door and out-
side world so that every one who goes in or
out, when the temperature ranges from zero to
forty-five below zero, gives those inside a taste
of the fine bracing air out of doors. Those
who surfer from cold feet, in spite of felt boots
and three pairs of stockings, do well to comfort
themselves with the thought that in six or seven
months the warm weather will have come, and
it will be pleasant to have open doors. At the
approach of winter one cuts old coats and
trousers into strips, and laboriously tacks them
down the cracks in the boards of which the doors
are composed, for, having been made in a hurry
out of green wood, they have, of course, warped
and begun to gape.

In many cases one of the worst discomforts on
a new homestead is the incessant trouble about
105

A WOMAN IN CANADA

water. This is one of the numerous points we
have in common with the old country agricul-
tural labourer's wife. Time was when I thought
with my class that " poor people " could at
least keep themselves and their houses clean,
for water was cheap. I know better now. In
some parts of the West the water is so alkaline
as to be unfit for either washing or drinking,
and even the well-to-do farmers have to be
dependent on rain-water in a cistern. In the
bush, however, water is good and plentiful if
means are taken to secure it, but the home-
steader, as a rule, digs a shallow well at first,
instead of going to the trouble and expense of
boring. In a dry season it probably runs dry,
and one goes to a neighbour's for drinking-
water, and waits for rain to provide washing-
water. This is in summer. From November to
April one melts snow to provide all the water
required for drinking, for washing, and for such
animals as are kept. This is a tedious and
messy process, for a pail of snow will only make
half a pailful of water.

It will be understood that a bath under such
conditions becomes a luxury, and one is never

so wasteful as to throw away the water after
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THE PRAIRIES

one's weekly tub. It serves to mop or wash the
floors on cleaning day, or to soak the dirtiest of
the clothes on washing day. In time, of course,
the male relative will provide an adequate water
supply, but he has so many things to do, and,
besides, he hopes to build a proper house in a
few years' time, and when he bores he will
prefer to do it near the new house. Washing
day in winter comes round all too quickly. It
is prefaced by melting numerous pailfuls of
snow, until one gets half a barrelful of water.
There are, of course, no coppers in Canadian
houses, either in the cities or in the new coun-
tries, and the water is heated in a tin boiler on
the stove. If one is short of pails and tubs, one
must just carry dirty water out in the midst of
operations from a steamy atmosphere to the
arctic temperature outside, and before the
clothes can be shaken out to hang on the line
they freeze stiff. One, of course, learns to
manage things so as not to go outside until
everything is finished, shaken out, and put in
position to hang out as expeditiously as pos-
sible, and one puts on coat and warm gloves
before starting the hanging-out performance.

Such discomforts as being many miles from a
107

A WOMAN IN CANADA

village and post office, of doing without various
articles of food, such as fresh meat in summer,
milk if one has no cow, and fresh vege-
tables for eight months in the year one soon
gets accustomed to, just as one gets accus-
tomed to eating in the same room as one
cooks in, finding everything in the house frozen
solid on January and February mornings, and
keeping muslin and wire mosquito- and fly-
screens over doors and windows in summer. It
is, of course, quite unnecessary to lengthen out
on the things which every woman must be able
to do in rural Canada, and this applies to the
civilized old settled districts as well as to the
new places. She must cook, clean, wash, bake
bread, make butter, milk, mend her menfolk's
clothes and make her own, attend to a garden,
and in summer go out every day and pick wild
fruit -blueberries, strawberries and raspberries
to preserve for the winter. No tame fruit is
to be had, and an average provision of pre-
served fruit for two people for nine months will
be two hundred quarts. This is not jam, but
stewed fruit put in jars which seal hermetically,
and which are to be bought at every village

shop in Canada.

1 08

THE PRAIRIES

I have many quarrels with that article. The writer
advises any working-class woman to go to the
Colonies and not the middle-class women. I
strongly oppose such advice. The working-class
woman does not bring the intelligence to bear on
domestic emergencies which a cultured woman can,
out of her ignorance how can she reduce disorder to
comeliness, and make the prairie home a beautiful
thing? It can be done. I have seen it. Then the
next generation deserves some attention. If ignorant
women of our lower orders go out and marry as
they will farmers, who are often men of decent
breeding, their children will go down, not up, in the
scale of progress; a woman of refinement and cul-
ture, of endurance, of healthy reasoning courage, is
infinitely better equipped for the work of home-
making and race-making than the ignorant, often
lazy, often slovenly lower-class woman. I know;
I've washed too many of them in hospital days.

Then the squalid picture of the hovel drawn by
the transplanted Englishwoman galls my kibe.
There are such shacks; no man ought to ask a
woman to share one; no woman ought to be silly
enough to do it, unless she chooses to deliberately,
and then she ought not to grumble. There are

plenty of comfortable farmhouses on the prairie

109

A WOMAN IN CANADA

where the farmer's wife will welcome her and pay
well for help. Let the transplanted Englishwoman
go to her. She will work less hard than in the
piteous hovel described so graphically, and under
infinitely more comfortable and healthy conditions.
Let her earn good money and leave that " busy male
relative " to miss her enough to build a decent house,
and board his floors, and look after the well-boring
and all the rest. Even if the male relative is her
husband I'd say the same. In fact, I would say it
more urgently such a hovel is not fit for child-
bearing, both mother and baby would suffer. Every
woman who works, and domesticity is work, has a
right to ask for decent working conditions, and if
she cannot get them, to leave any man, husband or
no, and work for herself until he can provide them.
The labourer is worthy of her hire. I have no
patience with the women who go to ill conditions
and grumble about them instead of bettering them.
There is no need to stop and be miserable. No one
can compel you to.

I asked one woman on the prairie who slaved to
keep her shack in nice living conditions, "Aren't
you sorry you came ? " She went to the door and
looked across the sunny acres. " No ! " she said,
"this is all our own. England could never have

given us this. We shall soon be more comfortable."

THE PRAIRIES

The "transplanted Englishwoman" talks of
doing without fresh vegetables for eight months in
the year. There is no need for it. I have some-
thing to say on market gardening later on but what
on earth is to prevent her growing her own vege-
tables ? The relative afore-mentioned will spare her
an acre or two near the shack where she can grow
"roots," as they call them over there, and store them
for winter use as her neighbours do, in a cellar or
" root-house."

It is bitter to find individual incompetence de-
scribed as general conditions. To do the lady justice
she does say in her next and concluding article that
there is hope for those who stick to their drudgery
f he hope of ultimate betterment.

T. P.'s Weekly, however, does not publish only
grumbles. Here is a letter from a worker of evi-
dently cheery soul who makes comfort out of what
may readily be turned to hideous discomfort. A very
different story this man tells.

To the Editor of " T. P.'s Weekly "

SIR,

After living in Canada for six years, and
having resided in the provinces of Ontario and

Manitoba I am now in Saskatchewan upon a
III

A WOMAN IN CANADA

farm of my own I think I may claim to have a
good knowledge of the country. Like " Suc-
cessful Man," I emigrated to Canada independ-
ently, which seems to be the only way to avoid
trouble. The Canadian Immigration Depart-
ment specially advise against dealing with pri-
vate agents and advertisements such as ended
so disastrously for the " Three Who Failed."

Arriving at Winnipeg, I applied at the
Government Bureau for a position, and was
sent out to a country town in Manitoba with a
letter of introduction to the postmaster, asking
him to place me with some farmer needing help.
Unfortunately, this old postmaster got in a
temper, saying he had "no connection with
the Immigration Department." However, he
stated the case to some farmers that had just
called for their mail. They told me of a man
whom they thought needed help. As I had
only thirty cents in my pocket and was prac-
tically stranded, and night drawing near, I of
necessity paid the farmer a visit. His hospital-
ity was all that could be desired, and, after
keeping me overnight I suppose to "size me
up," for I was pale-faced and anything but

sturdy-looking told me he did not really need
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a man, but directed me to another farmer ; and,
after walking fifteen miles from place to place,
1 finally obtained a position at fifteen dollars per
month.

I was not altogether "green" at farm work,
but being new to the country was to my dis-
advantage, and Canadian farmers,, like most
employers, will not pay any more than they can
help. After serving six months in my first berth
I changed from place to place, always getting
highest wages fifteen dollars for winter and
thirty dollars for summer. I always selected the
larger farms, for on them they usually have
some system and pay highest wages, and a man
learns quicker. On the small farms, where
there is only one man, he has everything to do ;
system is lacking, which often makes the work-
ing hours long. I have worked on large farms
of 2,000 acres and upwards with as many as ten
other men, each having four horses under his
care and to work.

" Successful Man " said he " always avoided
the bachelors" because of their "wretched es-
tablishments and the absence of female help."
It is true some of them are negligent, but not all
of them are as black as he has painted them. I
H 113

A WOMAN IN CANADA

myself am a bachelor, not through choice, but
rather force of circumstances, and know the
situation only too well. I am constrained to put
aside my natural modesty to modify the state-
ment that in " these establishments " there are
"no properly-cooked meals, no regular hours,
general disorder, dirt, etc/* I have known many
to be systematic, orderly, and excellent cooks;
and some I have known to receive great praise
at the hands of women for their household
management. Recently I had a threshing
machine with a crew of sixteen men (and this
is the average number in the West) to do my
threshing; and I had to do all the cooking
alone for them for three meals. Through force
of circumstances I have become fairly profici-
ent in this art, though this is the first time I
have been put to so severe a test.

As to the absence of women, which " Suc-
cessful Man " mentions, it is not the fault of the
bachelors. The bachelors are a great majority,
and the women are not in the country. Any
woman who ventures here will receive more
than her share of attention, and, most likely,
be promptly appropriated by some bachelor

anxious for a happier state. The crying need
114

2
O

THE PRAIRIES

of Western Canada is women; it is like that
heathen cry which comes to the missionary
"Come over and help us." Though Canada
is not altogether "heathen," it needs the mis-
sionary spirit of women to make it a crowning
success, and no doubt many of the teeming
multitude of British women would profit by
this golden opportunity. The life, though
strenuous, is not altogether monotonous, for one
can have one's hours of leisure in which to cul-
tivate the mind as well as the land, if the man so
desires.

Yours faithfully,

J. G. S., Sask., Canada.

That man deserves a good wife ! I have lingered
to quote and comment because there is so much
written one way and another on the prairie farm-life
that English readers must often be rarely puzzled
to know what to believe. Every one writes sincerely,
I think, from the individual point of view. Every
reader may be sure that in himself alone is the stuff
to make this picture of Canada come true, or that.

H 2

CHAPTER VI

PRAIRIE STUDIES

THE trail is what one might call hummocky, the
heat is fierce, and I am getting my skirt covered
with grease from a new kind of cartridge. My face
and hands I gave over to perdition after the first
ten minutes with them, but the extension of damage
to my skirt is less easy to bear as I am "travelling
light," and it will be ten days before I reach Calgary
and my trunk !

The little smokeless bullets I used at first were
hardly big enough to kill, and after I had suffered
seeing half-a-dozen little furry gophers die slowly
in great rebellion, I open a box of black-powder
cartridges and become a pillar of grease ! and
mercy. I am really driving out over this sun-
smitten prairie to see an Englishwoman who has
newly settled in Canada, and loam from her of the
conditions, but the journey is considerably gilded
by the loan of a '22 Winchester and the presence of
a driver who connives at gopher-shooting. We

PRAIRIE STUDIES

dawdle along and shoot from the rig whenever the
boy turns with a " Say ! there's a dandy shot," and
I see a pretty squirrelly person sitting by his hole
staring defiance with his cheeks bulged with stolen
wheat. I would recommend gophers to any one
who prefers a rifle to a shot-gun they give quite as
good sport as rooks in May, and that is saying a
good deal. We lose our way once and I am
electrified to find a patch of prairie roses in bloom.
They are the loveliest things of wonder, in that
desert of scorched grass from dead white to deep
red they grow on low bushes a foot or so high and
smell with a wild, warm sweetness impossible to
describe; we find the trail again and see at last the
place we are looking for. Out on the livid grass it
stands, a mean black shack of wood and pulp-paper,
a lowlier shelter than many a farmer's beast would
have in England. My heart sinks with pity as we
approach how can anybody live in such a shell
here in this arid, treeless desert? The rig draws
up and a man comes out of the doorway, I get a
glimpse into a stifling den of flies, and am reminded
of the accommodation in a gipsy's caravan this
looks no bigger. There is a small tent in front of
the shack I suppose for sleeping in in dry weather.

The man listens to my story and takes me round to

117

A WOMAN IN CANADA

see his wife ; he is a nice man, deeply tanned, with
humorous eyes and a strong chin. I like his face.
His wife is sitting the other side of the shack in the
shade, nursing a fat baby. As I sit beside her I am
wholly prepared for an outburst of grumbling, and,
indeed, I feel I have no right to expect anything
else. But lo ! like the roses in the gasping prairie
there blooms nothing but courage and cheerfulness
from her tale.

" Lonely ! not a bit now I have my baby ! But
even without him there was plenty to do. A farmer's
wife in Canada must expect work. In seeding-time
she will be up at 4 a.m. to get the men their break-
fast. Then she will have to milk, and separate the
cream afterwards, if they have a separator. If there
are several cows it is quite a back-aching task.
Then there will be the house to clean, the breakfast
things to wash up, the beds to make, and she must"
not waste time over that part of her day for there is
dinner to cook for hungry men by 11.30. After
washing up again the afternoon will mean bread-
making, or clothes-washing and ironing, or jam-
making, or butter-churning one of the endless
things like that anyway, and at 7.30 or 6.30 (accord-
ing to the season of the year) she must have " tea "

ready. Tea is nearly as big a meal as dinner and

PRAIRIE STUDIES

the last meal of the day. After that she must wash
up, then milk two cows and separate her cream
before she can think of going to bed. Probably
there will be some darning or mending to do even
then. That is a straightforward day, but it is greatly
complicated when the children begin to come."

She has told me the tale of labour quite simply.
Her eyes are happy, her face is beautiful with health
and courage.

"We only came out a year ago," she continues;
" in a week or two we will move into a good house
this is very uncomfortable my husband has bought
another farm and it has a house on it. Isn't my
boy beautiful? but he was born before his time.
You wouldn't think so, would you? I had to go so
far to reach the hospital that the journey upset me,
and I was very afraid for him, he was nearly a
month too soon."

The baby is a magnificent chap, worthy of un-
stinted praise 5 and gets it, though he dislikes my way
of holding him and clamours to get back to the
arms he is growing to know. " Do you think he
will smile at me soon ? " she says. " I am so glad
to have him, but the women suffer much out here in
these wilds for lack of proper nurses. They want

qualified midwives who will turn to when their

119

A WOMAN IN CANADA

patients are settled, and do housework for them.
It is a dreadful thing to know how many prairie
women go through their confinements alone; I was
very lucky, I was able to get to a hospital, but lots
of them can't." I ask her if she is homesick for the
old country, and she saddens for a second. "Will
one ever lose that feeling, I wonder? It will
come all right. We are getting on, we are not
going to give in we have never thought of doing
that. 5 '

The man comes out of the shack with tea and
bread and butter for me he has prepared it all
quietly while I was talking; as he returns to his
work the young wife watches him very fondly. " Eng-
lishmen make better husbands than Canadians," she
announces, and I observe that the latter would not
like to hear her say so. We laugh and talk on about
the life, the people, the country.

I disQern in her a reserve of cheerfulness that
promises success for both in the venture. Her
laughter is not forced, it bubbles continually from
some inner fount of joy. They came from the
Midlands, and neither of them understood land
culture, in general a foolhardy experiment. But
these two young English people are on a fair way
to success I cannot exactly say why. They may

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be intelligent above the average, they may have
brought considerable capital, they may, or he may,
own to some streak of farmer blood which helps
him to learn readily, it may be unusual industry (a
quality which always brings success in Canada), or
it may be who knows? that old-fashioned love has
them in grip, and makes everything seem easy for
each other and nothing too hard to win. I have
pictured them exactly as I found them I cannot hit
on what made them so interesting and so nice in
their squalid shack. I only know that their eyes
were kind when they looked at each other, and they
were very happy in surroundings which many would
have bitterly resented. I realize one thing as I look
at them and say " Good-bye " the hardness of a
settler's lot is infinitely lessened if he has a wife to
smile with him, A grumbling woman could have
made life hell for both on that blazing, shadeless
plain.

If I were to come next year I should see them in
a nice house, with granaries and cow-sheds; with
more acres of prairie broken into grain, and a small
fat person toddling round who has learned to smile
at mother.

Going, I sniff industriously it almost feels as if
I can smell mignonette ! I accuse them inwardly

A WOMAN IN CANADA

of having made me homesick with their peaceful
English voices; but a few yards from the shack I
see a plaintive tribute to our common nationality
a square yard, not more, of prairie land hedged
round with pegs and string, where bloom gloriously
mignonette and nasturtium.

******

I am prepared to write Canada down a tropical
country ! This is mid-September and the heat is
fierce; the train ambles along over a new wobbly
track the passengers have long ago given up resist-
ance and are lying or sitting, gasping, in every
position of wretchedness. Some of us are sitting
on the end of the car, blinded with dust and glare,
but getting some slight draught from the motion of
the train. I am on my way to an old settler's farm
they came out sixteen years ago, have done well,
and belong to the type of moneyed farmers now.
The train brings me at last to the station of a little
prairie township, and there a burly man with a red
face claims me with a hospitable grunt.

" It's very good of you to meet me," I say politely.
" You must be busy at this time of year? "

"Yes," he says, "we'm busy. Mind that step.
It's deceitful. More slips off than gets on with it."

I make for the step gingerly. It is a very little

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one behind a big wheel, and I "slip off it as most
do," to the great discomfort of my shins. When I
get fixed, the horses turn towards the sunset and we
drive in a fairy world of amethyst light, creek and
bush and slough mantled in purple and gold. The
farmer is pleased with my admiration.

' You should see this 'ere in spring," he says,
"when acres of purple crokers bloom wild over the
prairie, and them tiger-lilies and wild roses and that
maiden' air fern they think such a lot of in the ould
country; sakes ! you'd oughter see it then."

He tells me of the early struggles. He was a
cobbler in England and went into farming where
he was "beggared by a little farm of nine acres at
a rental of 3 an acre." Now he has 1,500 acres of
his own land and "money in the bank," besides
stock. But the early struggles were hard; they
would have gone back to England scores of times
if they had had the money, he says. At first he
worked hard only to make money to pay the pas-
sage back ; but hard work brought the reward of this
country, money more money than he had ever
handled before, and he determined to stay on and
see if he could not go back with a few thousand
dollars. Now he tells me he could not live any-
where in the world but this free North-West.

A WOMAN IN CANADA

The farmhouse proves to be a large building of
brick a sign in itself of prosperity, at the door a
short, stout lady in gorgeous apparel beams affably.
" The missus," he says shortly, " and the lady from
England/' The missus and the lady shake hands,
and I see her eyes travel in acute disappointment
over my plain linen dress and Panama hat. I follow
her into the house humbly conscious that I have
fallen short of a preconceived ideal of what the
"lady from England" should look like. We go
into the parlour, a realm of fumed oak chairs and
violent cretonnes, garrulous with pink and blue
flower-vases and "knick-knacks," and there we sit
stiffly, discussing the weather and politics. I learn
that "my 'usbind is a Conservative and don't 'old
with them grafters at all." Also that " Mrs. Warren
and Mrs. Suter called on me this afternoon, or I
would a' come to meet you." This with some pride.
I wonder vaguely if a " grafter " is a Socialist or a
Liberal, and how my hostess has time for calling or
being called upon in this busy land. The room is
very stuffy and does not seem to have been dusted
for some time. Grievous odours of cooking assail
the air; I long to be allowed to go out on the
"lawn" (a patch of prairie grass) and look at the

petunias, which riot in confusion everywhere. But

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

conversation drags on, every now and then a
daughter of the house will come in and sit for a
moment, looking at me with her hands folded on
her lap. Then she returns to the region of smells.
(I want to see the ordinary daily life and this is not
at all what I came for.) By and by we go in to
"tea" a heavy meal of ham and cold beef, honey
and jam, cakes and tea. The whole family is there,
'ncluding the farm-hands; every one helps himself
the flies most of all and I suffer several shocks.
Food is here in plenty, but carelessly served
dirtily served. I endure agonies of conscience as
the farm-help near me takes a fly-blown slice of beef
on his fork from the common dish in the centre of
the table. Ought I to tell him? Or is he used to
it? Would my hostess be hurt? Is it my duty to
hurt her and tell her the beef is not fit to eat?
While the dispute rages within the farm-help has
eaten his beef, and I resign him to his fate. The
tablecloth is very dirty, the butter has not been put
in the ice safe (an unpardonable sin in Canada,
where every household has its store of ice gathered
in winter). I drink a cup of tea and plead a head-
ache for lack of appetite. After the meal is over I
volunteer to turn the " separator," to the great sur-
prise of " Missus," who, I am sure, thinks I have

125

A WOMAN IN CANADA

never done an hour's work in my life. But I am
again badly shocked. The separator is near the
kitchen stove, a very inferno, and the last place for
milk to be in this weather. The flies make high
holiday, for the wire-netted door is propped wide
open instead of being kept shut; the pails are none
too clean, the strainer is certainly not clean. I feel
I want to scald every vessel in the place, to pack ice
round the milk corner, and to kill every fly, to scrub
the greasy, dingy floor, and box the ears of Missus
and her tribe of feckless daughters. This is an ex-
perience indeed. Here I am finding the farmer's
wife as she should not be; a woman of plebeian
stock who, with prosperity, is greedily clutching the
worst features of the class above her, which claims
all the admiration of her foolish, snobbish soul.

She must wear a silk blouse and " call " of an
afternoon forsooth and neglect her home for
society. I retire to bed wrathful and perplexed.

After an hour in bed an odious suspicion pre-
sents itself. It increases in virulence and becomes
a certainty. I consider the touch of an unclean
insect an affront it is a thing I refuse to tolerate.
With ludicrous precautions against the acquisition
of one of the creatures I dress and creep down-
stairs to sleep on the "lawn." For three hideous

126

PRAIRIE STUDIES

days I live on tea and toast, sleeping on the lawn at
night when every one else has gone to bed, and rising
before any one is up to avoid discovery. Then I
resist all invitation to prolong my visit, and take
train for a farm six hundred miles away where I am
going to study conditions in the house of an English
settler and his wife, neither so new as the first nor
so old-established as these last.

As I drive away, pursued by cordial good-byes
(for the Missus has forgiven me my low-born taste
for farm-work and hatred of " calling "), I muse on
the pity of it all. These people are rich, they could
have their house cleaned, papered, painted they
could afford to hire servants to keep it nice if such
were to be found in the district and they didn't want
to work themselves; they have no excuse for dirt
but one they don't know any better. They come
of a poor old-country stock, bred probably for
hundreds of years in poverty and dirt, ignorance
and class-worship. They don't know any better.
And the pity is for the land of their adoption.
******

I am sitting beside my " good, reliable driver " in
the hired single rig, which is to take me to a farm
on the Eagle Hills fifteen miles away. I have
especially described the kind of driver I want as

A WOMAN IN CANADA

experience has taught me the grief of trusting to
unskilled pilots among the sloughs and mud-holes
on the prairie trails ; instinct tells me that this good-
looking young man, with his fiery eye and casual
acceptance of my directions, is hardly up to my
description. I wonder whether to make a fuss and
ask at the livery stable for another, but decide
against, probably he is all right. So off we go at
an easy lope to follow Red Pheasant trail. The
ferry is crowded with oxen and wagons, with rigs
and " democrats " ; true it is that the mare prefers
the side of the trail to the middle of it and we ride
most of the way at a fearful angle, but the sun holds
us in such kind regard, and the blue harebells fling
such a frail defiance to the wind that there is no
room for anything but happiness. If it were pos-
sible I would describe the country, but there is no
way. I am unable to show to English minds the
wide Western horizon, the height and blueness of
the skies, the stinging caress of the wind, sweet with
scent of the upland hay and the wild charm of the
prairie when it breaks, as it does here, into rolling
dunes of grass and scrub. Between the little hills
lie broad blue lakes I had thought Manitoba
beautiful, now I am fain to forget her in Saskat-
chewan. Wind and sky and lonely spaces . . ,

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there is that in the West which will make my heart
bleed to leave it. ... The afternoon wears on, the sun
plunges behind the hills and I begin to realize that
the mare is slacking wearily, the air is growing crisp
with frost, that fifteen miles was never so long in
the world, and that my "good, reliable " driver is
looking round uneasily. "Are we lost?" I ask.

"Guess so," he answers, and so we are. After
driving on and on we find a homestead and learn
that we are nearing " Swift Current," miles from
" Red Pheasant." The settler is pleased to see
strangers, and keeps us a long time outside his shack
while he tells us the way. The sun drops rapidly, the
air grows sharper than a serpent's tooth, and I sit
brooding on the pleasures of a night on the open
prairie. I try to believe what the settlers say about
the coyotes that they are cowards and run away if
you " shoo " them. I try to persuade myself that it
will not be horribly cold, and that three oranges in
my sachel will supply us with food and drink.
Every now and then the mare gets us into a mud-
hole or shies at an insecure log bridge. At last we
find a French half-breed on a lean broncho; he
tells us we are wrong again, and I ask him if we
can find the place at all to-night. He thinks so if

we don't go wrong any more, and I offer him a
i 129

A WOMAN IN CANADA

dollar to put us right. He leads us to Red Pheasant
trail and we jog along for eight more miles, lit by
the Northern lights, shivering miserably.

At last we see a light on the hill, we conciliate a
big Newfoundland dog, and an English voice says
kindly, " You are blue with the cold, now come
in at once." Soon, from the security of warm
sheets and woolly blankets I listen to the coyotes
howling.

A step passes my door at dawn. I get up and
go down-stairs; there she is my pretty hostess
with her young face and grey hair, lighting the
kitchen fire for the day's work. I watch her for a
little while. She has a contented face and works
very neatly; her dress is a pretty blue cotton and
over it is a linen apron, the sleeves are rolled to the
elbow, her feet are thickly shod, she wears a low
collar, her skirt is four inches from the ground,
there is nothing to impede her movements, and yet
the whole effect is very smart and workmanlike.

Presently she goes out and I follow her ; we walk
down to the corral in the tender light that hangs
like a kiss on the brow of day; I watch her milk
the six cows, help her feed the calves, and gather
in the breakfast eggs ; we linger a minute to admire
the black baby pigs that race from bush to barn,

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

sleek and ridiculous. We sympathize, at a distance,
with poor Tim the terrier, who has lately killed a
skunk and been shut up till he can be disinfected;
we tread delicately like Agag through the dewy
golden-rod to the kitchen garden, 'where we gather
some squaw corn for breakfast, and I have time to
admire the pitch of cultivation to which it has been
brought, onions, beets, celery, potatoes, carrots,
cabbages, turnips, peas, beans, all growing
luxuriously in the rich black loam.

"I love the garden," she says; "I do most of it
myself. Aren't the sweet peas lovely? The
Canadians use tinned vegetables far too much it
is not healthy, and they can grow them beautifully
if they will take the trouble. They have several
little faults, only I would hesitate to tell them so
they spoil their complexions and make themselves
delicate by keeping their houses too hot. They
think me mad because I have lots of fresh air in
the house, and because my boys have a bath every
day and four clean shirts a week." It is on the tip
of my tongue to tell her I know of some English
settlers who would think these things mad too, but
I refrain. Her loyalty to the old country, so often
derided out here, is too sweet to taint with shame
for any of its people.

12 131

A WOMAN IN CANADA

"We have been out nearly six years," she tells
me while she is preparing breakfast, talking in little
jerks while she runs from cellar to stove and stove
to table; "but my husband came out two and a
half years before me that was a long, cruel wait
for us with only letters and photographs to live on ;
he was in a city office at first, but he was too big and
strong to stand the sedentary stuffy life; after we
talked it over we decided to risk our 250 saved
for furnishing and try farming in Canada; he came
out homesteaded and made good he worked as a
labourer first, learning the soil and the conditions
and saving money all the time. When he came to
till his own land and build his own house he was
able to profit by all he had learned, it saved him
hundreds of dollars." . . . "But the boss hasn't
told you what she was doing all the time," says her
husband, coming in from his chores; he is a fair-
haired giant of thirty-three or so and looks less like
any city man I have ever seen. " She went and
trained for a nurse, because she said the farm work
could never be as hard as hospital work and it
taught her to get up early. That was good, wasn't
it? When she started here, I tell you, she often
drove the hayrake with a pair of oxen, and I've

known her pitch hay till sundown we're in better

132

PRAIRIE STUDIES

shape now and doing good; she doesn't do that
any more."

" It's a lovely life," she says, " everything smells
fair and sweet there are young, healthy, live
things round you all the time."

The meal is fragrant with the steam of good
coffee, the taste of clover honey and wild-strawberry
jam, eggs so fresh that they are creamier than cream
itself, golden bannocks and home-made bread,
which is the crown of every settler's table ! This
homestead is very different from the last one.
Breed has a great influence in the ordering of lives ;
with exactly the same materials to her hand one
Englishwoman makes of her home a paradise and
the other in her ignorance a smellsome hovel.

While the farmer and the farm-hands start break-
fast she runs up-stairs for Humpty and Dumpty,
who in due course appear, shiny and hungry, but
when she has her own breakfast I don't to this
moment recollect. We had ours, and they had theirs,
and I suppose she had hers too, but it must have
been quick. When the farmer goes out to plough
fireguards round the stacks I engage the Humpty
Dumpties in a miraculous fairy story, full of candy
and pop-corn, while Mummy makes beds and rushes
from room to room like a Utopian whirlwind that

133

A WOMAN IN CANADA

leaves order in its train. They are four and two
years old, these babies ; as they listen to the oracle
with their round, brown eyes and curly hair wide-
spread about their heads like haloes, I speculate on
how they would have fared in England, and realize
that this broad heritage, won by their parents from
the wild, is a nobler gift from one generation to an-
other than the unendowed gift of life which would
have been all they would have got in the old country.
Aye, and that gift, too, is often tainted at the spring.
. . . The day is short because it is so full; her
young face, brown-eyed, and rosy under its mass of
grey hair, beams on me with the good nature of
perfect health and high spirits, twinkling when I
express astonishment at her energy, jerking out
scraps of information at odd intervals.

"Jim says you can shoot some wild duck if you
go with him to-morrow we can lend you a gun-
he 5 11 be by the lake and you can get good sport
while he is at work; we want some more meat." I
profess modest incompetence.

:< They're so thick you couldn't help hitting them,
the temptation is to kill too many; prairie chicken
are more difficult. No ! I don't sell much butter, I
could if I made more, but I do want help ; there is
none to be got in the West, you know ; directly an

134

Near Leanchoi!

1PRAIRIE STUDIES

active, clever woman comes out she gets married.
I wish I could find one to help me with dairy and
chickens, and the pigs, they are all my ' perquisites/
and I could make a lot of money by them if I had
more time. This afternoon I must make bread, and
bannocks if you like them; those onions are ready
for pickling, and I have all Jim's winter vests to
make. I must get them cut out before the threshers
come. They'll be here for two and a half days,
twenty men think of the feeding ! I used up a
whole hog last year. They don't mind if the service
is rough so long as the food is good. Yes ! we
generally thresh from stack, the grain sometimes
improves in colour by stacking and it's safer, too.
A little rain will delay a great time if you thresh
from stock." I listen to her as I wander from the
dining-kitchen to the living-sitting-room; her taste
is good here are no lithographs, but plain green
walls hung with the " Four Seasons," Millet's
"Gleaners," Rossetti's " Beata Beatrix"; a book-
case where Scott jostles Omar, Don Quixote leans
against Schopenhauer, and Dickens riots in beauti-
ful red calf alongside Henry Harland and De
Maupassant; a dado of green burlap, a small
cottage piano that is all, except for the vases of
sweet peas, and the Dresden cups and saucers,

135

A WOMAN IN CANADA

choice but few, carefully carried from the old
country six years ago. A restful room I feel that
to look in it is to know its owners have indeed " made
good " in Canada.

I ask her about the birth of her babies. " Don't
talk of it," she says ; " I nearly died last time, and
we thought poor Dumpty surely must die. He was
born hours before the doctor came, and the nurse
was away on another case thirty miles off. I was
alone but for Jim, he sent the chore-boy for the
doctor and he lost his way in a blizzard. TDon't
talk of it. We need nurses at reasonable distances
all over the prairies sensible, skilled women, but
they are hard to get."

The same cry as that first woman gave ! If the
Dominion Government would secure to itself a fine
race it must watch the needs of its mothers.

" After bread-baking we will take a walk and
look at the standing wheat, if you like."

We set forth near milking-time, and walk past
the gopher holes and badger holes and pale wolf-
willow to the standing corn. It rustles in the wind
and exudes the faintest hint of a warm grainy smell
under the blazing sun; the slight harsh sound re-
minds me fantastically of bank notes rustling, it
billows like a sea, wave on wave, acre on acre,

136

PRAIRIfi STUDIES

mile on mile; timely bluffs make wind-breaks for
the crop, and shine like green oases in the Sahara
of growing gold. Here, where they found virgin
prairie, she stands; the heavy ears lap against her
splendid hips, and here and there they tip her
breast; round her skirts the children cling, she
moves in this beautiful, fruitful land like Ceres
among plenty.

" Now, Humpty, if you look at the new Auntie
over there you'll see she is making a * mental
picture/ and if you look at the sun you'll see he is
making long shadows. The two don't agree. Long
shadows say bed-time for little Humpties and little
Dumpties, so Auntie's picture must melt away."
Off home we all go like geese in single file. Beauti-
ful big Mummy first, then fat Humpty, the sleepy
Dumpty, and lastly " Auntie " making notes.

" No, it's not with the troubles of farming, if it
was any trouble at all it was from living in a highly
rented Putney house with a lot of brothers and
sisters who needed more money than father could
earn ! " She has bathed the two rolls of fat and is
putting them to bed. " It's hereditary I was grey
at twenty and my brother at eighteen ! Do you
hear the cow-bells ? " I look out of the window, far
away I see the tiny windmill arms of the binder

137

A WOMAN IN CANADA

flapping industriously ; I hear a sleepy " Amen " fol-
lowed by " Good-night " behind me.

Here is the sleek, slow herd ; one by one the cows
come lowing into the corral. There she is, pails in
hand, going to meet them among the wolf-willow
and golden-rod.

My conscience stirs uneasily in all my wander-
ings through this beautiful busy country I have not
found an Englishwoman to tell me in close detail
her experiences of Canadian domestic life as she
found it on first landing, white-hot with eager in-
dustry and ignorance. They would be useful read-
ing, I know, to intending immigrants, and till I find
them I feel I have hardly obeyed the official instruc-
tions to " describe Canada from a woman's point of
view." A difficulty I have never foreseen confronts
me, for the feckless settlers have nothing of value
to tell, little but self-revealing grumbles to offer,
and the workers have so much to do that they will
hardly talk about it. It is quite near the end of my
sojourn in the country before I find what I want :
an English girl who came out two years ago to keep
house for her brothers, and who tells her story
vividly while she gets tea ready in the little wooden

138

PRAIRIE STUDIES

house out on the prairie. She is young and pretty,
I watch her work with pleasure ; she has curly red
hair and a pleasant voice, her hands are red and
rough, an honourable sign in this country. Far
away on the horizon is a crimson ring of sunset, in
the middle distance a straw-stack burns with a
pale yellow flame.

" I'll tell you of my first day," she says. " I can
never forget how odd it all was. I got to Regina
at two in the morning, and whenever I think of the
city I see it as I saw it then for the first time, silent
and grey, with its unpretentious rows of wooden
houses. My brothers had been ' batching J it, and
welcomed me gladly; they are not farmers, they
work in the city and had had many discomforts to
put up with. I started right into work at once I
got up that same morning to make their breakfast;
they were asleep still, and I wanted to please them
from the first day they had me there. I went into
the kitchen to make the fire, but could find no wood,
no coal, no water; I looked about for the bundles
of tidy sticks one always has in the old country,
nothing to be seen. Then I remembered I must not
expect comforts, and went outside to hunt. I found
a shed with coal, but all the wood was big round
pine logs, hopeless for kindlings. I hunted for a

139

A WOMAN IN CANADA

chopper. It cost me a long time and a cut finger to
splinter enough for my purpose, and when I tried
the stove oh ! I wish you'd seen how clumsy I
was. I tried to light the fire from the front like we
did at home, but I found it worked from the top,
and after my eyes were smarting with smoke and
my temper ruffled it began to draw. Then for the
water : I looked everywhere, there was none to be
found, no taps, no barrel, no anything ! I took a
pail and searched round about for a well, but at
last had to call one of the boys and he took me
down to the well that supplies several of us here
a good four hundred yards away.

" It was with real dismay that I realized how every
drop of water I used must be drawn from the well
and carried all that way. At last I got them some
tea and bread and bacon, and sent them off to work
with a list of wanted stores. We are too far from
the shops to be really comfortable here. After they
had gone I looked round. First to wash up the
breakfast things. There was no sink, no sign of a
sink; earnest search revealed a pail full of tea-
leaves, potato-parings and refuse hidden behind a
packing-case evidently this must be my portable
sink; but where to empty it? I went to the door

and surveyed the blank prairie; at last I took a

140

PRAIRIE STUDIES

spade and dug a deep hole far from the shack, for
the boys had evidently emptied the c sink J out of
the front or back door, or anywhere handy, during
their reign, and the method did not commend itself
to me. With a pail and tin basin I made shift to
wash up; then made the beds, cleaned the dusty
windows, scrubbed the kitchen floor, and then made
for my great work. Early in proceedings I had
spied in one corner of a room up-stairs a heap of
dirty clothes, socks full of holes, tailless shirts and
other bachelor signs, which made my female heart
to bleed. The tablecloths looked as if they had
been used to clean boots with at least two months'
washing stared me in the face. Half-a-mile or more
away I spied a neighbour's shack there I went to
borrow a wash-tub after a hopeless search for the
thing at home, and I first drew four pails of water
up from the well, putting three of the pails straight
on the stove to heat. The neighbour, a slatternly
Irish woman, with tousled hair hanging about her
face, and gifted with a dingy, sore-eyed child, lent
me her tub with all the good-will in the world.
With indescribable back-ache I washed the pile of
clothes and linen from pure black to pale grey, the
best I could compass, and then was hard put to for

a clothes-line. At last I remembered a cord round

141

A WOMAN IN CANADA

a trunk up-stairs, and unknotted it with sodden
fingers wondering where to fix it to there was no
pole, there are no trees here ! Finally I strung it
between the house and woodshed, and hung out the
washing to dry. There was hardly any food in the
place, I boiled some potatoes and made a ' hasty '
pudding for my dinner. When the boys came in
with the stores I prepared their supper and listened
with seemly humility to their expressions of admira-
tion and delight ! "

Funny little woman with the red hair and red
hands ! What will the " boys " do when she
marries? She has refused two offers already for
their sakes, but she can hardly be expected to do
that for ever. I look round me, and see how beauti-
fully she keeps the house; outside she has rigged
up a primitive boot-scraper to save her shining
floors, a clothes-line stretches proudly between poles
beyond the back door ; endless homely contrivances
bear witness to her ready wit and industry. The
" boys " must marry too, in self-defence I But wives

are scarce in Western Canada.

******

Here is a Dutch cattle-herd, who has charge of a
fine dairy farm five miles from Regina. He is a
big, handsome man who talks English with the

same quaint haunting accent that I have always

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

associated with Nico Jungman. His is a splendid
herd of grades and thoroughbred Ayrshires but,
then, it ought to be splendid. He " mothers " them
as a woman her children. The cattle are "in"
they will be kept in from now (mid-October) till the
middle of May, going out sometimes for a few
hours on the very fine days. Only the young and
dry stock is allowed to range through the winter, the
milch cows need warmth and care and don't they
get it ! I follow him into the warm, sweet-smelling
byre where a fat grey cat prances frantically after
the prongs of his pitchfork, and there he passes
from one prize-winner to another, telling me how
each one has her different feed this one is going
to beef and so is on bran, which does not make fat
and gives a good yield of milk; this one has oats
chopped and flaxmeal and middlings, she needs
building up; this one is off her feed and is there-
fore in disgrace, having her milk tested by Dr.
Charlton the bacteriologist to fix the trouble. We
look at the sturdy calves, nineteen of them all born
in the purple, and he strokes their backs, fluffy with
the coming winter coats. At a wary distance I
admire the great bull, and surfer with what dignity
I can his evident dislike of me. Cornelius Zoon
pats him familiarly, and says he is annoyed because
he "hasn't seen anything like you before." The

A WOMAN IN CANADA

kindly Board of Trade official, who has driven me
over to the farm, explains this hard saying. " He
means that women hardly ever come here," that's
all ! The herd tells me of the crops how they
grow alfalfa for the calves, but do not grow hay;
instead they cut the "prairie wool" (the native
grass) and stack it, it is just as good as grown hay.
His daily programme of average food in that byre
reads like a fairy tale, in my ignorance I never
guessed cows could eat so much. At 4 a.m. he
gives them their first meal of bran or chop ; at
6.20 an oatsheaf each; at 7.30 water; at 10 another
oatsheaf; at noon more water; at i he gives them
hay; at 4 p.m. chop; at 5.30 sheaf; at 6.30 water;
at 7 hay again, and twice a week a little salt ! All
the while this big Dutchman is working towards
ultimate independence. That is the glory of work
in Canada. It has such rewards. He tells me of
his half-section (320 acres), half of which he has
homesteaded and the other half "pre-empted."
Little by little he will build his fortunes, when he
can "quit" working for hire and start altogether
on his own land he will be on the way to prosperity.
His round, rosy, child-like face glows as he talks,
his blue eyes beam with hope.

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

One of the most difficult things in life is to refute
an accusation of vulgarity. Difficult because it is
only the whole of oneself that is to say, one's life,
one's work, one's mental outlook that can be called
in witness for the defence. Here is a cutting which
reached me on my return to England.

An Englishwoman by birth, but a Canadian
by adoption, has written to the Regina Leader,
criticizing Mrs. Cran's study of a prairie home,
which was published on this page last week.
She thinks Mrs. Cran must have met a very
unusual class of people. She has visited many
farm homes, and has never seen dirtily served
food, nor has she met any farmers who did not
introduce their wives. She also considers the
farmer's daughter, who sits with her hands in
her lap and says nothing, quite an exception,
for, as a rule, farmers' daughters can talk, and
talk well too. She says

" Certainly I am amused at the vexation of
Mrs. G. Cran, because the farmer's wife wears
a silk blouse and receives callers. Why should
she not? Surely the women who share with
their husbands the isolation incumbent upon
farm life may be permitted to indulge in neigh-
K 145

A WOMAN IN CANADA

hourly ' calls ' and sociability, which to my
mind seems better than a visit made in the
interest (?) of journalism, and while accepting
hospitality with outward cordiality, feeling
' wrathful ' and vicious, and writing up one's
host and hostess to expose their faults and fail-
ings. But while I am sorry the lady's 'journal-
istic industry ' landed her with such undesirable
'plebeians/ I rejoice that the number of such is
very small, and look forward to the time when
those who have bravely worked through the
early years in the Great West shall reap to the
full extent all it has in store for them of reward,
and satisfaction in looking back at work well
done, and instead of pitying the land of their
adoption I am proud of the pioneer men and
women, those who have helped, and are still
helping, to open up this country of wonderful
possibilities. May their number increase."

It is hardly intelligent criticism, it is stupid to
judge of a building by a brick. The lady judges
by one of a series of studies, as those who read may
see. She is first of all inaccurate; the farmer did
introduce his wife, simply, shortly, but quite nicely.

She misapprehends me when she gibes at my " vexa-

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

tion " in the matter of silk blouses and calls. The
farmer's wife may wear silk blouses and silk hats
and silk skirts, and sleep in silk sheets under a
silken canopy, she may have callers by the gross
every hour of every day with my entire approval
if that counts for anything if she keeps her house
clean, and can afford these luxuries. She says she
has visited many farms and never found dirt. I did,
and I am not the only one. Let me quote in my
defence the " transplanted Englishwoman." She
says

Even a tent is preferable to close contact
with people whose ways in "little things that
count" are offensive. The discomforts of a
small room, an uneven floor, and an inadequate
supply of crockery are discomforts that one
can be happy with. The presence of a man
who spits on the floor, and of a room-mate who
never bathes and cannot stand a breath of fresh
air in a fetid sleeping-room, are discomforts
which, to a refined woman, mean Purgatory.
I speak from a month's experience of this
species of discomfort in a backwoods home-
stead." The bed to which I was introduced had

no sheets, and the blankets were of a dirty
K2 147

A WOMAN IN CANADA

greyish-brown colour, and had been in use all
the winter. There was but one sleeping-place,
as it was termed, for the whole family and any
chance visitors, flimsy curtains separating the
beds. There were, of course, no toilet arrange-
ments. Every one was supposed to wash and
comb his or her hair in the kitchen, the small
wash-basin and hanging glass having their
place on a bench which held the water-pails,
saucepans, etc. I caused much amazement by
taking the basin of water and my own hair-
brush and hand-glass out to the cowshed, and
there performing my toilet in a clean corner.
(The men chewed and spat continuously while
indoors.

This is in the nature of corroboration, I think.
Then my critic on the Regina paper accuses me of
a vulgar offence, one which wounds me even to
think of, wholly undeserved as it is. "Accepting
hospitality with outward cordiality, feeling wrathful
and vicious, and writing up one's host and hostess
to expose their faults and failings." I may have
drawn this accusation upon myself by not stating
in every article that wherever I went through the

whole of my journey I said straight off, " I am

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PRAIRIE STUDIES

writing of things as I find them over here. May I
make notes of your daily doings and surroundings
and use them ? Do you mind ? " I never went to
any place without making my purpose clear. I
always asked permission. I never took bread and
salt under guise of an ordinary friendly visit. With
the accordance of such permission my way lay clear.
It was always given ; if it was given under the idea
that I should smooth the rough and gloss the dull,
then I am sorry for the giver. The writer says I
felt " wrathful " and vicious. I put it to those who
have read this chapter, Have I seemed vicious?
"Wrathful." Yes. Wrathful with the conditions
of any social system which can breed people in
ignorance and dirt, but the wrath is for England,
the sorrow for Canada that there should be grafted
on to her fine stock such undesirables of our civiliz-
ation. I have not over-stated one fact in that
article, nothing is set down in malice, bare record is
all I have attempted. Finally I would say that if
the Western paper which quoted my article did not
say it was one of a series, and quote or outline the
others it did me an injustice.

I have refrained from statistics in these prairie
descriptions because I so well remember how they

made the very name of Canada a boredom to me,

149

A WOMAN IF CANADA

before I came over and saw the beautiful country.
But some of the officials to whom I betrayed this
ill-governed dislike were very shocked. They said
no book on the country is any good that does not
comment on its marvellous figures; one of them
drew up a beautiful table for my private edifica-
tion. I have not read it. But here it is, lest any
fall by the way in learning of Canada from me, and
think it is all landscape and no dollars.

WESTERN CROPS, 1909

The following is the Official Government
Estimate of 1909 crops, dated Ottawa, i5th
October, 1909, and covering the Provinces of
Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta only-
Bushels.

Wheat, total yield .... 120,340,000
Oats, ... 156,800,000
Barley, 30,240,000

At their present market values the above
crops represent the gigantic sum of nearly
$185,000,000.

A FEW COMPARATIVE FACTS

The total gold production from the Yukon
for ten years, from 1896 to 1906, represents a

PRAIRIE STUDIES

value of $114,000,000; but, from this year's
crop alone, our Western farmers will earn about
sixty-two per cent, more than the above sum.

The total value of diamonds pro-
duced in 1905 (last available
figures) from the world's rich-
est mines at Kimberley, South
Africa, was about $34,000,000

The total output of gold for the
same year from the entire
Transvaal reached the sum of
about ........ $104,000,000

Or taken together $138,000,000

Our Western farmers will realize a greater
sum by about thirty per cent, from this season's
crop.

The whole world's silver production for the
year 1905 totalled a value of $282,000,000.
Our Western farmers will earn from this year's
crop a sum equal to more than half of the value
of the whole world's annual output of silver.

The world's gold production for 1905
totalled about $380,000,000. The earnings of
our Western farmers from this year's crops

A WOMAN IN CANADA

will represent a sum equal to about forty-nine
-per cent, of the value of the whole world's out-
put of gold for the year mentioned.

Canada represents about one-third of the
entire area of the whole British Empire. Yet,
only one-quarter of this area is at present
occupied, and only about one-fortieth is under
cultivation.

I still like my way best. But that may be
obstinacy.

Where Real Snort may be had

CHAPTER VII

POULTRY FARMING AND MARKET GARDENING

ALTHOUGH I am anxiously looking out for " bache-
lor " women on the prairies I do not seem to find any.
I mean by this phrase women who are working the
land " on their own," singly or in clusters. At last it
is borne in upon me that there are no women on the
prairies except the wives and daughters of farmers,
and they are scarce enough; but travelling as I am
doing at this stage of my visit, week in and week out,
over soil so rich, I am constrained to wonder if there
is any reason why women should not come out and
work it as well as men. No one questions its fer-
tility and abundant profits, nor the fact that hundreds
of healthy Englishwomen are encumbering the old
country and leading profitless lives. The labour of
" homesteading " would be very great for women, I
can understand their shirking it; and the lure of
1 60 acres of free land is not so golden, when faced in
detail, now that Canada is fast settling up, as it is
impossible to homestead within easy reach of the

153

A WOMAN IN CANADA

railway, a most important matter where the question
of carrying goods to market is concerned. The dis-
tance, too, doubles the expense of conveying lumber
for fuel and building purposes, furniture and imple-
ments and stock to the farm ; it also makes the home-
steader a very lonely person. To " make good " on
a free farm a woman would need either much courage
and capital, or considerable male labour, besides
agricultural skill.

Land, however, can still be bought at any price
from ten dollars (,2) an acre and upwards within a
few miles of the railway, and only those who have
been over here can appreciate the opportunities for
money-making in Canada. Women in England have
no conception of the openings there are for them in
the great North-West. Given health and industry,
there is a fortune waiting for them in that marvellous
prairie loam, just as surely as for the men who go out
to grow wheat and run stock-farms. Above all there is
a splendid opening for our women gardeners. Plenty
of women now-a-days train in agriculture and horti-
culture, but the demand for their services is at best
small in Great Britain, while it is urgent round the
rapidly growing prairie towns. These towns are
utterly unlike anything English; built of wood, they
spring up like mushrooms wherever some accident of

154

POULTRY FARMING

rail or water in the locality makes them convenient
centres of access to the outer world. Thither come
the farmers and ranchers to sell and buy, to bring
their sick, to fetch their mail, to hire the labour which
is so dear and scarce in the North-West and to
"see life."

They are excellent centres, moreover, for the sale
of market garden produce, which at present is, like
labour, both dear and scarce. The Canadian house-
wives use tinned goods to a tremendous extent be-
cause their men prefer the big gamble of wheat-
growing to the steady, if slower, road to fortune
offered by vegetable, fruit and flower growing. Here,
then, is the opportunity for Englishwomen. Let
them come out in twos and threes, unless any single
woman has herself sufficient capital, and (just as im-
portant) courage for a lonely life; let them settle
within marketable driving distance of such cities as
Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, etc., and
they will find awaiting them every facility for a life
of independence and certain ultimate success in the
grandest climate in the world. The brilliant bracing
air, the bustle of industry and of hope which pervade
the prairies are beyond my powers to describe. If
they would prefer to try such a centre as Winnipeg
they must be prepared to pay bigger prices for their

155

A WOMAN IN CANADA

land, or else to settle near the smaller towns, like
Birtle, which is eight hours by rail from Winnipeg,
where excellent land is to be bought for ten dollars
(2) an acre. Mr. Larcombe has 800 acres at Birtle,
where he raises excellent wheat, yet he finds it pays
him to devote more and more of his land every year
to growing potatoes, beets, tomatoes, pumpkins, etc.,
for the Winnipeg market. He would be an invalu-
able and willing adviser to any one proposing to
compete with him ; it sounds altruistic, but the market
is large and grows yearly larger; also he is an ardent
Imperialist who keenly desires to see British settlers
on Canadian soil. It is possible to settle within an
hour, by electric car, from the city on the Assiniboine
River, but land there fetches 250 dollars an acre.
Winnipeg offers a greater market for fruit, flowers and
vegetables than any city in Canada. It imports hun-
dreds of car-loads yearly from the United States, all
subject to 33 per cent, duty, not to mention the high
freight rates. The soil is magnificent, a warm quick
vegetable mould which has been known to produce
650 bushels of potatoes to the acre. Figuring that
out at 50 cents a bushel shows a yield of 325
dollars an acre, and 50 cents is a low estimate. I
met a man here in September who had just received
1.25 to 1.50 dollars per bushel for his last load!

156

POULTRY FARMING

All vegetables sell readily. Some of the companies
will do the first year's ploughing for buyers of market
garden lots, and take payment by instalment as
profits come along; personally I should always sug-
gest the advisability of starting fair with sufficient
capital to be unencumbered by any such debt, al-
though many a wealthy Canadian of to-day began in
that way.

Land round the other cities I mentioned can be
purchased now for twenty-five dollars to thirty
dollars an acre, generally speaking, and they offer a
steadily growing market. Round Saskatoon land may
be bought for anything from ten dollars to twenty-
five dollars an acre, in accordance with its proximity
to the city, a factor the value of which to a market
gardener it is unnecessary to emphasize. The soil
is of marvellous fertility three to four feet of loam
over clay and one or two of the townspeople have
begun to grow their own vegetables, in despair of
getting them any other way. In Mrs. Hanson's
garden at Saskatoon are cucumbers, carrots, to-
matoes, marrows, asparagus, celery, onions, beets,
radishes, turnips, potatoes, strawberries, raspberries,
currants and gooseberries. The season is short, and
housekeepers who can get fresh vegetables store
them in "root-cellars " for the winter they are also

157

A WOMAN IN CANADA

very clever at pickling them. As evidence of the
rapid growth of these prairie cities I may mention
that Saskatoon had 200 inhabitants six years ago,
and has 10,000 to-day. The story of the transforma-
tion of Winnipeg I have already narrated. Edmon-
ton is one of the most beautiful and prosperous of
the prairie cities and Calgary, "the capital of
ranchland," is another wonderful place for such a
venture as I am advocating. It stands at the feet of
the Rocky Mountains, is warmed throughout the
winter by Chinook winds, fed by a glacial river of
indescribable beauty, and boasts, even in Canada,
an atmosphere of exceptional brilliance and ex-
hilaration.

For the benefit of such of its subjects as live by
the soil, the Dominion Government, as I have
already said, supports nine experimental farms, of
which two are in Saskatchewan, two in Alberta, and
one in Manitoba, so that the prairie provinces are
well supplied. The importance of these farms to
settlers is beyond count there experiments are
ceaselessly in progress for the identification and
destruction of weeds and pests, for the breeding out
of flowers, fruit, grain and vegetables which will
stand the hard North-West winters, or ripen before
the earliest frost, or in some way render the grower

158

POULTRY FARMING

immune from climatic hazards in his ventures. The
farms exist solely for the use of the people, and
results of successful experiments are made public
property at once ; advice is given free, and the liter-
ature they publish is of extraordinary value to those
interested in the land. I have spoken of these farms
before, but the matter will bear repetition in con-
nection with market gardening.

I am particularly struck with the possibilities for
women market gardeners at the Manitoba Hall in
Winnipeg, where I am in time to see the Horticul-
tural Exhibition. There I find an old familiar
friend, Beauty of Hebron, and Early Rose, and
Early Jersey Wakefield, among other potato tribes.
The latter were sown on June i;th, and win first
prize on September ist. Strange pear-shaped to-
matoes, too, I see ; Swiss Chard, an unfamiliar vege-
table, with stalks like flat white rhubarb ending in a
leaf similar to that of a cabbage with white veins;
petunias, asters, carnations, zinnias, stocks, sweet
peas, cacti and a few pathetic half-wild roses. Pump-
kins and citrons are here, and home-made wines and
jams in abundance yellow misty dandelion wine
that carries me back to thirsty childhood hours in
the hay-fields, when sunburnt peasants drank dande-
lion " beer " out of big stone bottles, and we children

159

A WOMAN IN CANADA

clamoured vainly for that nectar instead of tepid
milk. One never-to-be-forgotten day I persuaded
an infant brother to accompany me to the stone jar,
and we drank furtively, like the dwarfs in the old
myth, of that Odhserir, honey-sweet and just as fatal,
for the Odin-eye of a parent discovered us later
disgracefully fuddled under a briar hedge. I am
straying from my subject, however, and will not
pursue the story; it is hardly a creditable one, and
nothing whatever to do with Canada ; moreover, the
rest of it is painful even in remembrance. To return
to Manitoba Hall, I see parsnip wine, bronze like an
Austrian copper briar rose with the sun on it ; cherry
wine, black and opaque ; white currant, a warm
orange ; raspberry vinegar, homely pickles ; and one
exhibit round which I hover fascinated the sweet
herbs ! Thyme, summer savory, sage, marjoram with
flowers like " cherry pie " or heliotrope, and sweet
basil, with its pale green spikes and small white
flowers, indissolubly connected with memories of
Keats and Isabella.

Herbs are always quaintly attractive with their
beautiful names, their odd perfumes, their virtues
and sobriety. English cooks ignore them in the
most unintelligent fashion, few will use rosemary

for veal stuffing, or put chervil, tarragon or dande-

160

POULTRY FARMING

lion into their lettuce salads, thereby missing count-
less subtleties dear to a discriminating palate. Mint
and parsley they will admit in their dishes, but the
difficulty of getting an English cook to put a
chopped chive-spike with mashed potatoes is beyond
belief sometimes they will rise to borage for Cup,
but chives for potatoes never. As Schloesser has
it, " once upon a time, when things went more slowly
and life was easier, the culture and culling of the
simples which went to make the olitory, or herb
garden, was as much a part of female education as a
nice deportment." It is with considerable admira-
tion, therefore, that I linger by the herb stall in Mani-
toba Hall and see that Canadians are not above
growing herbs. There is an immense market for
market garden produce out West flowers are dear
and sell well; vegetables are greatly needed; it
seems an infinite pity, therefore, that any one should
think of inserting such an advertisement as ap-
peared the other day in a Surrey paper. A trained
woman gardener offered her services free in ex-
change for a house ! It sounds incredible ; but it
is a fact. Nor is it unusual in England. Here is a
woman, trained expensively, ready to haggle her
skill for a home ! Why does she not go out West,

where many a farmer would gladly pay her well to
i 161

A WOMAN IN CANADA

" run " a few acres for flowers and vegetables, while
he and his men attend to the wheat growing? She
can save money and ultimately buy her own land;
it is easy to save in these wild places of the world,
where there are none of the lures to spend which
make saving such a dire and difficult game in the old
country; there are no after-season sales, no enter-
taining, no taxicabs, no theatres ; it is hard to spend
money indeed; and there is every inducement to
make it. It is easy to acquire land in a slow, sane,
industrious way, and work it profitably. Market
gardening requires no such outlay as wheat farming ;
that is a venture which does not begin to pay till
1 60 acres are tilled, a feat which takes some doing
in the bush-covered parts of the prairie with only a
scrub-plough to help. The ploughing of a few
acres, on the other hand, is not a very formidable
undertaking, and returns in flowers and vegetables
would be steady.

Before I left England a woman I know asked me
to look out for an opening for her out West. Her
comely face, drawn into puckers of anxiety, haunts
me as I travel; I make inquiries on her behalf, and
get five offers for her services on the prairie lands,
one in Nova Scotia, none in British Columbia. Four

out of the five would-be employers are anxious to

162

POULTRY FARMING

engage her as domestic help, practically as servant,
a post at which I beg no reader to sniff. Every
woman is a servant where labour is so scarce, and
the wives among them throw in their travail and
child-rearing as well ! The wages offered range
from ten to twenty dollars a month. The fifth offer
is to run a poultry department on a large farm of
800 acres near Winnipeg. The farmer wants to
keep poultry, there is a good market for,it in the
city; his daughters are already fully occupied with
the housework and dairy, and he would like an Eng-
lishwoman "for company" for them as well as to
manage the poultry. He says he will " deed " her
five acres to work on, make them wolf-proof, al-
though he cannot promise they will be hawk-proof,
and give her fifteen dollars a month, to become
twenty if she likes the work and stays on, and as
perquisite all the eggs to sell that are not wanted
for the house or for sitting. I remember the worried
face in the Devonshire rose-garden

" Auntie is very kind, but what am I to do when
she dies? I have no trade; I look after the fowls
for her ; she gives me five shillings a week for that,
and I have to dress on it. I can't save. I am thirty.
I shall never marry now. No one wants an old

maid. . . ." I remember her, and tell the farmer I
L2 163

A WOMAN IN CANADA

think I know an Englishwoman who will suit. 1
picture her round, rosy, good-tempered chubbiness
in this land barren of women, and tell myself that
some lonely farmer will learn one day how clever
she is in all female arts, sewing, cooking and filling a
house brimful of domestic comforts, and I write to
her detailing all the offers, keeping the best till the
last; but she does not come.

What is the fatal inertia which makes our women
remain parasites on the community? Do they feat
to travel? Why do they persist in staying in a
country where they are not wanted, just because they
were born in it?

I never learn why the Devonshire girl goes on
living with an aunt who thinks herself a philan-
thropist for keeping here. The only reason ever
offered is, " It seems such a dreadful long way away
from every one/ 5

Hawks and wolves on the prairie do much damage
among the poultry, I gather. The "boys" shoot
the hawks and trap the wolves, but they are very
tiresome. The prairie wolf must not be confounded
with the savage timber wolf, and is more properly
known as a coyote ; he is more like a wild dog, and is
occasionally dangerous when driven by hunger and
hunting in large packs never when by himself.

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POULTRY FARMING

The coyotes howl in shrill intermittent style, eerie
and discordant. They are commonly called wolves
among the settlers, and their coats make excellent
rugs for the sleighs in winter. A coyote is respons-
ible on one occasion for a paroxysm of homesickness
on my part ! I am being entertained to tea at a
farmhouse and presently mother has to clear up and
put a brace of babes to bed, so Miss Seven-year-old
takes me for a walk round the byres. I try to tell
her about the King of the Swallows, who pulls the
hair off the reels in little girls' heads and makes it
grow long, awfully long, but she muddles him up
with Absalom; a similar fate overtakes Cinderella,
who, by some obscure mental process, she confounds
with Daniel in the lions' den; thus we drift into
Sunday school talk, and I learn a lot. She has a
lovely face, this little prairie girl, with a pale, fine
skin and wide blue eyes, deep, dark blue, fringed
with black lashes. She is very animated. I am hear-
ing about " Amananeve " and a serpent, when a long
wild keening rends the air. Upon a mound near by
a coyote points his nose to the sky. Her chatter
ceases, and she clings to me trembling : " I don't
like the wolves." Whereupon memory plays me a
cruel trick ; I. feel as if it were my own little chatter-
box clinging to me, and I want to leave Canada and

165

A WOMAN IN CANADA

all it contains and rush to her. We retire indoors
discomfited, and, to cheer Miss Seven-year-old, I
sing Moody and Sankey hymns to the harmonium
while the rig is being got ready to take me away.
It is the only music I can find.

I learn a great deal about poultry farming from
Mr. Prain, of the Scottish Agricultural Commission,
during my sojourn in Edmonton. He is one of the
greatest living authorities on poultry, and does not
keep all his knowledge to himself like some experts.
If it is not an impertinence I should like to say in
passing that the report of that Commission should
be of inestimable value to any intending emigrant to
Canada. It contains the collected opinions of
twenty-two Scotchmen, men of repute, position and
learning, all experts in agricultural matters, who
went through Canada last autumn at the behest of
the Dominion Government to report on the con-
ditions of the country and the possibilities it offers
to settlers. It is published by Blackwood and Sons
at the modest sum of one shilling; here is part of
Mr. Pram's report on poultry keeping, a branch of
farming which Englishwomen with some capital
and a desire for a career would do well to
study

166

POULTRY FARMING

Canada possesses unique opportunities for
raising poultry keeping to an important industry.
With the exception of the bare prairie lands,
there is abundant natural shelter everywhere in
the woods, forest, and bushy scrub which clothe
the earth, providing not only protection from
the weather, but affording a supply of insect and
animal food so necessary to the health of this
kind of stock. In the apple orchards of the
eastern provinces, in British Columbia, and in
the magnificent fruit valley of the Niagara Pen-
insula, no better conditions could exist for the
profitable keeping of fowls; the two industries
of fruit growing and poultry keeping so natur-
ally fit into and supplement each other. Whilst
the fruit-trees supply the shade from the sun
and the shelter from the storm, so helpful and
beneficial to the fowls, these active, foraging
animals are continually devouring all insect and
grub pests which are their natural food, but
which are the deadly enemies of the fruit-trees.
Then the labour connected with the two in-
dustries is so divided that the busy season of
the fruit picking is distinctly separated from the
hatching and rearing of the chickens. Particu-
larly is the labour reduced when the birds are

A WOMAN IN CANADA

put out in colony houses all over the orchards.
The minimum of attention is required by this
system, while the ground derives the benefit from
the manure being equally distributed over it.
There is ample evidence of the successful com-
bination of these two industries, to the mutual
benefit of both, to prove that this practice might
be most judiciously and profitably extended.

The prices obtained for table poultry and
eggs all over Canada assure a profit to the pro-
ducer under good management. Taking the
whole country, the lowest summer price for eggs
will not be under 8d. per dozen, and the mini-
mum winter price not under is. $d. per dozen.
.Table chickens bring 8d. per lb., dressed weight,
rising to is. per lb. for crate-fattened birds.
Ducklings make about the same rates, and there
is always a good market for turkeys and geese.
In British Columbia prices are much higher,
but this is counteracted to some extent by the
dearer price of poultry food. In the eastern
provinces grain is also somewhat high in price,
but with better distributing facilities from the
great grain-growing areas, prices will gradually
be equalized. Cheap frosted wheat is often
available, and this can be used freely along with
168

POULTRY FARMING

other kinds of food. Although the past six or
seven years have seen an enormous increase in
the poultry produce of the Dominion, prices, in
sympathy with the other markets of the world,
are tending upwards.

From the last census returns of 1901 the total
poultry population of Canada is stated at
17,922,658. Competent authorities estimate
that the province of Ontario alone now pos-
sesses 13,000,000 hens, so that in 1908 the
poultry population was probably twice what it
was in 1901. Yet in spite of this doubled work-
ing plant, as it might be called, the consuming
capacity of the Dominion has been increasing
at a higher ratio. While at one time it was
considered impossible to consume all the pro-
duce raised, it has now become the problem to
supply the home market. In 1902, 11,635,108
dozens of eggs were exported, valued at
1,733,242 dollars. This had fallen in 1906 to
2,921,725 dozens, valued at 495,176 dollars, and
in 1908 to 1,365,890 dozens, valued at 301,818
dollars. From 1902 to 1906 the value of im-
ported eggs had fallen from 169,457 dollars to
88,937 dollars. In 1908 the value of the im-
ports of eggs was 214,994 dollars. The fall in

A WOMAN IN CANADA

exports, especially to Britain, is due to the in-
creased demands of the home market. This
strong local demand is an undoubted incentive
to greater effort on the part of the Canadian
poultry grower. The exports and imports of
live birds have both notably increased, due
presumably to the freer interchange of breed-
ing stock between Canada and other countries.
Very few large utility or commercial poultry
farms are to be found in Canada. The ten-
dency is rather to extend the industry on surer
and better lines through the farmers taking a
more intelligent interest in the fowls, and mak-
ing them a regular paying part of the farm stock.
The exhibition side of poultry keeping is well
advanced in Canada. Fanciers are numerous,
and as keenly active in introducing and improv-
ing new breeds as they are in the old country.
They play their part in fostering and educating
public opinion. They also distribute eggs and
cockerels of pure breeds, which go to build up
and improve the strains of other breeders. Con-
versation with many of these fanciers brought
out that the demand for pure eggs and cock-
erels of the useful varieties was increasing enor-
mously, indirectly proving the greater interest
170

POULTRY FARMING

manifested in poultry keeping. At most of the
agricultural shows exhibitions of poultry stock
are encouraged by liberal classification and
good prizes. Table poultry and egg classes are
almost invariably provided.

In the maritime provinces of Prince Edward
Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick the
opportunities for successful poultry keeping are
to some slight extent modified by the price of
grain, which has to be carried for food to all
kinds of stock from the Far West. The heavy
carriage, with the dealer's and speculator's pro-
fit added, makes dear grain, thus raising the
cost of production. At the same time a flock of
fowls, from twenty-five to a hundred or so on
each farm, when looked after with reasonable
care, leaves a good margin of profit. The waste
grain, vegetables, etc., augmented by a small
quantity of maize meal, carries the birds through
the winter at a very small cost. Farmers gener-
ally are doing well with their fowls, and the
custom of adding these to the regular stock of
the farm is rapidly increasing. . . .

Quebec and Ontario, being the oldest settled
provinces, with several large cities as conveni-
ent markets, naturally take the lead in the pro-
171

A WOMAN IN CANADA

duction of poultry produce. From these prov-
inces a considerable surplus is sent west every
year to the growing towns, the mining districts,
and British Columbia. Poultry keeping is much
more recognized as a regular part of the regime
of the farm in these provinces than it is any-
where else in the Dominion. With the Mac-
Donald College near Montreal, the Central
Experimental Farm at Ottawa, the Ontario
College at Guelph, the scientific and educative
sides of poultry keeping are well provided for.
The wonder is that an organized system of
marketing the produce has not yet been intro-
duced. . . .

The provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta, particularly the latter two, are so
much taken up with grain growing, the farms
are still so scattered, and labour so difficult to
obtain, that no great output of poultry produce
can as yet be reasonably looked for. As it is,
considerable importations of poultry produce
have to be made every year, though this will
very soon be reversed when these provinces get
more thickly settled. The climate, though
sometimes extremely cold in winter, need be no

hindrance to the development of the industry.
172

POULTRY FARMING

Many successful examples could be quoted to
prove this point. Even round the outskirts of
the towns many well-bred flocks of fowls can
be seen on the town lots. This might be called
a characteristic feature of most Canadian towns,
the birds being kept more with an eye to profit
than merely as a hobby. Turkeys seem to
thrive so well in these provinces that it might
be profitable to specialize in the production of
this favourite table delicacy. ... In Alberta
in 1906 the Provincial Government started co-
operative poultry fattening stations at five
centres, Wetaskawin, Lacombe, Red Deer, In-
nisfail, and Olds. The principle of these
stations was to take the ordinary unfattened
fowls from the farmers, and to fatten, kill,
dress and market them. Formerly the farmers
only got from eight to ten cents per pound live
weight, then crate-fattened, killed, dressed and
put them on the market. After deducting all
costs^the farmers were returned four and a
quarter cents per pound, in addition to the eight
cents advanced at purchase. This system had
been successfully established in other districts.
Alberta has now engaged an expert to devote
his whole time to the development of poultry
173

A WOMAN IN CANADA

keeping in the province. Throughout the whole
of the north-west provinces poultry stock keep
remarkably healthy. The wet weather in the
hatching season, particularly in June, is prob-
ably the worst handicap the farmers have to
contend with, but this might probably be ob-
viated by earlier hatching and by a little more
attention to housing.

In British Columbia the opportunities for
poultry keeping are most inviting. In fact,
almost ideal conditions exist for this industry
in the fine climate, associated often with excel-
lent soil and unlimited shelter. When to these
natural advantages is added a splendid home
market for the produce in the mining districts
and in Vancouver, the wonder is that much
more is not done in this direction. As in Nova
Scotia, the fruit orchards might most judiciously
be more extensively used as chicken nurseries.
Feed is certainly higher, but this only relates
to grains, and after all, fowls in such conditions
as usually predominate in British Columbia can
be kept at a moderate cost. At Agassiz Experi-
mental Farm there is a poultry branch which
distributes a considerable number of eggs and
cockerels. In Vancouver Island, where fruit
174

POULTRY FARMING

growing and market gardening are extensively
gone into, it is the custom to keep flocks of
fowls in conjunction with these two industries.
The Okanagan Valley, and other districts of
the same kind, present most favourable oppor-
tunities for the development of this industry.
Looking at all the circumstances, there seems
no reason why British Columbia should not
supply her own markets with poultry produce,
as well as export a surplus, rather than have to
import it as at present.

The united testimony gathered from all ex-
perimental farms, and other reliable sources,
agrees in the essential principles of housing. It
must be borne in mind that the winter over the
greater part of Canada lasts at least four
months, and that the temperature falls occa-
sionally to forty and forty-five degrees below
zero, while the thermometer often registers one
hundred degrees in summer. The variations of
temperature are accordingly much greater than
in Britain. The housing problem is, therefore,
one of the utmost importance. One of the re-
cognized essentials, then, is light ; at least one-
third part of the south, or front end of the
house, should be of glass or open to the sun.
175

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Abundance of fresh air is of equal importance ;
this is secured by having the front of the house
almost entirely open, but protected in extreme
weather by cotton curtains or sliding glass win-
dows. The open front, with sides, back and
roof tight, gives plenty of fresh air without
draught or through ventilation. The minimum
depth of a house of this kind should not be
under eight feet, with the perches low and close
to the back. An additional cotton screen sus-
pended before the perches when the weather be-
comes extreme, protects the combs and feet of
the birds from being frozen. In some houses
with span roofs the upper space is packed with
straw, which admits of top-ventilation and ab-
sorbs moisture as well; but, with the proper
amount of open front, the straw is unnecessary.
The main idea is perfect dryness of atmosphere
inside the house. Dampness to any degree is
fatal with low temperatures, therefore the floor
ought to be tightly jointed and raised from the
ground six or eight inches, as well as littered
three or four inches deep with cut straw or
roughage of some kind. It is marvellous how
birds thrive and lay in the coldest weather when
housed as above described.

POULTRY FARMING

The tendency at the present time is to feed
dry grain and discontinue mash foods. It is
admitted that mash foods may force growth in
the young birds, and also stimulate egg produc-
tion, but for breeding stock the eggs are con-
sidered to hatch better and give stronger chicks
when dry food is used. Sometimes sprouted
grain, or grain steeped in boiling water, is given,
also clover leaves or cut clover which has been
well steeped in boiling water. Green food, such
as mangels, turnips, cabbage and sugar beets,
is freely fed, also animal meal or green bone.
The self-feeding hopper system is quite com-
monly adopted for grain, bran, etc., and also for
oyster-shell and grit. Where wet mash food is
used the practice is tending towards giving it at
night instead of in the morning. The custom
of scattering grain in the litter is universal, and
altogether the methods of feeding seem to be
most intelligently understood. . . .

The tendency of the Canadian farmer is to
go in for general purpose fowls, rather than
for those with pronounced characteristics of one
kind or another. Thus Plymouth Rocks, Wyan-
dottes, Orpingtons and Rhode Island Reds may

be reckoned the favourites, with Plymouth
M 177

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Rocks easily leading. This variety is undoubt-
edly the standard fowl of the country, and it
certainly seems to fulfil its dual purpose of egg
production and table qualities admirably. Some
strains, such as those at Guelph Experimental
Farm, are remarkable for their prolific laying,
early maturity and fine table qualities. The
White Wyandotte and Buff Orpington are also
much kept for their all-round good points, while
the Rhode Island Reds are considered ex-
tremely hardy. Of the Mediterranean breeds,
probably the Brown and White Leghorns are
the most popular, with Minorcas and Anda-
lusians next.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND BRITISH COLUMBIA

FROM Edmonton to Calgary. The pulses dance
to think of it, for that means a journey afterwards
through the Rocky Mountains, the wonderful, the
world-famed ! Before I leave the prairie city, how-
ever, which to me must ever be connected with pic-
tures of the Agricultural Commission and long talks
on poultry, I meet Mrs. Balmer Watt, an interest-
ing journalist, whose little book Town and Trail is
very well worth reading by any woman who thinks
of settling in Edmonton. The Press all over Canada
has been very good to me; here and now I would
like to tender it my heartiest thanks. Mrs. Balmer
Watt has been caught by the spirit of the West, the
bias of her mind leads her to analyze and brood over
it, unlike the majority who merely take it for granted
and enjoy it. " Out on the prairies," she says, " face
to face with their naked souls, men and women come
into possession of a depth of wisdom impossible to
attain surrounded by the distractions of the town.
And what, after all, is the secret of the spirit that

M 2

A WOMAN IN CANADA

animates the whole West . . . from the centre of the
newest cities to the uttermost ends of the farthest
distant homesteads . . . but the joy of labour, the
satisfaction of knowing in each man's hands lies the
possibility of his own future ? " True words.

I leave Edmonton, the beautiful, prosperous capi-
tal of Alberta, built on the banks of a gold-bearing
river, and storm Calgary in a mazy hurry to see Mr.
Turner's ranch; he is out of town, so I miss the
ranch, but am entertained delightfully by the editor
of the Calgary Herald, with whose wife I have a
long talk about the need of maternity nurses on the
prairie. More of that later. And then Calgary, the
capital of Ranchland, the gate to the Rocky Moun-
tains happy Calgary nestling in the beautiful cup
that is neither prairie nor mountain, but girt with
both Calgary moves away from the train, and I
watch her fade into distance; we are approaching
the great gate of the mountains which stretches be-
tween the prairies and the Pacific slopes. Travellers
tell of it, how it towers to heaven and leans to hell,
how it is riven of valleys and gives back sound with
a terrible voice, how it is ranged by the bear and
shadowed by the lone eagle. Men with pens dipped
in fire have told of the Rockies, I will be betrayed

into no competition with them. The air that sweeps

1 80

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

by is brilliant and rare, so rare that it makes a novice
" out of breath," but it gives at the same time a tre-
mendous exhilaration of spirits. That phrase comes
old and stale, it sounds like the sort of thing every-
body will say who speaks of mountains, but it means
a very great deal, it means that one is happy and
happiness is the gift of the gods, sought desperately
all the world over, from the loafer in a gin-palace
to the King watching his horse win the Derby. 1
lean from the end of the car, and the silver rails slip
away from our wheels. As we approach the greatest
scenic track of railway in the world a fellow traveller
tells of the old days of the road when men fed on
fishy pork pork which in its lifetime had wandered
by the shore eating dead salmon the days when
they shot for the pot and not for sport, when they
lived for a week on a trumpeter swan and fed on
white beans for a fortnight. Here is the perfected
result of those days of travail for all the world to
enjoy. As the train enters the Bow River Valley
and the mountains close in upon us, I learn the taste
of awe.

Under Mount Stephen stands a brown house built
of wooden shingles, in the hall is a great open hearth
where logs burn continuously. Here the sportsmen
come and go go in a flurry of earnest hope, and

181

A WOMAN IN CANADA

return excited or depressed as they have found the
sport, though they never come back empty-handed.
If they have not grizzly bear they have black bear,
if not caribou they have deer. Standing by the
dancing logs I watch the last bear-parties come in
from Leanchoil, very happy and excited, with three
splendid skins; a slight fair woman who has been
standing near the fire too, for the first snow has
fallen, goes up to them and talks about their sport.
Presently one of them calls her by name, "Mrs.
Schaffer " ; I look at her with intense interest, there
could hardly be two women of that name in this
particular spot. It is known to every one that she
started from here in June intending to go over the
Wilcox Pass, down the Athabasca, and up the Miette
River, across the Yellowhead to the old Tete Jaune
Cache. Every one has heard how she started on
horseback with one other woman, two guides and a
pack-train of twenty-two horses. There can hardly
be two Mrs. Schaffers, I tell myself, at this place
in September. I study her closely; she has fair
hair that has been burned fairer by the sun, a skin
once fair, now deeply tanned, slim arms that are
browner still, and a smooth voice with a strong
American accent. What can this little woman have

in her so fearless that she is gaining the reputation

182

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

of an intrepid explorer ? Her manner is gentle ; one
derides the notion of a bias to masculinity ; perhaps
she is so sincerely an artist that she loves the virgin
wild before its bloom is pushed aside by the white
man's presence, for the red man defiles no more than
the caribou or wandering bear. If this is the Mrs.
Schaffer I mean, she is the woman who lectures
before geographical societies, who illustrated with
her brush the Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rockies,
who has written for the Canadian Alpine Journal
and the Geographical Journal of Philadelphia, and
who lectured in Boston before the Appalachian Club ;
the woman who goes on exploring expeditions for
three or four months at a time and who is men-
tioned by Kipling in his Letters.

Later in the day we meet and talk, and I see the
companion of her travels for the last three expedi-
tions, Miss Adams, a little dark, neat woman and a
keen geologist, with a head shaped beautifully like
that of an Egyptian priest. They talk amusingly,
and without the least pride, of their "trip," they
show me countless photographs taken on the way.
" First you must meet Mr. Muggins. He is the
dearest. See his sad face, he got to thinking us a
parcel of lunatics at times when we kept him too
long on the raft. Oh ! and you must see the raft,

183

A WOMAN IN CANADA

it was the most primitive thing, but we were so proud
of it. When we found the horses could not swim
the Maligne we 'unpacked' them and got across
on the raft, it was the only way. Another time we
had to unpack them and coax them one by one over
a twenty-foot bluff with a rope. I say 'we' did, but
really our two guides did; they are both English-
men, and nobody can imagine the care and trouble
those two men took ! The passing of that bluff is
becoming history in the country. It was always sup-
posed to be impassable. I am afraid the photo-
graph is rather indistinct. "

It is rather, but I manage to make out the figure
of a perturbed horse coming down a precipice at
an acute angle, and a row of others looking nerv-
ously on from above.

" Here is our camp on the Maligne Lake. We
had great trouble in finding that lake. We got there
eventually from a map drawn by Sampson Beaver,
one of the Stony Tribe, an Indian who had never
seen a map in his life. It was the crudest pencil
sketch in the world, but it served its purpose. It is
twenty miles long, and has never known a sound save
the moccasined foot of the Indians. Ours was the
first white man's camp in that far-away hunting

ground. Here is our pack-train yes, the figure on

184

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

horseback is me we both wore breeches in the wild,
it's safer, skirts are a concession to civilization. Say,
isn't this child cute ? Her mother is a quarter-breed
and her father a white man, yet look at the Indian
in that child ! See the way she carries her doll.
And she brought it in a moss-bag ! Here is a tiny
picture of the raft going over the lake; do look at
Mr. Muggins being carried over the Saskatchewan,
he is very amusing when the water is at all rough.
He just sits and cries till he is carried, and when
he is safe in his master's arms he looks as proud
and indifferent as possible. Here is our dinner-table.
You see it shows five diners, and obviously another
present to take the photograph. That comes about
because the first month we had Mr. Brown the botan-
ist and his guide with us. After that we were only
the four. Here is Mount Robson, the highest moun-
tain in the Rocky range, and at the most only photo-
graphed twice before."

" What made you begin? " I ask.

" Well ! I began with the botanical work, making
small explorations in search of plants. In that way
I learned to live on horseback, to camp out two days,
four days, a week, two weeks, a month, four months,
and so on; to jump muskegs, to take a loaded animal
up and round rock ridges, to keep a foothold on slip-

185

A WOMAN IN CANADA

pery, sliding mud. After I had learned so much it
was hard to sit with folded hands listening politely to
the stories of Colin, Stutfield, Wooley, Outram, Fay,
.Thompson and Coleman of the hills I so longed to
see stories of the vast unexplored glorious country
beyond! It bred rebellion. We looked to each
other and said, 'Why not? We can starve as well
as they; a muskeg will be no softer for us than for
them, the ground will be no harder to sleep on, the
waters no deeper to swim nor colder if we fall in/ '
So they talk; telling vivaciously, without vanity,
of their amazing venture ; giving photographs, some
of which appear in this chapter. The " muskeg "
referred to is bogland; it is the word used over
here for dangerous, treacherous bogs which seem, to
abound both in the Rockies and Ontario. (I am
liable to remember the Ontarian belt as I was caught
in the Kenora washout, where a cloud-burst washed
away a long stretch of track built over difficult boggy
land, and my train was thirty hours late arriving at
Winnipeg !) I met Miss Agnes Laut, the authoress;
I go to Emerald Lake and wonder, as every traveller
wonders, at the deep green waters, clear and bril-
liant, cradled among the mountains, with no appar-
ent excuse for their wonderful colour. The chalet
is empty, it is late in the year for travellers, but the

1 86

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

man in charge comes out to see how we are im-
pressed with his beautiful lake. Directly he speaks
I know him for English he is a Birmingham man.
We chat a little, he is of the rover type and loves
the wild mountain fastnesses. We mention New
Street, the Arcade, Five Ways, Hagley Road each
name painting a different picture of the busy Midland
metropolis to our English minds the words strike
crudely on the ear by the calm waterside, they echo
incongruously up the steeps, though we speak softly
he takes his pipe out of his mouth and looks across
the green water looks at the jagged heights about
him, looks to the sunset and grows silent. He would
not go back. He could not. If he did the moun-
tains w r ould call till his heart broke. Returning to
Mount Stephen, Otto the guide shows me how to
"shy 55 straight. He sees a spruce-partridge on a
bough and kills it with a stone. I am impressed less
with his skill than with the instinct to kill which
animates all his conversation, and is after all his
means of livelihood. He tells me that the spruce
partridge is usually known as the fool-hen because
of its silly habit of sitting still to be stoned, also
that the ruffed willow-grouse is protected by law.
He has lived at Leanchoil and Field for seven years,

and knows all the trails for two hundred miles round.

187

A WOMAN IN CANADA

I ask if one can fish much here, and he tells tales
of the trout in the Kootenays, of the silver and grey
heckle, of fishing up to ice-time till my ears ache to
hear the keen swish of a line cleaving the air, my
eyes to see a silver fly tip the water. Next day I
find the west-bound train is cancelled, so start forth
to try riding astride; the indescribable mosses, the
trees gnawed by porcupine, the thickets bright with
scarlet bunch-berries lure one to brave the passes ; I
find a beast which proves a very Samson among
gees; after two or three hours he makes for home
just as violently as he started away from it; he has
galloped and curveted up the Yoho Pass in great
good humour, utterly regardless of the tremors
which might possibly possess a rider unused to
Rocky Mountain roads. I am wondering if there
is any chance of slipping into the hotel unseen-
there are no side-saddles "out West." Walking
feels odd in this kit. Other women can look very
smart and workman-like in the queer Mexican
saddles, and out of them too, but I haven't yet " got
the habit." Round the last perilous corner, past the
livery barn, and over the shining railway track we
dash to the hotel steps. I peer about me in the
dusky light and cautiously prepare to dismount. No

one who has not been in one knows how many humps

188

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

there are on these Western saddles. I am swaying
and struggling in great disturbance of mind when a
civil voice offers help.

A lady of apparently forty or so, with one of those
even voices that go with " decided " opinions, has
seen my difficulties. I explain my modest appre-
hensions, and she tells me she has felt the same,
also that she has been up the Burgess Pass alone
and is only just down. I am engineered over the
humps and out of the funny wooden stirrups, and I
thank her with great respect. Fancy climbing the
Burgess alone ! The Yoho with a horse is bad
enough.

We meet at breakfast next morning and I find
she is a very handsome girl of twenty-seven or there-
abouts, brilliant in conversation, intelligently vague
in all her opinions. It is impossible to think and be
"decided" since the discovery of radium. There
are some buckwheat cakes on the menu, and we
have two helpings, then tell each other we are
greedy.

" But all nice things are greedy," she says,
" babies, you know, and dogs and roses."

I tell her of my vain efforts to grow roses on the
sand in Surrey; she tells me to try basic slag, and

we wander into a highly technical discourse on rose

189

A WOMAN IN CANADA

manners, on habits and varieties, winding up with
Mendelian theories.

" I am taking home some seeds of the wild prairie-
roses," I tell her, "to try and breed out a garden
variety that will stand hard winters."

" So am I," she cries.

We stare, then laugh. Here we are, two lone
Englishwomen who have drifted together for an
instant in the toil of travel, and a chance word re-
veals us both bent on the same quest, infinitely inter-
ested in the same problems.

She has some relatives lately settled in British
Columbia, and has heard so much talk of Canada
that she has come out to see for herself if she would
like to live in it. She has trained as a horticultural-
ist, and asks what chances there are for women out
here.

" Endless ones for the right kind," I answer
warmly. " England is glutted with female labour,
Canada faints for want of it. It looks like the sim-
plest problem in the world to solve. In reality it is
bristling with difficulties."

Her clever face crinkles into lines of perplexity.

"How?" she asks.

" Because Englishwomen are used to a communal

life. That's why," I answer.

190

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

She muses, and I watch her strong, fine face with
interest and pleasure. She seems to me to be the
embodiment of the best kind of Englishwoman, the
kind so greatly needed out West. There is courage
in her and endurance, gentleness and refinement too,
and all these qualities are lit by the radiant intelli-
gence that beams from every glance.

' You are sure to stay at Victoria later on," she
says. " Will you ring me up and tell me if you have
time and inclination to stay a few days with me out
on the farm ? "

We say good-bye. I see her embark on the west-
bound train with regret another of the " ships that
pass in the night."

Though there are so many English in British
Columbia, I seem to become engaged in more of the
England v. Canada quarrels there than in any other
province in the Dominion ; one Mr. Hamber in par-
ticular I remember says that the English population
of the North-West is greater than in any other part
of Canada, and is mostly composed of wastrels a
statement which rouses me to fiery debate. We end
in mutual hatred, and I repeat the performance with
so many worthy British Columbians that at last big
Jim Macdonell proclaims himself my champion.

Any one who quarrels with me must fight him and

191

A WOMAN IN CANADA

thereafter peace. " Big Jim " is the biggest man I
have ever seen in my life, a Scotchman and a famous
engineer. He is doing a tunnelling operation be-
tween Laggan and Field for the Canadian Pacific
Railway, and has a great colony of navvies en-
camped like a city for the last two years on the base
of operations ; he has built a house there for his wife
and babies and partner, has a hospital with a doctor
and nurse for the staff, and reigns like a burly blue-
eyed Scottish chieftain among his men. He tells
me a retort to silence the Eastern Canadian with
when he quarrels with me about the silliness of Eng-
lish settlers, and he, " Big Jim, 55 is not at hand to
fight him I am to say, "The Englishman in
Ontario is a fool? Well, if you went West would
you know how to throw the diamond hitch ? 5> And
they never know. There is only one way to throw
the hitch which will fix the pack on a pony's back ;
an intricate piece of Western lore it is, and quite
unknown of the tenderfoot.

I learn a great deal in the mountains about the
minerals in this province ; there is an aerial lead and
silver mine on Mount Stephen, and much talk of ore
goes on ; I learn that the yield shows about twelve per
cent, of zinc, three ounces silver to the ton, and that

the only foreign element is lime, the easiest substance

192

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

of all to eliminate. I look at it, on the face of the
mountain like Dracula, and can perceive the advan-
tage of its position ; it is above the railway, and they
do not have to sink for ore. They drive straight
into the mountain, and the metal travels with its own
weight to the truck. I strenuously evade all hospitable
efforts to drag me up to it. Gold, silver, copper,
lead, antimony, mercury, coal, zinc, iron are all found
in British Columbia a noble array. Mining has
been dull of recent years owing to long litigation.
Last June the Dominion Government re-enacted the
Lead Bounties Act, practically making lead worth
18 sterling per long ton. There were good reasons
for it, as the United States impose enormous import
duty on the ore, also the cost of production is great,
and the freight rate to the London market on pig-
lead amounts to 4 per ton. At the coast Vancouver
Island has huge deposits of iron, copper, gold and
silver. All this and more of mining passes to and
fro in talk, generally of an evening the days are.
devoured of work and sport; a young man with a
head of distraught hair and melancholy eyes tells me
most of it he is a miner. I wonder as I listen if his
hair would lie down flat with surprise if he found a
real enormous gold nugget one day in his life, and

if his miserable face could ever look pleased. Soon
N 193

A WOMAN IN CANADA

I say good-bye to him, to Big Jim and his little
pretty wife, to ptto, to the explorer-woman who goes
not as the crow flies, but as the trail winds, to the
little wooden house among the eternal mountains
to the spluttering log fire, to the happy hunters.

On the train I lean as usual from the car and smell
again the smell of Canada pine and cedar, pine
and cedar here is the muddy Fraser River laced
with emerald mountain streams; down the sides of
the canon grows the burning bush, there are splashes
like blood on the rock-face of maple deeply red.
Here is a gold dredge at work on the river, here is
Agassiz, with her deserted orchards, where Mr.
Prain shot a bear. We run into a litter of pigs and
leave a steaming, throbbing corpse behind; here is
a little settlement called Cheam I wonder what
homesick Surrey man named it so. At Harrison
Mills is a pond of water-lilies gleaming silver tones
in green sward, all girdled with mountains. Here the
turgid Fraser turns green, she is cleansed by some
miracle of the mud of her earlier courses^ here is
a butterfly, here bracken, dandelion, clover, yarrow,
a hedged lane this country is like England, like
England !

From the livid grasses of the prairie to the sunny

orchards, the bracken, the ivy, the pleasant, low-

194

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

pitched voices, from a desert of grass, of wheat, of
scrub, where the wolf-willow glimmers on the wind-
bitten wold, from the prairies to this paradise is
change indeed. Here in this other more beautiful
England, British Columbia, the roads wind in mossy
dells unsoiled of weary feet tramping to win a daily
pittance, unstained of the filth of cities, untamed,
unbroken; the bracken stands twenty feet high, the
cedar and arbutus grow down to the edge of the sea,
the deer and salmon share wood and water. I tread
its ways bemused with wonder, morose with the
impact of sensation. I suffer the strange faces
about me almost as a bodily hurt, for they are used
to this wonderful country, and look with the aloof-
ness of incomprehension at my amaze. From Van-
couver I take steamer to Victoria, the capital city of
British Columbia, and the great mart of Vancouver
Island, on which it is built. We steam for five or
six hours through the Straits of Georgia, threading
among the green islands with Mount Baker look-
ing like Fujiyama, white-capped against an amethyst
sky; the gulls sway against the breeze, the under
wing dyed with pink reflected from the brilliant
sunset water. I wander curiously about the streets
of Victoria; they are wide and beautiful, just tilted

from the level of a sheer copy of the Old Country
N2 195

A WOMAN IN CANADA

by the Oriental bias. Here are the little yellow Japs
and Chinks, with their quiet, busy ways, their cease-
less industrious coming and going. Their shops are
here, their names line the streets, they are as much
part of the social machine as are these high-nosed,
slim, tall men and women who speak " army " from
every pore and who are Victoria. The gardens are
fenced from public view by clipped holly hedges,
ivy grows joyously, a welcome sight never seen on
the prairies. Here is a garden full of roses, Mrs.
John Laing nodding on her long stalk; La France,
the rascal who pays so ill for cutting and is so beauti-
ful that one always finds garden-room for her in
spite of her withery habits; Frau Karl Druschki,
long, white, graceful; Dorothy Perkins, vigorous of
growth; a brilliant dragon-fly poises over her he
looks a little weak in the wing, perhaps, but this is
mid-October he lingers round as though he re-
members the pink clusters which must have made
that rambler a glory when it was in full bloom ; he
is annoyed with " Dorothy," and goes over to Mrs.
John Laing for comfort. This brilliant sea and sky,
this island of flowers and sweet scents makes me
envy the high-nosed ones who come to live here in
the afternoon of life. At Oyster Cove, in Esqui-

mault Harbour, Captain Williams walks in his big

196

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

wading-boots among the apple-trees and wax-berries
telling me all the dowdy things that can happen to
oysters if they are not nicely managed. Wo Lung,
whose long pigtail is wound round his head like a
cap, goes down to the cove to grapple some up for
me to taste; the Captain takes me down to the sea
and shows how they are " planted " with sea-paths
so that between he can walk round and turn them
over whenever he wants to. It is like a sea garden,
and its summer-house is a wooden hut on the raft
where he sorts his oysters over. Wo Lung staggers
away with a heavy load, and I follow the Captain up
to the apple-orchard once more, wondering how
many I am expected to " taste."

Inland, happy as man must have been when he
first saw Eden, I wander between splendid avenues
of balmy cedar that make a luxury of breathing;
maple burns in crimson and gold against the deep
rich green of the pines brown and gold and green
green and gold and brown it is like looking at
Dante Rossetti's palette. One Martin Vannier
drives me to Cowichan Bay, the landscape is pure
joy every inch of the way. The roads are wide and
well kept, edged with picturesque snake-fences
almost hidden under brown-gold bracken; here is
a rich orchard where the apples hang among their

197,

A WOMAN IN CANADA

leaves like little crimson Chinese lanterns, when the
sun strikes them the untouched bloom glows like
mauve violet. Here is a herd of red polls, fat and
contented in pasture that looks like parkland, mag-
nificently timbered. The blue jays chatter as we
pass, Mount Tzouhalem rises beside us, a burning
mountain in its radiant garb of autumn foliage. A
funny mongrel with a fox-terrier head, a setter body
and a Pomeranian tail attaches himself to our " rig "
and barks at every elderberry bush somebody
must have given him some to eat at one time. On
the slope of a hill by Cowichan Bay is a pretty house
of wood that reveals itself as Buena Vista Hotel-
set in trees that would grace the noblest English
park. We unhitch Jimmy, the dapple grey who has
shied industriously at every blade of grass on the
road, and reward him with a feed of oats. The mon-
grel rejects my overtures, coupled though they are
with enticing smells of lunch, and makes for the bush
to hunt for elderberry-trees; he gives a friendly leer
from a clump of ferns and disappears for the after-
noon. Men come and go for lunch, for a drink, for
a word with our host, and I watch them enviously
they all have guns, they all have setters, they all
roam these glorious woods from day to day ; I am a

momentary sojourner who would so gladly stay for

198

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

ever, and I wonder that they can wear a mask of
calmness whose heritage is set in these pleasant
paths.

Martin discovers that it is little use going after
pheasants, as we had intended, without a dog; so
we borrow a line and spoon from our host, and go
down on the bay to troll for salmon. The glittering
bait whirls busily in our wake ; we row up and down
and round and about. The sun settles closelier
among the mountains, the little breeze fades to a
whimpering calm, the gulls scream greedily over
their fishing, carrion crows flap heavy wings over the
dead fish on the shore. The wet line is twisted
round my hand lest a sudden jerk betrays my absent-
mindedness to Martin and in such a peace as is
beyond praise, beyond description, the day wears
toward sunset.

The whole atmosphere of this lovely island is
opposite to that strenuous, bracing prairie-life I have
recently passed through. There the days tingle with
work, with the massing of moneys, the stress of toil.
Here the climate is warm and sensuous, the most
part of the settlers have small incomes and are con-
tent with the happiness of " enough " rather than the
excitement of " more." I sit brooding on the com-
fortable lives gentlepeople live here in Nature's

199

A WOMAN IN CANADA

lovely garden island on incomes which in the old
country mean penury with all its attendant humilia-
tions and demoralizations; I am so engrossed with
thought and bitter with envy for the people who own
the beautiful acres on either hand that I forget the
tiny thrill of the whirling spoon, and am nearly
jerked out of the boat when a furious salmon finds
himself hooked. I collect my scattered thoughts and
begin to haul him in amid excited advice from
Martin, but I am not quick enough. The line slacks
for one instant, a great bar of indignant silver flashes
into the air and deluges me with water, he has twisted
himself free, and I am in horrible disgrace. Martin
says he was a fifteen-pounder, and looks at me with
such grief and scorn that I forget Vancouver Island
and remember that I am out to fish. You see he was
lost through clumsy playing, and Martin would for-
give clumsy gaffing sooner than that. After long
patience I get a three-pound rock-cod, and suffer the
forbearance of my guide all the way back. I point
out the beauty of the catch as his ruddy translucence
fades to pallor streaked with brilliant yellow, and
flushes again to red-brown, but the fifteen pounds
of silver salmon hang in Martin's mind and I am not
acquitted. I suggest that the lost magnificence may

have been a "cohoe," but even that slight comfort

200

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

is denied me Martin says he was a fifteen-pound
" spring," and I marvel at his quickness of sight.

N A tired, bloody-jowled mongrel meets us with a
yap of joy under the cedars and arbutus; I sneak
past him with the rock-cod spiked on a stick (the
horny fins are supposed to be poisonous); I do not
even pat the dog as we pass, I suspect him from his
torpidity and gore of being a much better sportsman
than I have proved myself to be.

I find my ship of the night, the lady gardener of
the Rockies, is not to " pass " after all ; we meet
again, and one drenching morn at four of the clock
she and I, with her uncle and aunt, may be seen row-
ing dismally towards one of the little islands that
cluster round Vancouver Island, where they have
bought a large estate. This is the beginning of the
rainy season. Her uncle gives me " tips " for the
good of other Englishmen who are coming out.

:< Tell 'em not to bring out silly spiral gaiters that
let in the wet, but puttees for choice, or gaiters to
button up the side and come well over the boot. Tell
'em to bring a gabardine, and learn how to shoe a
horse, and how to do a little cobbling, and how to
use saw, chisel, axe and plane/'

I listen respectfully while I struggle to row in

the bow ; the oar is all right but the rowlock is broken,

201

A WOMAN IN CANADA

and I keep getting into disgrace because I can't
keep time with stroke; also my hair is hanging in
front of my face dripping like the eaves of a thatched
roof, and it is difficult to see when the back in front
of me bends. Presently "the boys" spy us from
afar and bring the launch to the rescue.

What a beautiful place they have ! I cannot
wonder army people come out here, I only wonder
any one keeps away. I am taken over the bay to
troll with rod and line in the Siwash way. Four
fathoms from spoon to lead, and two fathoms from'
lead to point of rod. We use cuttyhunk and a lead
of about three ounces. I land some nice fish, and am
only sorry that Martin is not here to see. His scorn-
ful eyes are a humiliating memory. My gardener
friend is not only versed in horticulture; in a little
dairy under giant Douglas firs I watch her churn the
pale cream, and I stand gazing in ignorance, but
faith, at the glass disc which is to " get clear when
the butter comes." Fascinated I hover over the pile
of golden grains washed and rewashed and washed
again; her clever hands finally pat and mould it to
the guise in which one is accustomed to meet butter.
I watch her melt yeast cake, and help her stir the
dough till our arms ache, the pleasant acrid yeasty

smell fills the kitchen. We troll the bay for more

202

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

fish, and catch a big " cohoe " who gives us great
sport and a cod who gives us an excellent breakfast ;
we tramp the woods with a '25/20 Winchester and
stock the larder with venison because " the deer have
eaten up all Auntie's winter cabbage."

In the sunset we walk, we two moderns, in the
primal glades discussing the Fabian Society,
eugenics, Brieux, Ibsen, Tolstoy, all the questions
and question-makers that have been born of our
teeming population and the stress of civilization.

" Incongruous in such a setting," I say at last, but
she does not agree.

" Here is the young world to be built. Where
else should be discussed the lesson of the old ? " she
says.

" What has it taught us ? " I ask, being older and
less buoyant.

" That all's well with the world ! That races, like
the flame, go upward ! That the new is better than
the old, that the future is greater than tradition."

British Columbia is opening up every year; the
Grand Trunk Pacific will soon make the Kitsumga-
lum Valley a rival in fruit-growing with the Okana-
gan. The province is thickly grown with valuable
trees, it has the sea, it has minerals, it is rich beyond

belief in every natural beauty. It is a sportsman's

203

A WOMAN IN CANADA

paradise where range the bear black, grizzly, cin-
namon ; the moose, caribou, deer, wapiti or elk, the
bighorn, or Rocky Mountain sheep, of all Canadian
game the most wary and difficult to bag (every head
brought down represents honest hard work and
straight shooting); the mountain goat abounds, that
singular bearded beast, most daring of all mountain
climbers; wolves; puma, or cougar, often called
panther or mountain lion; lynx; antelope; besides
the small game : foxes, hares, rabbits, mink, fisher
martin, sable, otter, beaver, muskrat, wolverine and
the rest. Although few persons, however keen,
would visit this province merely for the sake of its
wing shooting, yet it is undeniable that, with the
exception of Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Athabasca, a man may find as much work for his
breechloader here as anywhere abroad. Five species
of grouse, and vast quantities of wildfowl, from
swans to teal, abound in suitable localities. The
marshes of the Columbia swarm with mallard and
other choice duck in the autumn; the Arrow Lakes
and the upper valley of the Fraser form a trough
much frequented by the wild geese during their
migrations, and the fiords and sounds of the coast
shelter great flocks of wildfowl throughout the winter
the winters of the Pacific are very much less rigor-

204

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

ous than those of the Atlantic, and a very large
proportion of the birds do not go farther south than
Vancouver Island.

The fishing is so remarkable that no one can
realize the quantities of salmon and trout to be found
in the streams till he or she has visited British
Columbia.

The province is divided into eight districts, each
of which would require a whole book to set forth its
peculiarities of soil, climate, mineral and timber re-
sources and diversity of scenery ! There is the
Kootenay district, drained by the Columbia and
Kootenay rivers, which combines in odd juxtaposi-
tion fruit orchards and copper mines. There is Yale,
the garden of British Columbia, with its lakes and
sunny orchards; Lillooet, the pastoral country de-
voted to dairying and cattle raising; there is West-
minster, which includes the fertile valley of the
Lower Eraser, famous for its lumbering and salmon
canning industries unfortunately the canneries are
closed at this time of the year and I do not see
over them; Cariboo and Cassiar, great unexploited
tracts of close on 200,000,000 acres which look to the
new Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to bring settlers
to mine for gold and work the fertile belts; there

are the Comox district and Vancouver Island, where

205

A WOMAN IN CANADA

fruits are prolific and fishing, quartz mining, copper
smelting, whaling and shipbuilding are staple in-
dustries.

Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is an
important business and industrial centre. It shares
with Vancouver the northern trade and that of the
interior; the vessels entered and cleared during
1906-7 were 3,625, and of these 2,077 were foreign.
It is the first port of call for the trans- Pacific liners
and northern steamers, as well as all the big freighters
which round the Horn for Puget Sound points.

Labour is scarce and dear. Women can command
in domestic service anything from fifteen to thirty-
five dollars a month with board.

In brilliant sunshine I leave Vancouver, gathered
like a child to the breast of the mountains, and turn
my face to the east again. On the prairie tract the
train gets snowed up at Maple Creek; after the
tropical vegetation, the rugged magnificence of
British Columbia, these lowly hills and vast treeless
spaces covered with snow under a blue-green sky are
odd indeed. We wait on the train day after day,
discussing the country's platitude, topographical and
domestic, watching the gophers playing on the glit-
tering snow by the track. This is an unusually early

blizzard, and people tell storm stories in the intervals

206

03
H-

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

of snowball fights, and questioning the worried con-
ductor about the progress of the two snow-ploughs
in front which are endeavouring to clear the way.
I am on the "home trail/ 5 Soon this brilliant air,
this boundless country will be out of touch and sight,
will have given place to the misty greys of tiny
populous England.

207

CHAPTER IX

EASTWARD BOUND

THE train pulls away from Winnipeg, the nigger
porter assiduously portions me my pet berth, " No.
2 Lower/' the dining-car conductor bustles about
distilling odours of bacon and coffee every time he
opens the door of his car. ... I am on the east-
ward train and my face is set towards home.

Let no one think he can come to the young North-
West and leave it with joy. Lightly enough I came
three months ago, lightly enough I took the trail
towards the sunset, lightly enough I trod the magic
land that leaves its mark for ever on the heart. The
process is so unconscious. I never knew as I trod
the prairie grasses and caught the perfume of the
low roses brushing by my skirt, I never knew as I
looked towards the mountains in the sunset that
these once tasted leave an everlasting hunger for
more; there was no way of knowing that when I
followed the lean trail it would never cease to

beckon, only now as I turn eastward do I learn the

208

EASTWARD BOUND

thing that has happened. Another song to haunt
the silences till death.

There is the song of remembered childhood we
all hear it at times by " moonlight or by candle-
light " ; there is the song of the first kiss of first
love; there is the song of the beloved waxen dead
we laid to earth with bitter grief; there is the song
of the secret hours when none but ourselves know
how the soul lost or won, how good or how bad the
record was made every one of us has that song to
haunt the heart ; but not all of us has added to the list
with this song of the West that is started for me, and
which I have neither power to still nor will to resent.
It is a song of labour, hardship, loneliness, of great
rewards, of unfettered life, of limitless oppor-
tunities. A song of hope, of freedom; a song of a
happy land.

I suppose it is the savage in us that responds to
the wild waste places, the savage which looks with
eyes of sympathy on the face of Nature when we
find her virgin, naked, unashamed. I don't know-
one doesn't analyze these emotions if one is wise.
But I do know that the beaten roads and easy paths
of England seem tame and tiresome to feet that
have followed the trail through bush and scrub, by

creek and slough, under a boundless sky with the
o 209

A WOMAN IN CANADA

sun for sign-post and the warm, wild wind for
friend. It is hopeless to urban ears to talk of the
exhilaration that clutches at the heart when one
finds oneself stripped of the " conveniences " of
life the intolerable hideous yoke of comforts that
civilization binds on our backs from birth who live
in settled lands. The uplifting of the heart when
it finds itself free and face to face with primal con-
ditions is not to be told in words to such as have
not tasted. But it waits in Canada in great draughts
for those who have the courage to seek it, wine for
the brave heart. There is no call in her for those
who are tainted with the poisonous love of cities ; in
the name of mercy let such stay in Europe. Dream-
ing hearts that love the mourn of a deep-throated
wind in trees, that feel the pulse of a secret never
solved in the touch of loam and leaf-mould, the
beginning and the end of philosophies and fears in
the sowing and the reaping, who keep a steadfast
face to fate, not from ignorance but knowledge, who
offer a beautiful service to Nature those are the
souls to win the wild, to garner happiness in every
twist of the seasons, to bide the rewards of labour
in unmurmuring patience.

As I look regretfully at the landscape slipping

from me with every throb of the train, hoarding

210

EASTWARD BOUND

jealous memories of every acre as it passes, I
remember a great deal that Mr. Larcombe in Mani-
toba said about the pity of people coming out and
buying land cheap for speculative purposes, the
unfairness of it to the workers. He advocated buy-
ing land with a view to settling it, and was ardently
anxious that English capitalists should settle vast
tracts with English settlers. I hear his mellow old
voice droning out a scheme as we drive about his
prosperous acres.

"Why will not an English capitalist purchase
several thousand acres of land with a view to settling
British farmers on it. The land could be divided
into farms as at present, namely, 160 acres, and let
at a rental of ten per cent, of the purchase money,
allowing the tenants option of purchase at any time
within ten years by giving the original purchaser
fifty per cent, on the purchase. Say the capitalist
buys at ten dollars an acre and re-sells at fifteen,
giving the tenant option of purchase at any time in
ten years, drawing till such time ten per cent, inter-
est on the original outlay ; it should be possible to
adjust the percentage and purchase money to give
the settler stock and farm implements as well as
land. There seems no reason why 20,000 settlers
could not be arranged for in this way with profit to

02 211

A WOMAN IN CANADA

both first purchaser and the man who settles; the
latter will avoid the handicap of distance which tells
so heavily on the settlers on free homesteads. The
best-placed land is already sold. It is dearer now-
a-days to get land at a gift than to buy it .where
there are opportunities."

I think that was the scheme he outlined, it was
a warm sleepy day and I was being lulled into
slumber by the dolorous chant of his voice, when
he became highly excited over the tariff question and
I had to wake up and appear to know what he was
talking about.

"Why don't English manufacturers come here
and build plant near Winnipeg for making farm
implements ? " he asked fiercely. :< The Americans
are fetching raw materials from the Kootenays at
twenty per cent, duty, then making the stuff in
America and bringing it over here at another duty
of thirty per cent., thus making a duty of fifty per
cent, on the farm implements bought in Canada.
The preferential tariff is no good, it is only a two
cent preference. All English goods should be
allowed in free, the ocean rate is so small that that
would make a great difference to our trade. As
things are we are building up American millionaires
out of the hard earnings of our Western farmers.

212

EASTWARD BOUND

There should be no tariff on any English goo'ds,
Canada should be as free to England as England
to us. Then she would get her revenues from direct
taxation, which she could well afford, seeing she
would be getting her goods so much cheaper. Prob-
ably twenty or thirty per cent, of moneys collected
under tariff revenue is paid to excise officers whose
duty it is to watch Canada's shores."

He looked at my automatic smile of acquiescence
and suddenly accused me of utter tariffic ignorance.
I admitted it, I remember, and was thereupon
bitterly accused of being behind the times, also of
being a perfidious deceiver.

" Why, I saw in the paper that you were speaking
to the presswomen of Winnipeg on female suffrage."

I hastened to explain and left him only half
enlightened, I fear; he did not tell me any more
schemes, but he told me a great deal about farming
and was infinitely kind, the nice old man. I hope
he ended by forgiving my political ignorance.

As a matter of fact I had said a few words to the
presswomen of Winnipeg when they very court-
eously entertained me to a luncheon, and I had
spoken on the suffrage because I saw it was a topic
that both interested and shocked. I only asked

them to reserve judgment on the question till they

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

had been over to England and studied the working
conditions for women at first hand. And I was
wrongly reported, too, I remember. One paper said
1 had said that Mrs. Humphry Ward had never
done a day's work in her life ! Mrs. Humphry
Ward ! who has given us the History of David
Grieve, and Robert Elsmere, and William Ashe,
and Marcella! What I really said was that prob-
ably she had never had to work day in and day out
for her very life. My farmer friend was quite right
in being shocked at my ignorance of politics. I
know so little of them that I think only the units of
the community, irrespective of rank and sex and
age, who can pass a standard examination on pre-
sent politics and political history should have a vote.
Only those. We might select from among us in that
way brains fitted to choose the governing brains.

So musing, remembering, watching the country
slip by, we clang at last into Ottawa, the capital of
Canada, at an untoward hour on a frosty morn,
where Meg and Gaston greet me shivering and
smiling.

One thing which has struck me very forcibly
about the people of the country is their " insularity,"
their narrowed horizon. Frequently in passing

from province to province I have been impelled by

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EASTWARD BOUND

admiration to say, "What a beautiful country this
is," meaning always Canada as compared with what
I know of the rest of the world. And always my
hearer has taken me to mean, not Canada, not even
his own province, not even that, but just his own
town or hamlet. Time after time I was met by this
limited outlook, time after time I hit up against this
barrier and found that to expect imperial thought or
argument was like fighting with a pudding.

" What do you think of this country ? " has been
a question asked me more than any other, and it
took me a very long time to realize that I must
answer not for the Dominion, but for the few square
miles around me; with the attrition of other minds
and the facilities for travel which added ailways
will offer that narrow view will doubtless widen;
and anyway it argues some pride of locality, some
interest in comparisons of attribute and progress,
however small. Prides are good for the individual,
for the municipality, for the race, they carry virtues
of strength and independence in their train, and no
one will deny that the Canadian is proud, even to
boastfulness, of his land, its size, its progress, its
possibilities, so proud that he errs at times on the
side of believing no other prides in the world should
have hearing but his own. There are the faults and

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virtues of a young people to be noticed on every
hand, and I sated with the civilization of London
understand and envy the fierce youth and un-
tamed ambition which beat in the heart of this land.
All its future is before it ; if it has not a background
of glorious history it has the making of it in hand
with all the histories of the world to guide it to
glory.

There is no Established Church in Canada.
There is none of the struggle or the ennobling of
religious dissent; every congregation, Roman
Catholic, Church of England, Presbyterian and
the rest supports its own pastors. And it suffers
from no lack of them or of churches. In fact, I am
struck with what appeals to me as a plethora of
religious edifices on every hand. Toronto has 218
churches ! In some parts of the prairie, notably
in Saskatchewan, I found a demand for young
Church of England men, to help with the training
of the catechists, ordained men to drive from point
to point of the diocese and perform the duties neces-
sarily left undone by the men in training. Arch-
deacon Lloyd of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, is
the superintendent of catechists, and would, I
imagine, answer readily all inquiries on the subject.

I know the haughty cleric in the Old Country, and

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EASTWARD BOUND

am envious to see how the familiar estate will look
in the New, stripped of the prestige which its posi-
tion gives it in England. It seems to me that what
it loses in snobbery it gains in vital energy.
Whether the aim be a worthy one or no the young
men of the Church know that their incomes depend
on the way they please and handle their congrega-
tions. It behoves a clergyman to work hard in
Canada, like every one else; he can never slacken
on the tenure of a fat living, he must be up and
doing or his income will abate, his popularity de-
cline, and finally his flock fail to support him. I
have thought a great deal about the two methods,
the Established and Disestablished, and I must
admit that our Old Country way appeals to me as
more dignified and more likely to aid honesty than
the Canadian way. Not energy, perhaps, but inde-
pendence, and with independence commonly goes
honesty. I would sooner fight the haughtiest pride
in my Rector than feel he depended on his manner
to me and mine for his daily bread. This is rather
in the way of rumination than statement. I have
not studied either condition closely enough to
venture to have a decided opinion. I had a long
talk with a young Irish curate in Manitoba one day :

he said his people were good to him, his labour

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

interested him, he loved the climate, and his horse
was his greatest friend. All he wanted was a wife,
and he was coming overseas to find one in his next
holiday. He told me he would not go back for any-
thing, not for all the bouts of homesickness he some-
times had to fight. This with a twinkling Celtic
eye, and a beautiful brogue that would lure any
wandering sheep back to the fold. I found after-
wards that he was a very popular young man, and
therefore was well supported by his flock.

The Presbyterian and other sects have as large
followings as the Church of England; I am, indeed,
not sure that the latter does not come rather far
down in the statistical table.

If the Dominion Government does not support
its churches it does most liberally and wisely aid its
hospitals. If a choice between the two causes had
to be made in every land I would most warmly back
the choice of Canada. Look after the bodies, help
the hospitals, give them prestige and status : let
none be ashamed to use them. With healthy, happy
bodies the people is liable to have happy, healthy
souls. I can see a maelstrom of argument whirling
round that statement I know many an eminent
divine who would fight it tooth and nail; but I

believe it is true.

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EASTWARD BOUND

The whole of Canada is terraced with Govern-
ments; there is the great Dominion Government,
which sits at Ottawa and controls the affairs of the
nation as a whole. Under it are the Provincial
Governments, each working with its own Premier,
its own parliament, its own social system. The
Provincial Governments are by no means to be
lightly considered as we consider the word pro-
vincial over in England. A "province" means a
country as large as France or Germany, and its
Premier has great powers. The provinces are
divided up into municipalities and so on, and rang-
ing among these divisions and subdivisions of power
are strange errant forces of enormous wealth and
influence, governments within governments reign-
ing, controlling, directing, making men, making
money; great companies with chartered rights and
immense land-holdings the Hudson Bay Company
and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. There
are other railroads coming along, the Canadian
Northern has been running some time, and the
Grand Trunk Pacific nears completion among others,
but in the West the Canadian Pacific Railway
towers by reason of its priority, and no other fur
company can touch the Hudson Bay for that same

reason. Considering the complexity of the

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

machinery it seems extraordinary that Canada
governs herself as peacefully and as smoothly as
she does. I am travelling near General Election
time, and find tales of " graft " and corruption on
every hand, tales which steady men smile at, and
which apparently have no influence on the confid-
ence which Canada feels in her existing government,
seeing she re-elects it wholeheartedly.

I am impressed by the wonderful number of
Scotchmen who succeed in the New Land. He is
welcomed straight off as a likely success and the
Englishman is instantly expected to be a failure.
They must have earned these reputations. The
Galicians are a handsome race of a much lower
type than the Scotch, and prove very adaptable
settlers, with a great ambition to own stock. The
Jews are only found in cities, they are commercial
parasites and no good on the land. There is hardly
one successful Jew farmer in Canada. Seeing that
they came originally of a pastoral race the fact is
singular and interesting; we in England a nation
of commerce have given them so much room that
our country has become a sort of secondary Pales-
tine ! Some derelict Jews totally unsuited to
Canadian conditions arrived at one of the centres

for immigrants and were refused admission to the

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EASTWARD BOUND

country. Application was made to the Hirsch Fund
officials to deport them, and it was promised they
should be sent "home." So they were. To
Liverpool.

Many of the tragedies of failure in emigration
revolve round the ignorance of the prospective
settler of what qualifications are necessary to make
prosperity in Canada likely. The woman who
applied for a post as a teacher in a Methodist
Ladies' College and could only produce a certifi-
cate for dancing in support of her application was
not unusually silly. Another "skilled workman"
who wanted to settle in Canada was asked what his
trade was. He said he was a doll's-eye maker. It
is these unintelligent venturers who are the drug-
bats of the Empire. I like that word drug-bats. I
was walking down a country road in England one
day when I saw on a little notice-board by the road-
side a warning about the "improper use of drug-
bats," and became deeply exercised in mind as to
what this strange beast was. I thought of Dracula,
of vampire bats, of strange, silent, flitting shapes
that might haunt the brows through open bedroom
windows at night and inflict deadly opiate bites on
slumbering innocents. They were all wide of the

truth. I learned in time that a drug-bat is a skid-

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

pan, in other words a primitive brake which not only
reduces speed, but also cuts up a well-made road.
I suppose the word was originally " drag-back/' but
see how the soft blurred Surrey voices have made
of it a picturesque, romantic, wonderful thing ! But
the stern significance of it remains unsoftened, it is
still a skid-pan, a harmful brake, and that is what
every hasty, unsuitable emigrant, rich or poor, noble
or humble, is on the progress of the Empire.

222

CHAPTER X

THE ART OF CANADA

" DOES Art make for decadence ? " The question
calls to mind many a warm, wordy warfare in Lon-
don's debating societies, when the battle invariably
ended with a struggle in definitions. What is Art?
What is decadence ? And never did two agree, and
never have I heard the initial question definitely
settled. The historian would always rise with his
mouldy tales of Greece and Rome and the artistic
craftsman would for ever retort with his question,
" Would you stay civilization then, for civilization
always brings the cult of beauty in its train ? "

I had a whiff of it on the Rocky Mountains when
a sunburnt Canadian flung at me that he was " Real
glad this country had no Art, it meant the beginning
of the end in every sane man's mind."

But his flattered grin when I replied that in that
case Canada was on the point of instant dissolution,
for it made the finest enamel of any I had ever seen,
Battersea and Limoges not excepted, suggested to
me that his view was based on jealousy rather than

study. I am inclined to believe that a great number

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of the crude prides in crudity that I collected from
Canadians in the notes of my sojourn had their birth
in a similar emotion. There is growing, however, a
feeling for Art. Painting and literature are yet to
come ; the kindest critic could hardly say that either
has yet achieved expression at a master's hand ; but
here and there is an apostle of beauty. In a land of
such exceeding natural loveliness it would be strange
if this were not so, even in these early days of settle-
ment and struggle.

The enamel I had known and admired long before
I traced it to its source. Of a very fine surface and
brilliant in colour I had chosen stray pieces to bring
back to England, during my first visit, always deplor-
ing, when I saw my samples, the difficulty of getting
a good design. On a hot day in Montreal I found
the heart of the industry, and Mr. Hemming took me
over the factory, where I laid bare to him the dis-
turbance I always suffered in seeing the frequently
ugly and sometimes vulgar designs to which the
beautiful medium was set. So far as I may be per-
mitted to judge, it seemed to me that his artists' de-
sire was always to show a range of colour in their
designs, rather than doing what they might well have
done, restricting colour and form to the very sim-
plest and letting the exquisite enamel speak for

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THE ART OF CANADA

itself. When we passed from this carping talk to
look at processes I was free to admire the patience
and care that have gone to make Canadian enamel
what it is. To my unlearned mind the joy and pride
the manager takes in his pet water-supply in the tank
for cooling dyes was a trifle obscure, but obviously
the dirty water had some grave virtue, counted of
great moment and concern. I learned with interest
that the staff know to a hair's-breadth the thickness
of the ground metal and the amount of enamel that
the raised pattern will hold, so by a finely poised
balance of thicknesses they equalize the dangerous
differences of time that silver and enamel take to
qpol. They spoke with scorn of the English method
of preventing unequal cooling and consequent split-
ting, which is to enamel both sides of the object in
hand. It is a good way for amateurs, they told me,
easy and extravagant. They showed me also with
the same scorn a sample of " English finish." I
recognized at once the class of ware which we toler-
ate over here, coarse and pimply in texture; putting
beside it a piece of the Montreal work, I was again
amazed at the fineness of surface, the limpid depth
of finely polished colour in the latter.

They had another ware at this factory which was

interesting, " silver deposit " they called it, a clumsy
P 225

A WOMAN IN CANADA

name for a beautiful thing. By some secret process
they superimpose sterling silver or pure gold on to
glass and china, welding both in indissoluble union.
I admired the ware most sincerely, but again made a
protest about the designs; some were beautiful,
simple, suave, but a number had an unfortunate
leaning to the angularities and meaningless vagaries
of " L'Art nouveau." When I protested about the
ugly shape of a china teapot which had been en-
riched by the silver deposit I found English manu-
facturers in disgrace. They will not send out what
is asked for, only what they think ought to be
wanted ; one can hardly conceive a more aggravating
method in business. I made a mental note to take
any opportunity that might present itself on my re-
turn to the old country to tell English manufac-
turers what was said of them in Montreal. The old
method of slipping a framework of design in silver
or gold on to glass or china is incomparably bettered
by this method of the Hemming factory; in the old
way the metal was a refuge for dust and dirt, besides
being liable to bending and loosening. By the new
process glass and metal are one with obvious advan-
tages, I left the factory filled with a vicarious joy in
work ; there is great pleasure in seeing men working

arduously at labours which they love.

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THE ART OF CANADA

I was fated to come in contact on the same day
with much that Canada boasts of applied art; for a
note waited at the hotel when I got in from the
enamel factory asking me to come and see some
French-Canadian fabrics. I was ready packed, had
an hour to spare, and went. How the air smelt of
cedar ! When I was little we used to have cedar-
wood pencils at school, and I remember sitting sniff-
ing the faint perfume (which always grew more
elusive as the pencil got greasier) while my unwill-
ing mind followed the intricacies of " x " on the
blackboard. I have forgotten the vagaries of "x,"
but I vividly recall the sweet smell of cedar, and
there it was in the nostrils then, full-bodied and
fresh, a real grown-up cedar smell mixed with pines,
and sometimes an indescribable heavy, luscious sen-
suous smell from a fruit orchard on Mount Royal.
I was welcomed with tea and shown the French-
Canadian hand-woven linen curtains made of home-
spun flax and darned with good patterns in coloured
wools. They were of a coarsish texture, with a fine
silky gloss in the thread ; hand-woven blankets, too,
made of home-spun wool, light and warm and very
pleasing. No crudeness in that work. There spoke
the dignity of tradition, the legended lore of an

established race, and the staid quality of long exper-
P2 227

A WOMAN IN CANADA

ience. I was warm with appreciation when suddenly
a ruddy-faced man of Belial foisted the old quarrel
of England v. Canada upon me once more. He had
a horrific yarn to tell of an eminent English Colonial
official (named) who asked what the capital of
Canada was. I said that doubtless he would learn
in due course when Canada had settled it for herself ;
a retort that infuriated him to the last degree as he
was from Ottawa, and there were people from
.Toronto present as well as the Montrealers. The
fight waxed and waned and waxed again till I
rushed for my train carrying with me mixed memo-
ries. Whenever I remember home-spun fabrics warm
and fleecy, I must see peering over them a red face
pregnant with quarrel. Those curtains and blankets,
though out of Canada, are hardly of it. They belong
to the civilization from which came Grand Pre,
Evangeline and the rest; they are not evolved, like
the enamel is, from the composite people which calls
itself Canadian, any more than the bead-work woven
and the supple skins of caribou tanned by the
Indians can be called Canadian.

A chapter on Art would be sadly shorn of truth
did I omit to mention a certain apostle of interior
decoration, and her work. At distant points of the
long travel from Quebec to Victoria I found hotels

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THE ART OF CANADA

which received me with subdued, consistent colour
schemes, with broad effects of decoration, and unex-
pected knowledge in choice furniture, of brasses, of
pictures. The first I saw was at Quebec ; high over
the brilliant St. Lawrence hung the spires of the
Chateau Frontenac, and in it were vistas of green
tapestries and carpets made beautiful with fine old
Dutch brass. Spoilt by Europe and still unused to
the rawness of a young country, I remember taking
the pleasant place rather for granted, and giving it
only the tribute of an approving glance; by the
time I reached Montreal, however, I had learned
other, and was thankful when I found the Place
Viger also individual and restful in colour and de-
sign. Later, as I neared Winnipeg, I had arrived at
the stage of hoping that the Alexandra Hotel might
evidence this unusual taste ; when I went into it,
travel-stained and unutterably weary, it was good
to be welcomed again by the comfort of chosen
colours and fabrics. It is not easy to describe the
gratitude with which I sat to write in the gold and
brown drawing-room, rested in every nerve by the
courage and the calm of its scheme of decoration. I
began to suspect some master eye in the employ of
the Canadian Pacific Railway, seeing it was always

Canadian Pacific Railway hotels which were so nice,

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

and to bow in my mind to the discretion of the
Director in choosing him. Such was the character of
the arrangement of these hotels that they have be-
come starred in my memory of travel as very points
of rest, as oases in that desert of interminable motion
and dust. I remember them all; the hunting
frescoes in the lounge at Banff, the quaint Egyptian
effects in the dining-hall at Vancouver, the fine con-
ventional posters that line the corridors in the
Empress at Victoria, and the daring ceiling in the
dining-room there which hangs overhead heavy with
carved mahogany and panels of green. By the time
I reached Banff I had learned that the artist who
designed for the Canadian Pacific Railway was
Mrs. Hayter Reid, wife of the Director of Hotels !
I had learned to understand the love of colour
that must impel this woman, her keen sense of
proportion, an attribute vital to success in art and
impossible to instil where lacking. It was that
sense which made Josiah Wedgwood the greatest
master in English ceramics apart from his patient
industry in chemical research and the discovery
of the jasper ware that sealed his fame. I had
grown to know in my own mind that the things
which were not perfect, here and there, were due

to some extraneous reason and were not her work at

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THE ART OF CANADA

all. Thus sure could one grow of the sense of
beauty and of fitness that permeated her work. At
Vancouver we met. A woman handsome beyond the
ordinary, vivid, picturesque, built mentally and
physically on large lines, with an impulsive vitality
in word, in glance and gesture. I found her a
genuine Bohemian in the finest sense of the word;
frank, sincere and original. In ten minutes from
meeting I was in the thick of her work, watching her
select papers and match paint among a troop of
workmen who were to make a new smoking-room
and were waiting her orders. She spoke in a flux
of energy, scattering objections where they gathered ;
rousing them where a false peace reigned. A thou-
sand problems found a thousand solutions instantly
at her hands. She was like a dominant seventh,
always herself on the pitch of ecstasy, always leav-
ing her resolution of tonic calm behind. After an
hour of tempestuous labour, " Come," she said, " I
only have a few hours here, let us hunt for curios."
And willy-nilly out I went, hatless, breathless with
that whirlwind of a woman into the sunny Vancouver
streets, plunging into stores and odd corners where
Indian goods and Japanese goods and French-
Canadian home-spuns were chosen and rejected in

bewildering array. I must always remember that

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

splendid creature, with the generous warmth radiat-
ing from her smiling eyes, framed, as I saw her then,
in the wide streets of the lovely Pacific city, the
mountains and the sea for background.

In connection with art and artists I am constrained
to remember certain other sensitive and cultured
souls which it was my fortune to meet in Canada,
salt of the intellectual world, pioneers of thought,
invaluable influences for the coming generation.
There are others, but I can only write of those I
met; one ardent collector and connoisseur whom I
missed meeting, much to my regret, was Sir William
Van Horn. Chief among the unforgettable was Dr.
Herridge, the famous Presbyterian preacher, author
of The Orbit of Life and Coign of Vantage. Before
we met I heard a woman say of him, " He prefers a
good phrase to a good dinner/' a description which
rang in my ears for many a day, for the tone of indul-
gent scorn in which it was said roused in me a totally
different series of emotions to those intended by the
speaker. I felt a sincere admiration for such a liter-
ary taste as was evidenced by such a criticism, and a
burning compassion for the critic. When we met
eventually I found a tall, austere man, swarthy, sar-
donic, with eyes of a stormy brilliance and a manner

which suggested restlessness held rigidly to calm. I

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THE ART OF CANADA

strayed into his church, learning for the first time in
my life the limpid simplicity of a Presbyterian ser-
vice, and discovered his sermons to be of an unusual
order brilliant, epigrammatic and as far removed
from the ordinary chatter of the pulpit as an essay
by G. B. Shaw from a Child's Guide to Knowledge.
He jolted one from the rut of intellectual indolence
by gibing at "indignant spasms of respectability"
and deriding the "slothful half-truths of conven-
tion " till the startled brain, stung to attention from
the average somnolence of sermon-time, was braced
to receive the full shock of oratory.

A keen sense of humour dominates his method;
in private life it breaks out into secular wit. I re-
member one bitter night sitting in the Rink with a
large gathering to hear a choral concert. It was so
cold that the music became tiresome, and at last I
said testily

" It's pathetic to hear scores of obvious spinsters
singing over and over again, c Unto us a son is
given/"

His harsh mouth twisted into a smile.

" Madam," he paraphrased, " that is the triumph
of hope over inexperience."

I asked him once why he did not come to London
and gather about him, as he inevitably would, an

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

appreciative congregation of cultured Bohemians.
The rebuke was simple : " Madam, I have a congre-
gation here, why should I leave it ? " A strange
man; for all the tempestuous unrest of his eyes a
student, a scholar, patient !

Talking of unusual personalities reminds me of
Miss Cora Hind ; there is a woman ! Small, slight,
quick of movement and speech, with pince-nez and
workmanlike clothes. She is commercial editor of
the biggest daily paper in the Western Dominion,
the Winnipeg Free Press; many a hard tale she can
tell of drives in the autumn weather from farm to
farm when she has been out estimating the year's
crop on behalf of her paper. Hard-headed and
practical, and something of a sociological dreamer,
she would rank with the best women thinkers over
here, and in her own city is regarded with marvel
not unmixed with fear. From Winnipeg to Calgary
I found her recognized as an authority on stock
breeding, a reputation that called for unstinted
praise from every man who spoke of her, and made
some women, 'to my infinite amusement, sniff.
Yes, that is the word, Sniff. I found in her the
side least widely known. We met in Winnipeg,
where I was kept for a couple of days in my room
at the hotel glued to the telephone waiting for

234

o
w

.2
O

x_
Q.

THE ART OF CANADA

official orders; a programme of inaction which
developed a devastating condition of home-sickness ;
I would sit at my table trying to write, my mind
straying to the bracken and heather of England
while I watched the sun beat hot on the flat prairie
city, and fashion a ring of orange flame to wed her
withal at sunset ; I would scurry down to meals leav-
ing a train of messages as to my whereabouts, and
scurry back to wait for the bell that would not ring
when this little woman heard of the sister journalist
within her gates and carried me off to her flat, genial
and gentle as a mother with a sick child. Goodness
knows why, but she did the nicest thing in the world.*
She let me lay tea ! Possibly it was the hint of home
life . . . how kind she was ! And from that
moment my stay in Winnipeg was busy and happy
throughout. We talked together, and I found in her,
remote though she is from the movement, a student
of eugenics. f There is much more interest taken
in breeding hogs in Western Canada than there is
in breeding children/ 3 she said, deploring the vice of
ignorance which masks itself as modesty and leaves
the stain of its incompetence on generation after
generation. I asked her how she came to have
adopted this bachelor way of life, to have acquired

the freedom of thought and simplicity of out-

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A WOMAN IN CANADA

look which made her indeed so charming, but was
so removed from the Canadian ideal of what is best
in woman. " I come of a protesting stock/' she said,
and I learned she had pioneer and Huguenot blood
in her veins. She busied herself with introductions
for the rest of my journey, so that I should not be
lonely any more. One of her descriptions lingers in
my memory " You'll find him white all through and
straight as a string ! "

I suppose I lay myself open to controversy when
I say I count Miss Hind an artist. She would not
say so of herself. But it has always seemed to me
that the man or woman who takes a delight in work
and bends all the intelligence to doing it well, who
stints nothing of time or labour to obtain the best
results, is an artist whatever form the work takes.
The statement opens a wide field for debate. I don't
know how far it would work out.

Canada makes singers. As the harsh, bracing air
of the Yorkshire wolds seems to string its children's
throats to singing pitch, so does the brilliant climate
over there. One woman with a voice of velvet and
silver is " Maria Ricardi " (Miss Lily Gibbs at home).

I heard her voice first in a romantic setting it was
during my first visit to Canada during a journey from

Ottawa to Toronto. We were flying through a dark-

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THE ART OF CANADA

ness that might be felt, a heavy murk hung like a
blanket over the world, we travelled in the discom-
fort of close stuffy heat, and many of us went to the
platform at the end of the car gasping for breath.
In the narrow space we talked with the easy fellow-
ship of travellers, watching the darkness when it was
stabbed with a jagged sword of light, listening to the
roar of the thunder above the rattle of the train and
welcoming the blessed rain when, at last, it teemed
upon us. We jostled together undismayed by the
wet, and watched the scene^ now a flash would show
the glitter of water below our wheels, we were cross-
ing a bridge now we would have a second's glimpse
of rolling pastures as we passed a lonely homestead
now a bracken-clad ravine; and now we would
have an instantaneous vision of tapering pines
against the sky. It felt like being inside a great
camera with some Titanic hand pressing the button
here and there to impress snap-shot pictures upon
the sensitive films of memory. We were an hour
and three-quarters late (more than anything else
except the Experimental Farms I found the lateness
of the trains drove home to my consciousness the
gigantic size of Canada). We were not dallying
with time; the big black engine, so unlike the cosy
little round ones of England, "had a hustle on,"

2 37

A WOMAN IN CANADA

and we were all wearying for the lights of Toronto.
I leaned out as far as I dared and looked into the
night in such wild hours the pulses stir and the
brain reels with grim thoughts; it did not strike
strangely when a voice broke into the darkness with
the mad song from Lucia di Lammermoor. It was
born of the storm a dream-voice, a goblin-voice
I resented being told by my fellow-travellers in awe-
stricken tones that Maria Ricardi was travelling with
us, and that " It must hurt her throat, sure, to sing
in the wind and rain."

I heard that beautiful voice last amid the perfume
of the flowers, the glitter of jewels and lights in a
London concert hall. Instantly it ravished me from
civilization into darkness, I felt the sting of rain upon
my face and saw again the lightning-born pictures
of that night.

Another Canadian musician is Guy Maingy, an
artist of great genius and extraordinary ill-luck.

So many other interesting and amusing people
I met : Miss Hughes, the Provincial Librarian of
Alberta, a quaint, demure, silent little person with a
really remarkable power of observation and expres-
sion ; Mrs. Bennett of Regina, with the beautiful eyes
and motherly way, who succeeded so nicely in look-
ing unconcerned when I smoked a cigarette one day

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THE ART OF CANADA

after a particularly hard wrestle with pen and ink.
I shall always remember that courteous calm, it
utterly deceived me, and I smoked in comfort.
Months afterwards in a London theatre I met Mr.
Hook of the Regina " daily " (I forget its name), and
he told me I had considerably damaged an otherwise
fair reputation by smoking. Which was very sad
and horrible for me, but very nice for the gossips. I
always believe gossip-mongers keep a warm place in
their hearts for people who shock them. They must.
Things would be so dull for them without shocks.

I remember, too, how well I remember, a lovely
face, a low voice, a cultured, beautiful mind with
which I communed for an hour at Victoria Mrs.
Fitz Gibbon the most fragrant personality I met in
my travels. She gave the idea of one who walked
unaware of earth with face to the stars.

An amusing person was the prairie follower. I
arrived at a little wooden prairie city one night and
proceeded as usual the first thing next morning to
the Board of Trade official with my introductions,
and a request to see something of the country round
about. I was received among two or three settlers
and farmers as usual, and found every resource of
officialdom again as usual laid with quick kindliness
at my feet. I remember saying I wanted to drive

239

A WOMAN IN CANADA

out to a homestead and talk to a new settler's wife, if
there were such to be found within driving distance.
Such was to be found, I learned, and arrangements
would be made to take me there. " Was I staying at

the X ?" mentioning the only hotel. I was.

Exit, to wander round the wooden sidewalks, to buy
some stamps, to linger a little outside a rifle store
and listen to the strange crop-figures offered by a
local farmer to some one he wanted to impress;
Canadians are never correct in numbers. Their
replies are always tinged with a little of their hope
and then back to the hotel to write. At the door a
rig and a young-old man. He asked me if I did
not wish to see So-and-So's farm. I said " Yes," and
without more ado mounted into the little seat beside
him between the spidery wheels, telling myself that
this Board of Trade official excelled all I had ever
met for quickness in attending to the wants of a
wandering journalist. We drove on and on, over
miles of prairie, bumping and joggling across the
rich black loam, crushing the sweet pink roses, sur-
prising gophers and once a stray coyote I tried to
talk of crops but could only hear of murders. My
driver had evidently made a study of all murders
in all lands, and by degrees I noticed that the ones

he liked best were the ones that were never found

240

THE ART OF CANADA

out. I reflected upon tales I had heard of prairie
madness, tales of how the loneliness wears upon
some settlers' brain and drives them crazy. I won-
dered if this young-old man with the blue eyes and
odd-sized pupils were going mad. Presently he
asked where we were making for. I said " So-and-
So's farm." He replied, " Oh ! no we're not, Fm
taking you for a drive. Where shall we go?" I
suggested that the farm would please me best, but
he grew argumentative. " Pm not here for work,
you know," he drawled presently, " I'm here for my
health"

I asked if he was ill, and he said he suffered from
brain-storms ! Also he said he had noticed me on

the train the day before, followed me to the X ,

and again to the Board of Trade in the morning.
Had heard my business and got the rig to drive
me out.

A most enterprising stranger he must have had
plenty of time to spare to alight at a little wayside
prairie city for the whim of driving a stray female
round for an hour or two !

He was quite amusing, quite courteous. I have
never seen or heard of him since ; I haven't the least
idea if he were really mad or only funny. If he did

it all for sport to see what I would do or say he
u 241

A WOMAN IN CANADA

certainly deserves to go in the chapter on artists, for
he laid no stress on his alleged brain-trouble, he
was most clever, most artistic. If he were really
mad why then he still more deserves his place in
this chapter, seeing that genius and madness . . .
you all know the rest.

I remember once watching a famous English de-
signer of costumes for the stage, Tom Heslewood,
worrying out the heraldry of the gowns for the battle
scene in Richard III. It was very interesting. Here
was this scholar, this artist, this man bred of genera-
tions of gentlepeople with a mind cultured, fastidi-
ous, creative, spending his gifts and time lavishly
on the seeming trifle of designing correct heraldic
costumes for a scene in a play ! I watched his sensi-
tive fingers sketching as he babbled of the murrey
and blue, of the House of York, with boar, and the
green and white of the House of Tudor, with grey-
hound, and the dragon dreadful of Cadwallader
emitting flames. I asked him why he should bother
so much. Very few people can follow the intricacies
of heraldic device now-a-days when it has lost
general significance, and has grown with successive
generations to such involved proportions. He said
that I had asked an unintelligent question, that if

the audience were made up entirely of heraldic

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THE ART OF CANADA

experts he could afford to be careless, they would
know better and suffer no harm; but seeing that it
would inevitably be composed of people who knew
no more of heraldry than myself, he must spare no
pains that they should learn nothing inaccurate
from his work. I do not know why I have men-
tioned that conversation, it has no bearing on the
thought that was rambling in my mind; it is recorded,
I think, because Tom Heslewood's sentiment is one
which might with advantage animate us all. Any-
way it was a digression. What I was intending to
say when I started out was that with the momentum
of the history of hundreds of years behind us it
would be strange indeed if we had not some Arts.
In the slow mills of time Canada will grind out
her own civilization, her own expressions of her own
history. One can't hurry these things.
As Bliss Carman has it

Ah ! the patience of earth i Look down at the dark pointed firs ;
They are carved out of blackness ; one pattern recurs and recurs.
They crowd all the gullies and hillsides, the gashes and spurs,
As silent as death. What an image ! How Nature avers
The goodness of calm with that taciturn beauty of hers !
As silent as sleep. Yet the life in them climbs and stirs ;
They too have received the great law, know that haste but defers
The perfection of time, the initiate gospeller firs
So year after year, slow ring upon ring they have grown,
Putting infinite long-loving care into leafage and cone. Etc., etc.
Q3 243

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Those lines express beautifully the wisdom, the
necessity of patience. Bliss Carman is a delightful
singer, I hope he is a Canadian a lovely trifle is his

Thought is a garden wide and old

For airy creatures to explore,
Where grow the great fantastic flowers

With truth for honey at the core.
There, like a wild marauding bee,

Made desperate by hungry fears
From gorgeous "If" to dusk "Perhaps"

I blunder down the dusk of years.

Though I am determined, in spite of Sir Gilbert
Parker, to deny any great literature to Canada " as
it leaves me at present/ 5 I admit her poet, Robert
Service, his place among the minors. And that
meek-sounding place is hard to win. Giants there
are not yet. They will come.

Robert Service has a certain facility of rhyme and
expression; he is what might be called faded Kip-
lingesque at moments he stirs. I was asked to talk
of Canadian poetry at the London Poets' Club when
I returned last autumn, and instead of speaking I
asked the President to call on one of the " Exposi-
tors " to read out the Rhyme of the Remittance Man.
It was greeted with favour, the swirl of the line suits
the subject, the sonorous voice and fine elocution of
the reader wrung every scrap of beauty that was to

be wrung from the words. Here is part of the poem :

244

THE ART OF CANADA

a certain ignorance of copyright law forbids my
giving the whole of it

There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,

And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day ;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,

And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming

On the water where the silver salmon play ;
And I light my little corn-cob, and I linger softly dreaming,

In the twilight, of a land that's far away.

Far away, so faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris,

That I fancy I have gained another star;
Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry,

Far away God knows they cannot be too far.
Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon how my purse-proud brothers
taunt me !

I might have been as well-to-do as they

Had I clutched like them my chances, learned their wisdom,
crushed my fancies,

Starved my soul and gone to business every day.

While the trout leaps in the river, and the blue grouse thrills
the cover,

And the frozen snow betrays the panther's track,
And the robin greets the dayspring with the rapture of a lover,

I am happy, and I '11 nevermore go back.
For I know I 'd just be longing for the little old log cabin

With the morning-glory clinging to the door,
Till I loathed the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,

Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

I confess I like Bliss Carman better. A quaint
fantastic imagery hangs about his work; he sings
with a wry smile, a smiling frown. But men of
action prefer Robert Service,

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Perhaps if I admit a bias in the matter of painting
I may be forgiven for keeping silence about the work
of Canadian painters. I know they exist I have
seen some of their pictures. It was my privilege or
misfortune at one time to be an " art critic," and in
that capacity it was my duty to see every picture
show in London, a fate which left me stranded on
the shores of prejudice so high and dry that "criti-
cism " had to go. I found that I would go any dis-
tance to see a caricature by Max Beerbohm, an epic
in proportion by James Pryde, a cool study in still
life by Nicholson, a portrait by A. E. John or Zulo-
aga or Howard Somerville, an etching by Whistler ;
Sargent's odd mingling of carelessness and courage
those unmerciful portraits with sloppy hands
pink tipped. One will not see those, I think, much
longer; Sargent is painting now to please himself,
not to fill the family portrait galleries of Great
Britain. He has given up accepting commissions
Such work he is doing ! light problems faced with
a courage never attained by any of the French
luminists or vibrationists. . . .

I found I would go any distance for those, and
almost any distance to avoid the rest !

So, confessing a warped judgment, I mention no

Canadian painters,-

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CHAPTER XI

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

WONDERING I have passed from Province to Pro-
vince. Wondering at the homes to be made, at the
husbands to be found, and at the scarcity of women
all over the West. That sounds bald, "husbands
to be found/ 5 unattractively phrased. I will not
retract it, nor re-phrase, nor modify. Whatever
may be urged to the contrary by the enforced
bachelor women of my own land, I know that in
their secret hearts most of them think of marriage
as the ultimate goal. An honourable wish, by no
means to be hidden with shame. Every healthy
normal woman has it. If we are in England, as I
believe we are, evolving a race of practical neuters
we are making for evil, not for good. They are the
" oddities " of Kipling's " Mother-hive." Our little
Island on the edge of Europe is overcrowded with
people, chiefly women, and a vast Continent in
North America is at its wits' ends for inhabitants,
especially women. Now, why does not plus go over
to minus and level things up a little, in order to
make both countries more comfortable ?

247.

A WOMAN IN CANADA

First one sees in England a surplus of women
working hard, working savagely day by day for
bread and bacon, working at a ridiculous wage with
no hope of ultimate independence, no hope of
marriage or motherhood, no hope of anything but
the moment's pence for the moment's meal. One
sees, too, the middle and upper class women suffer-
ing in the press of humans more acutely (because
more intelligently) than these, their factory sisters.

Then over here we see a vast majestic country,
rich in wine and oil, in bread and bacon, yielding
abundantly under cultivation, giving to all who
labour with a spendthrift hand. We see the thou-
sands of acres of prairie lying desolate for want of
people; the black loam, virgin to the plough,
covered with lilies and roses and golden-rod instead
of the fruits of the earth for want of labour. We
see the farm homesteads and farmers' wives suffer-
ing from lack of servants to cook and mind the
house, the farmers themselves frequently leading
wretched lives for lack of women to wed. It all
sounds so simple of remedy. Wondering and
watching I have passed through Canada, telling
myself that Englishwomen have never realized the
room in Canada. There is a wonderful lot of room

room to live in, to be lost in, to make money in;

248

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

room to learn the wild ways of the world in, room
to cast the fetters of civilization, and room to work
most splendid of all, room to work !

There is room for so many women in the West that
the heart aches to see them cramped and struggling
there in England ; it is paralyzing to travel through
both countries and note the crying need in one for
the surplus of the other, one is impelled to ask if
it is ignorance or cowardice that keeps them away.

And at last I found what I felt all along must
exist; a hardship to be faced which makes women
justly shrink from the country. First from one prairie
wife, and then from another I heard a cry about the
hardships of birth on the homesteads. Myself a
trained maternity nurse as well as a mother, I know
what lack of skilled attention must mean at the
hour of travail. And wherever I went I asked how
the outlying districts were supplied with midwives.
I heard many stories of courage, stories of disaster.
One I can never forget, the story of a woman whose
first two years on a lonely farm were childless and
whose reason began to totter under the stress of
loneliness until she found she was to have a baby.
The prospect of such an interest changed her life,
she was engrossed with hope; it was not possible

to obtain a nurse and difficult to get a doctor to the

249

A WOMAN IN CANADA

'distant homestead, so she and her husband made
arrangements for her to go to the nearest hospital
forty miles away. She drove over the rough road,
the baby was born prematurely and died. I picture
her return, to loneliness. I talked with many
doctors and nurses, one midwife told me of a case
where the lonely young couple found themselves
suddenly ushered into parenthood, the nearest
doctor was twenty miles away, and they had not
been able to get a nurse for love nor money. They
were entirely ignorant of obstetric work the baby
was blue and they were frightened. Thereupon,
with the placenta unborn, it was put in a hot bath;
visions of inverted uterus rise, and appal the
initiated. Countless unrecorded cases as terrible must
occur. On Fender Island, British Columbia, there
are eighty children of school age, so the population
must be fairly large. The island has no nurse or
doctor. The Jubilee Hospital in Victoria has no
maternity wing; at Duncan, on Victoria Island, a
district of forty miles is fed by two doctors. The
doctor at Davidson in Saskatchewan has a circuit of
sixty miles; there are no nurses at Yellowgrass and
Wood Mountain; the city hospital at Regina has
only three private rooms for maternity cases, in the

Catholic Hospital where the Reverend Sister

250

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Superior Mary Duffin and her devoted band of grey
nuns work day and night, there are only four private
rooms, and even they cannot be spared in the Fall
when typhoid is about. These are a few facts and
represent little of the case. Within driving distance
of a city a woman near her confinement may con-
sider herself more or less safe. Some one will be
found to help. But the wives on ranches and farms
at any distance, and there are hundreds of them,
must spend hideous hours looking forward to the
day of trial with every prospect of scrambling
through alone, at the risk of the baby's life as well
as their own, or else relying on the attentions of
some half-breed whose knowledge of the elementary
rules of cleanliness will be less than nothing. The
percentage of lacerations is enormous one would
expect that under such conditions. Any obstetrician
reading this will realize what I mean when I say
that such neglect leads to the train of evils which
necessitates the building of gynaecological wings on
hospitals. I was filled with concern to learn of the
hardships Canadian mothers are called upon to
endure, I felt I could not ask too many questions to
find out the reason. Doctors, of course, are neces-
sary; wholeheartedly I repeat necessary at confine-
ments, but every doctor and every mother knows

251

A WOMAN IN CANADA

that the nursing which follows after his duties are
over have a tremendous part to play in recovery.
A woman should not have to drag out a day or two's
rest by herself after the doctor has left and then
get up and begin her house duties, as many of them
do, of those I mean who are lucky enough to get a
doctor at all. The maternity nurses I found had in
nearly every case gone through the full three or five
years' training and were disposed to sniff at maternity
work. I can thoroughly understand their point of
view. Maternity work is unexciting and very
laborious, it is day and night work and very ex-
acting. Fully trained nurses prefer fever or acci-
dent work, and when they undertake maternity cases
charge exorbitant fees. The general hospitals are
in nearly every instance averse to maternity wards.
They say, and quite justly, that maternity work
should have a separate building and staff.

The prairies suffer greatly in this need of their
mothers, but British Columbia even worse, as it is
so isolated in settlement and so much more difficult
of travel.

I found the nurses were not in every case certain
of obtaining their fees, and there was again a diffi-
culty I could understand in the way of meeting
this pressing need of maternity assistance; under

* 252

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

stress of fear and love any one can pardon a man
for promising any fee to have his wife tended, and
understand too that with fear allayed and a new
expense safely launched on a slender purse, that
however willing he might delay payment and per-
haps need a nurse again before the first obligation
was discharged. A common fee is twenty to twenty-
five dollars a week, and forty or fifty dollars make
a hole, for there are many expenses to think of
besides; the doctor, laundry, travelling and all the
rest. The nurse's point of view has my sympathy
too. She does not want to work hard for a problem-
atical forty dollars when there are plenty of certain
ones to be had. With all these facts before me I
realized one certain thing, that the need of efficient
nurses cried aloud. That it spun from mouth to
mouth never questioned, that no great band of facts
was necessary to back up a plea for attention from
the Government because all in authority know the
need is there. It struck me that the only way to get at
these lone farms was through some subsidized band
of itinerant midwives, a sort of mobile corps unat-
tached to any given town or building, but working
coherently under the direction of the Government.
Women who have thoroughly trained at Queen
Charlotte's Hospital or the Rotunda of Dublin are

253

A WOMAJN IN CANADA

capable of undertaking cases unattended by a
doctor, if need be; they have not been through the
devastating General Training which, in a very large
percentage of cases in Great Britain, leaves a woman
a gastric invalid with varicose veins, or if it leaves
her healthy nearly always makes her too superior
for maternity work. I hope that does not sound ill-
natured. It is a fact. And one cannot in reason
blame nurses for feeling so when they have given
arduous years to a complete training, and have
emerged fitted to deal with the intensely interesting
inch-by-inch work of fevers and the exciting work
of surgery. Here and there in unfortunate instances
they may get a taste of everything in maternity work,
but fortunately that is comparatively rare. More-
over, as I have already said, the fully trained nurse
wants fully trained fees, and many of the settlers'
wives could not possibly afford them if they could
find an unengaged nurse who was willing to come.
The fully trained nurse also has been through her
purgatory of drudgery in the hospitals, she has
washed and cooked and scrubbed and polished, and
is now a nurse, not a superior ward-maid. There-
fore she would be useless practically in the little
prairie shacks where she would have to do all the
domestic work as well as the nursing.

254

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Looked at from every point of view it seemed to
me that the women wanted out West were the
qualified midwives trained by such reputable
hospitals as I have named. They would accept a
reasonable fee of ten dollars a week. At Edmonton
I saw the Honourable Mr. Oliver, Minister of the
Interior, and put my idea before him. He listened
with perfect courtesy, and considered without haste
what I said ; he admitted the need of such a scheme,
but declared finally that he thought it a Provincial
rather than a Dominion matter. He said it was the
business of the Dominion Government to bring
settlers into the country, but the business of the
Provincial Governments to look after them when
they had once settled.

So I then went to see the Honourable Dr. Ruther-
ford, Premier of Alberta. He also listened very
patiently and asked me to put the scheme in writing
so that he might submit it in session. He agreed
with me that if one Province took up the idea the
others would probably fall quickly into line. So I
wrote a long letter asking if it would not be possible
to establish a body of nurses under Government
auspices at every small town or hamlet through the
country, from whence they could radiate to the sur-
rounding districts. Such nurses could be guaranteed

255

A WOMAN IN CANADA

a minimum fee for every case where the homesteader
was unable to pay, and would take^ ordinary fees in
the ordinary way where possible. The homesteader
would be under obligation to repay to the Govern-
ment as soon as possible, and the nurse would not
be working for nothing. The nurses in return for
such protection would be pledged to take each case
in turn as it applied to the office without picking and
choosing. The settlers' wives, then, would only
need to write in to the nearest branch stating cir-
cumstances and asking for a trained midwife at
such a date for such a period. I also suggested
that no nurse should go to a case for less than twelve
days, a useful safeguard for the health of many
mothers. Further, I asked if it were not possible
that such a body of maternity specialists be attached
to the existing order of Victorian Nurses, acting as
an endowed Government body, but incorporated
with the present order.

I mentioned that in the old country many more
women are trained for maternity work than there is
work for; and that it should be possible to select
from among them women who can bake bread, sew,
cook and run a house, women who knowing the con-
ditions in the West would be willing to come for the
sake of guaranteed employment, and who after

256

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

settling the patient would turn to and mind the
house.

So having heard nothing from Alberta I ap-
proached the Premier of British Columbia, who
put the matter in council at once, and at least
did me the honour to reply. Here is the letter I
received

Provincial Secretary's Office^
Victoria^

October, 1908.

" MRS. GEORGE CRAN,

"c/o Supt. of Immigration,

" Department of the Interior, Ottawa.
" MADAM,

" I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of
your communication of the 9th instant, in which you
outline the suggestions offered in your conversation
of recent date regarding the bringing of nurses to
this Province for extra-hospital work. The matter
was laid before the Executive Council at its last
meeting, and I am instructed to say that after very
careful consideration the Provincial Government
feel that they are not in a position to accept sug-
gestions. The matter was thoroughly discussed,
and the consensus of opinion was that this being a

matter of immigration is one which lies entirely
R 257

A WOMAN IN CANADA

within the province of the Dominion Government at
Ottawa.

" I have the honour to be, Madam,

" Your obedient servant,

"H. E. YOUNG
" (Provincial Secretary)."

This was a game of battledore and shuttlecock,
the need of the women being the shuttlecock be-
tween the greater and lesser governments. I hoped
that Saskatchewan might prove more kindly about
things, but the Premier was away for the General
Election when I reached Regina, and the public
health official makes tuberculosis his hobby. He
assured me in the airiest way that the women were
amply provided for, yet he lives in the province
where maternity nurses are scarcest and where one
doctor, aforementioned, has a circuit of sixty miles
whereon to lavish his attentions. At Winnipeg
I was advised to get the municipalities to sub-
sidize the nurses, but my experience of governing
bodies inclined me to regard that project with pro-
phetic disappointment, and I went on to Ottawa,
where is the head-quarters of the Victorian Order of
Nurses, determining to lay the matter before the
committee and ask for consideration at its hands.

258

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

The Victorian nurses visit the sick and work, there-
fore, on short circuits ; they, as they exist at present,
are in no way able to meet the need I poignantly
felt to be an urgent one for the widely scattered
mothers of Canada. I saw the committee and de-
tailed my scheme once more, and knew directly I
spoke to the matron that I had met prejudice. The
pity of the whole position is this, that while the fully
trained nurse is more than a trifle scornful of
maternity work, she is violently antipathetic to the
"half-baked" sister, the midwife who has taken
only the short maternity training and is not qualified
for all branches of nursing. I have noticed that
prejudice over and over again, and always with
resentment. They might scorn the maternity nurses
to the crack of doom and welcome if they were
willing to do the work themselves, but they are not.
They oppose the idea of giving maternity nurses a
definite status, and themselves leave the work un-
done, Meanwhile, the mothers suffer. Any scheme
far alleviating the distress, which none denied, was
unwelcome to the Victorian Order of Nurses. Their
work is great, it is well done, their nurses have
worked hard to get their diplomas and are worthy
of honour. But they met the maternity problem

with prejudice. If an argument is advanced that the
Ra 259

A WOMAN IN CANADA

accidents and sicknesses of adults are more import-
ant than bringing to birth of the next generation, I
wholly disagree. It is the race that is involved in
maternity work, not the individual. A pregnant
woman is a national asset, a national glory, a national
responsibility. It is the next generation to which
we owe allegiance, should show mercy and con-
sideration, to which we should bend our energies
and skill.

Interfering people are intolerable. They seldom
compass anything. They are always a nuisance.
Frankly I believe I was an interfering person in the
matter of the neglected Western wives. Canada is
not my country, nor was it any of my business to
right its wrongs. I met my deserts. Yet the blood
chills to think of the lonely mother-women, of the
effect on their babes of the unnecessary harshness
of the birth hour and the nervous expenditure in
the anticipation of it. As Mr. Woods of the Calgary
Herald said in speaking of the subject, "It grips
one beyond reason."

Her Excellency Lady Grey was good enough to
interest herself in the idea I mooted before the
Victorian Order of Nurses; she mentioned the
Cottage Hospitals sparsely dotted about the prairies

and British Columbia, but realized their inefficiency

260

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

in this one particular when I told her how women
will come in eighty and a hundred miles for attention
to them and yet many hundreds go unattended.
Women within possible reach of a doctor, nurse or
hospital may be counted provided for, but the
women I grieve about are those who can only be
reached by such an itinerant body as I have
sketched. There are many farmers' wives with
children who cannot go to hospital for their con-
finements as their man is out at work all day and
they are unable to leave the house and children.
To such women a maternity nurse representing a
fortnight's rest would be an inestimable boon.

I am telling English women straightforwardly
what to expect at present if they go out and marry
on a lonely farm in the North- West. Also I can tell
them that every woman who goes out to stay makes
it easier for her sisters, for the evil will remedy
itself with population. To British women trained at
Queen Charlotte's and the Rotunda I would say
there is plenty of work to be had if they will take
the good and the bad and set about things carefully.
It would not be a bad plan to advertise in one or
two prairie papers before going out so as to secure
one or two cases to go on with and not trust every-
thing to chance. Better still, to find the names of

261

A WOMAN IN CANADA

one or two doctors in outlying districts and write
direct to them. I hope it has been perfectly clear
through all this talk of midwives that I never sug-
gest them as a substitute for doctors, only as allies,
and in cases where a doctor is unprocurable by
reason of the patient's poverty or distance I main-
tain that their trained services would be infinitely
better for all concerned than those of some terrified
ignorant neighbour or dirty half-breed. I beg no
one to misapprehend me on this point.

If such British women are prepared to go out and
put up with the inconveniences of primitive home-
steads, to be housekeeper as well as nurse, and to
accept moderate fees say ten dollars a week they
will find work in plenty. I would recommend them
to insist on payment before leaving, and if cash is
scarce to take payment in kind say wheat or live
stock. It sounds harsh, but it is only fair to the
nurse who may suffer if she has a kind heart and is
not armed with stern advice. In the majority of
cases her fee would be gladly and punctually paid.
A lady whose advice on the subject would be of
great value to any one who has courage to face life
under such conditions is Miss Benyon of the Winni-
peg Free Press. She appreciates to the full the

dearth of women in the North- West and has many
* 262

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

practical hints to offer. There is this to be said, that
every maternity nurse who has practised in Canada
and marries there will be fully aware of what she is
undertaking, and will probably take good care to
live within reach of assistance. My sympathies are
very much with the English girls who have gone
out, reared in that pernicious ignorance of physio-
logical facts which is counted among the many over
here for innocence, and has learnt at bitter cost of
unnameable suffering the penalties Nature exacts
for ignorance the unforgiveable sin of ignorance.
The care of the lonely mothers, then, as far as I
can see, devolves on the individual courage and skill
of their British sisters. Had my suggestion found
favour with any governing body it would have been
a comparatively easy matter to select the suitable
women to go out. Any one who knew the North-
West could have obtained permission to lecture at
the best Maternity Hospitals over here on conditions
for nurses out there, and having told in sober truth
the whole story the volunteers alone would have
been considered, thus eliminating all but those with
the desire for pioneer work. From those again the
matron would have been asked to remove the names
of those below a desired standard in health or

efficiency. They would need to be strong, reliable,

263

A WOMAN IN CANADA

clever nurses, but if there were a guarantee of steady
employment it would be a small matter to get all
the picked women needed steady work is a great
attraction to an English nurse.

I do not think government aid would be neces-
sary indefinitely. After a while some of the nurses
would make money and start maternity homes here
and there; which in their turn would make good
training centres for the next generation of nurses,
and so the situation would gradually work out of
itself. So it will still. Things always do, but
meanwhile the women suffer and the children suffer,
two sorts of suffering that are exceeding bad for a
young race. Canada, so fatherly in its govern-
ment, so sane and sensible, so wise and patient
in most of its measures, is here in this particular
extraordinarily callous and short-sighted. All over
the country one finds schools, well built, well
managed, the scholastic system in Canada is really
a remarkable one. Yet it neglects its children
at the fountain head of being and hopes for a
contented healthy people. I would reverse the
system, I would look after them physically first in
every possible way, and then set to afterwards with
schools and book-learning.

Here I am, then, at the end of all, seeming to say

264

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

to women, " Don't go ! there are flies in the oint-
ment." But I do not say anything of the sort. To
the right women there is only one word, " Go."

But the women Canada wants are rare in English
communities. There is the real trouble.

The English woman is used to large crowds, to a
busy communal life. In Canada she would have to
bring courage for loneliness, she would needs find
companionship in her husband and children, in her
cattle, in the housework, in the very beauty of the
wild itself. The English women are used to
specialized labour; they are artists, or stenographers,
book-keepers, nurses, journalists, dairy-women,
doctors or what not. The Canadian woman will
drive a team of horses when her man is too busy to
work the hayrake or binder, she will be baker, house-
maid, cook, mother, seamstress, nurse to her neigh-
bour five miles off when she is ill, she will run the
dairy, sell the butter and eggs, and keep the farm
accounts all in her own person. The English woman
rises at 7.30 to 9 a.m. ; the Canadian woman in the
West at 5 a.m., sometimes earlier, rarely later.

The woman who makes good in Canada is
energetic and brave.

The average English woman is lazy, fond of ease,
and she lacks courage to face new conditions. Now

265

A WOMAN IN CANADA

how to do any good with such a need and such a
supply ?

In all these large questions one has to speak in
masses. The mass of English bachelor women is, I
am persuaded, unfitted by our complete civilization
to face the toils of settlement in a new country. But
the exception, the fearless, enthusiastic, clean-bred
exception, must exist in her thousands. And to
her a direct statement of fact is the strongest appeal.
The woman who has faced an unvarnished history
of conditions in the country and is still anxious to
emigrate is the woman Canada wants.

Let no woman come from England to the
Canadian cities ; they are over-full already, there is
no work for them there, and at best Canadian city
life is but a parody of English city life. At the
risk of offending I will tell the truth. But if any
;woman cares for work let her come to' the prairies of
British Columbia and labour with her hands like the
rest. It is a great call for women. There must be
some who have the courage and the health to leave
the ready-made comforts of the old country, and
come into this wild beautiful West, giving their
best of mind and body for the race and for the
Empire.

266

Pines in High Water, Kamloops Lake,
British Columbia

CHAPTER XII

AU REVOIR

THE impertinence of trying to describe Canada
in a book, in twenty books, in a lifetime of words !
Her people resent it, they can always put up with
paeans of praise, but any attempt to find fault annoys
them exceedingly; and I agree thus much, that any
adverse criticism on any subject should be given out
of a sincere heart and intimate knowledge of con-
ditions. In her book Town and Trail Mrs. Balmei
Watt says

I suppose that a new country, like a new
baby, must patiently submit to a great deal of
discussion as to its various characteristics, what
the influence of its parentage upon it is, and
how far it shows evidence of striking out on an
original course. It is the price that it has to pay
for the very fact that it is new. In its earliest
years it does not mind, being for the most part
blissfully unconscious of the attention that is
given it. But when, with development, it begins
to look forward to the time when it will put away

267

A WOMAN IN CANADA

childish things and take its place in the affairs of
the world, many of the observations that come
in its direction are hardly calculated to put it
in a good humour with the kindly disposed
people who are responsible for them. It finds
itself criticized and advised by those who know
the youthful personage they seek to guide so
slightly that their interference can only serve
to irritate.

This is the stage at which Canada has now
arrived. For a long while the people of the
Old Land gave little, thought to us. To many
of her statesmen we were a burden that Britain
should get rid of at the earliest opportunity.
One prime minister spoke of us as a millstone
about the British ratepayer's neck.

All that, of course, has now changed. Hardly
a week passes by but we hear of some distin-
guished Britisher coming out to the Dominion
for the purpose of sizing up conditions here.
What they have to say when they return home
we read with interest, but in very few cases do
we find that their observations are of much value
to any one concerned.

It would be a matter of great surprise if they
were. How can a man who rushes from ocean
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AU REVOIR

to ocean and back again in five or six weeks
form a proper judgment of the people he has
come out to study?

But the man who rushes out and back has his
merits, for all the truth in this grievance. He is the
looker-on who sees most of the game. That is if he
has no prejudices, no affections involved. The
biassed writer is always worse than useless. I have
heard it said that one writes best of what one is
ignorant about, that knowledge cripples and thwarts
words. The man is generally chosen to rush over
Canada because he is a journalist. And a journalist
is an expert in recording. Moreover, he is fresh
from the country for which he is going to write, he
is able to tell of Canada for those who have not seen
it, not from the point of view of those who already
live there. After all England is not asking
Canadians to come and live in her land, and the big
Dominion is calling for settlers all the time. Poten-
tial Canadians are not unreasonable in asking to
know something of the country before they go to it.
So far, then, from resenting talk of herself, why
does not Canada encourage more talk in both lands
of both her and us? I have referred constantly to

the quarrels in which I was involved on that pet

269

A WOMAN IN CANADA

grievance of the Canadian the inferiority of the
English settler to every other; the superiority of
Canada to England; the coldness of England to
her great colony. From first to last that was rammed
into my tingling ears. At Saskatoon a melancholy-
faced fellow-countryman said to me
" The Englishman is crucified in Canada."
In justice to Saskatoon I must admit that I could
not help feeling that that particular man would be
crucified anywhere, he was so melancholy. At Mont-
real a hospitable native invited me to a royal feast.
I was entertained with sumptuous courtesy from
every material standpoint, but my host and fellow-
guests did not scruple to gibe at the folly of my
fellow-Britons till I dissolved in tears and made an
ass of myself. But this thing struck me everywhere,
that rarely indeed did a Canadian revile England
and the English who had been over and seen the
old country and its people at first hand. So I have
a petition to offer to every Canadian who reads this
book, and that is to see Great Britain before con-
demning it and till then keep silence. I promise
one thing, and that is that no one will suffer the
humiliation of hearing his own country derided while
he is a guest in ours. English people are immensely

interested in Canada, they will ask endless ques-

270

AU REVOIR

tions, they will listen eternally to talk of it, but I am
safe in saying they will not deride unprovoked. It is
a pity there is no great Press organ passing between
the two countries. If some well-illustrated magazine
passed to and fro written by English and Canadian
writers equally, I believe a bond of great strength
would be established. A great deal of the literature
read in the Colony is from the United States a
very great deal of it; an Anglo-Canadian illus-
trated paper would familiarize readers on both sides
with the aspects of either country. On one side we
have the great advertising output of the Emigration
Bureau and the Canadian Pacific Railway, so that
from the commercial aspect we in Great Britain are
not unaware of parts of Canada^ but we do not
advertise our country over the other side, and the
untravelled Canadian has the haziest notion only of
the land he is loth to. admit more powerful than his
own. He cannot picture the bustle of our London
streets, the thronging masses of people in those vast
arteries of commerce. He cannot picture the changes
that come into them with every onward impulse of
invention how we ourselves have to grow used to
constant change and progress, and learn our London
yearly ; nothing in the aspect of the City seems con-
stant but its ineffable greys of mist and stone. Daily

271

A WOMAN IN CANADA

the aspect of our London is changing; daily old
buildings and houses are being levelled to the
ground; daily fresh hoardings are pulled down
disclosing stately piles and widened spaces.

The noises and the smells of the street are differ-
ent. As a child I remember coming to London and
being struck mightily with the noise of the traffic. It
was an insistent roar of clattering hoofs and rolling
wheels. Later, coming back to it, I found a differ-
ence. It was nearly all the patter of hoofs and
jingling of bells. Rubber tyres had come into
fashion, and the comparative noiselessness of loco-
motion which they ensured made it, if not necessary,
at least expedient to put bells on the horses' heads.
The thrill of the bicycle bell was constantly heard,
for cyclists were much more general then than now,
and these airy little water spiders of the traffic
dodged and darted in a truly alarming fashion
among the buses and lighter vehicles. Now-a-
days the roar is pitched on a higher note. It is
more nerve-racking if less continuous. The noise
of London is now a steady series of the diminu-
endos and crescendos of fast-moving engines, throb-
bing with the warning hoot of horns. It may be
prejudice, but I believe that the ear accepted more
kindly the old song of hoof and bell than this present-

272

AU REVOIR

day clatter of machinery at express speed. Then
the smell of the city has changed. One's nostrils
are assailed on every hand with the odour of petrol,
instead of the former kindly suggestion of a well-
ventilated stable.

So, with our environment changing daily, yearly,
I believe it would be a good thing to make the
Mother Country a visualized fact in the Canadian
eye, instead of a dim, meaningless blur. The only
comment on the appearance of Great Britain I heard
was in Winnipeg, where a man of some imagination
said to me one day, " Your country must be like a
garden everywhere; it has hedges along the roads
and thatched ricks, hasn't it?" (The Canadian
never thatches his ricks, the climate makes it un-
necessary.) If there could sometimes glow in the
Canadian eye a picture of an English village in
Shakespeare's country, with the thatched roofs all
stained with moss till they have acquired a wonder-
ful nameless colour of age, with the cottage gardens
full of hollyhocks and roses, with an old sixteenth-
century inn rich in yawning fire-places, beams black
with age, oak staircases and walls a yard thick, some
such picture mellowed with all the appurtenances of
age and history, it would go far to engender pride in
the Motherland, far to kill disdain of her acreage.
b 273

A WOMAN IN CANADA

I read one day lately in the Daily Chronicle a
vivid picture of Euston Station, England, at mid-
night, by Mr. S. R. Littlewood, painted in simple
words with a clean touch. I wished, as I read, that
that article, illustrated with photographs of the
actual scene, could be reproduced in the best
Canadian papers. Here is the article

THE " GOOD-BYE " TRAIN

A FAMILIAR MIDNIGHT SCENE AT EUSTON

In these summer days, when London is
preening itself before her myriad guests from
oversea, flaunting forth the matchless wealth
and glory of the greatest Empire-city that ever
was, there are just one or two little scenes in
contrast that it is worth while to remember.
One means not so much the old, old contrast of
rich and poor of the grey millions on the sun-
set side of Aldgate pump and the bright, many-
coloured life of the West End, overflowing, as
M. Guitry described it the other day, with a
"splendour of joy."

After all, since Dickens' s time, London has
never been allowed to forget her poor. It is,
moreover, right, natural, and in some ways a
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AU REVOIR

new thing, that she should have these moments
of exultation over her own beauty; and, to be
sure, with the season in its pride, there seems
more point than ever in the poet's trope

To East, the root to Westward points the flower,
Fair bloom of London, changing hour by hour 1

No ! The contrast one would emphasize lies
simply between welcome and farewell.

It so happens that just in these last few
weeks, while distinguished strangers from all
quarters of the earth have been revelling in the
greeting that only London's opulence can give,
certain as yet undistinguished folk have been
bidding London good-bye. These are not
strangers. They are bred and born Londoners,
most of them. But they are going on a far
journey thousands of miles by land and sea
for the simple reason that London, with all
its greatness, cannot find room for them.

Let us take the trouble to see them off, and
perhaps we shall learn something of the joys
and sorrows that lurk beneath the surface of the
Cockney panorama. We shall have to make our
way to Euston Station just about the time when
the theatres are pouring out' their cheery throngs

A WOMAN IN CANADA

of playgoers, and the West End restaurants
are filling up for that fatal repast which has to
be devoured between half-past eleven and the
last bus. .Through those gloomy portals we ask
our way to the midnight boat-train to Liver-
pool. There, sure enough, it is, at a remote
platform, already crowded with a strangely
mingled gathering of men, women and chil-
dren. This crowd represents need one say it?
just London's weekly batch of Canadian
emigrants, bidding their friends farewell.
Nearly all are bound for the far west of the
Dominion, starting for the fortnight's journey-
third-class and steerage that will give them
their chance of wresting a living from the virgin
prairie of Alberta, or British Columbia or Sas-
katchewan.

They are of all classes save only the rich.
Here are rough labourers in corduroys and knee-
straps, white-faced clerks, waiters, mechanics,
maids-of-all-work, factory-girls, even middle-
aged professional men down on their luck, leav-
ing behind an anxious wife and wondering chil-
dren, and setting out to essay any new hope that
a new world may afford. In the crude, cold

light of the arc lamps there is indeed being
276

AU REVOIR

enacted upon that platform a drama more
poignant than any stage could well supply.

The most pathetic feature of it all is, per-
haps, the desperate, brave effort at gaiety.
While there is still five minutes to spare
though here and there one may see a wife, a
mother, a daughter sobbing quietly at the car-
nage door ^the prevailing note is a mad parody
of high spirits. Opposite one compartment a
bevy of boys and girls are dancing a cake-walk,
singing a rag-time tune at the top of their
voices, with tears streaming down their cheeks.
A little farther down a ring of pals are treating
a comrade to "For he's a jolly good fellow, 55
with three times three. One wholly happy
episode is to be noted. It is a family send-off
to " Grannie, 55 a cheery old lady of nigh seventy.
She has been sent for over half the world by
a stalwart son who has built a home for himself
at last probably with his own hands and
knows of no better housekeeper for it than his
old mother. Everywhere one hears cheery,
defiant promises to come back within a year
maybe, or eighteen months consciously false
promises, alas ! that the recording angel, let us

hope, blots duly from his book.
277

A WOMAN IN CANADA

Soon, and all too inevitably, comes the end
a whistle, a whirlwind of shouts and hoarse
cheers, a wild rush to the carriage doors, where
all thought of dignity is thrown aside, and
bearded men scramble to kiss one another, and
husbands and wives cling together on the foot-
board in a last passionate embrace. Slowly the
train grinds its way out, tearing asunder as it
goes heaven knows how many hearts, how many
bonds of flesh and blood !

Then, when the last gleam of the tail-lights
has vanished, and the deadening, blank reaction
of it all has come, and the platform is deserted
save for little clumps round anguish-stricken
women in complete collapse, one is tempted to
wonder what really will be the fate of that train-
load of humanity, bidden on its way with such
yearnings of heart. The women, doubtless, are
going to a marriage-market where they will be
pretty sure to find themselves at a premium.
As for the men, they know grimly enough, some
of them, what they are facing. They have been
lured by no glamorous dream of the gold-fields,
no Bret Harte romance, no whip-crack of an
Earl's Court cow-puncher. For these home-
steaders of the ultimate wheat-lands, where the

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AU REVOIR

man without capital or experience Has still, at
any rate, some hope, the main ordeal will be
just the long, inglorious one of loneliness and
monotony. . . .

Perhaps it is well, when one remembers all
this, that amongst that little band at Euston
not many were callow youths. Most were
mature men, who had made the decision of
their lives, and whom iron circumstance had
already tried and tested, and forced to an under-
standing of themselves and of their real hopes.

It is a trite saying that the Cockney makes a
bad colonist, because he cannot stand the lone-
liness of the outlying homestead, and drifts to
the towns or back to England again. Doubtless
this is true in part. One felt somehow that that
" jolly good fellow" of the Euston train would
probably be returning before many months
were over across the unharvested sea. But
there are Cockneys, born generally of country-
bred parents, who never will be in tune with
brick and pavement, flat and " tube " in whom
the land-hunger still survives, eating inward
because unsatisfied, like a canker at the heart.
Men like these, who have no appetite for the

" spoof " ideals that bring fortune in town, and
279

A WOMAN IN CANADA

who find that London has but rarely a fair
reward for plain honesty and strong arm men
like these are seeking, not their fortune in those
Western fields, but life itself.

Not least for the mere onlooker, this little
scene of heart-break amidst the flaunting de-
lights of the London season helps to show how
wrong is the notion that, because London has
become an Imperial city, it has ceased to be
above everything the home of its own citizens.
After all, to those midnight exiles, London
meant no fashionable pageant of park and
square and theatre, but some little house in
some little row in some little suburb, that held
within it what was more to them than all the
world beside.

I may seem to He harping on trifles, but I believe
the printed word dwells in men's minds, I believe
the Press has a great deal to do with directing
thought, and I believe that if the Old Country were
written of in the Canadian papers in an intimate,
descriptive and affectionate way that the people
would be drawn insensibly to think of her not as a
frigid disdainful autocrat over the seas, but as a

beautiful dear old land pursuing a blundering,

280

AU REVO1R

honest, generous policy with the kindest will in the
world. They would grow to feel her warm obstinate
heart beating steadily for them through good report
and ill, and learn to lean in trouble and kick in
prosperity harder than ever, surer and surer of the
Motherland.

Here is the end of the book. The au revoir end,
because in bones and blood and longing heart I
know that somehow, somewhere, I shall again tread
and write of that lovely land. What do I remember
of Canada now that Quebec has faded away Que-
bec with her ramparts and plains, her history, her
mighty river I remember the foaming rapids of
Lachine; the enamels; the rolling wheat of the
prairies; the fruit orchards of British Columbia
and Niagara; the mines of silver, lead, copper,
gold; the thrill of the whirling spoon in salmon
waters; the cry of a stricken quarry in the bush;
the scarlet bunch-berries on the mountains; the
snow and the sun and the dominant brilliant sky.
1 remember these and so much more of loveliness
. , . I remember, too, a people given over to work
and hope, a people kind and prejudiced and

courageous, a great Government which gives its

28!

A WOMAN IN CANADA

children schools, experimental farms, free home-
steads, a Government which subsidizes the hospitals
so that charity in sickness does not exist, and the
best medical attention may be had of all, a Govern-
ment which works sanely on commercial lines for
the good of the greatest number, and for all its sense
neglects its women and babes at the hour of birth,
leaving them untended on the outlying homesteads,
a Government which makes at the same time a great
hue and cry about race suicide. J remember these
things.

Every August as harvest comes I must suffer the
restless desire to stand on the prairie and hear again
the rustle of miles of wheat I shall long to board a
train and lean from the end car to smell the pine
and cedar, to see the silver rails slip from our wheels,
the wooden houses, the great barns, to feel the space,
to lave in silence.

If any woman, reading this, wants to go to a
beautiful country and carve out her own fortune
from its deep loam, I shall be happy to tell all I
can that may help her to Canada, and if that is little
I can at least put her in the way of getting informa-
tion from the best sources.

There is money to be made there, at farming and

horticulture^ at domestic service which entails in

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AU REVOIR

Canada no loss of caste; at maternity nursing; and
there are happy homes ahead for many, especially
for women who do not settle too far from civilization'
for safety and comfort.

If I had to earn my living I would go to Canada.

PRINTED BY

TUB LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LTD.,
LONDON AND NORWICH;

FICTION

THE PATH OF GLORY

By PAUL LELAND HAWORTH

Cm. 8vo. Cloth. Illustrated, 6/-

The Times says "The Path of Glory" is :

"An historical novel which relies neither on excitements nor on affectations, but
which arranges its events (true, many of them) with coherence and effect, taking us to
the glorious days when Canada was won for the British Empire, and closing with the
capture of Quebec. And its title is felicitous, for at the climax of the tale Wolfe
recites the famous lines which suggest it, and makes his famous observation on the
value of literary and of military fame. And Mr. Haworth's literary skill is such that
even now it moves us to read the incident."

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"The downfall of New France and the firm establishment of British dominion in
North America, supply historic background, scenery, and incident for this vigorous
story. The tale holds the reader from beginning to end, and in perusing it he gathers
much solid information concerning one of the greatest episodes in American annals."

THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE

By CORA MINNETT

Cm. 8vo. Cloth. 6/-

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" Should be very popular, because it is full of humanity, and has a plot which will
appeal to the fairy-tale instinct which there is in most of us. There is a pleasant,
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an unsophisticated tale, and it is also one which pleases and interests, just the sort of
book to charm all sorts of readers, in spite of, or perhaps because of, coincidences
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'NEATH AUSTRAL SKIES

By LOUIS BECKE

Crn. 8vo. Cloth. 6/-

Mr. Becke has a world-wide reputation as a writer of stirring
and fascinating stories of life in the South Seas. This volume
continues the charm of his great descriptive power, of telling a
story in moving and simple language as only he can tell it.

The Scotsman calls it :

"A delightful volume, with something in its entrancing pages of the indescribable

fascination of the Southern Seas."

LONDON: W. J. HAM-SMITH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

BOOKS OF GENERAL INTEREST

AN IDLER IN THE NEAR EAST

By F. G. AFLALO

Illustrated with 40 Photographic Reproductions specially taken.
DemySvo. Cloth. 10/6 net

"Mr. Aflalo does this sort of thing re-
markably well. He has just the right
touch .... and his little picturesque
patches of colour are full of charm and
an easy individuality." Daily Telegraph

"The book is delightful ... an enter-
taining kaleidoscopic volume depicting
life and leisure, sport and natural his-
tory, in the Near East." Yorkshire Post

"He is a shrewd observer of men and
things. . . . We have not read many
better travel books, of its kind, than this
one." Sheffield Daily Telegraph

"Few modern writers of travel books
have given us a more entertaining record
than that contained within Mr. Aflalo's
'An Idler in the Near East.' "

The Nation

THE AWAKENING OF TURKEY

A History of the Turkish Revolution
By E. F. KNIGHT

Author of "Where Three Empires Meet."

Second Edition. With Autographed Portraits of Enver Bey, Aisim Bey, Ahmed

Riza Bey, Niazi Bey, and others.

"Presents a vivid picture of the growth
and influence of the young Turk.

Morning Post

"Reads more like the records of a secret
society. Would have delighted the
imagination of a Balzac or a Poe".

Morning Post

"Merely as a tale of stirring adventure,
apart from the political issues involved,

DemySvo. Cloth, 10/6 net

the book should have an irresistible at-
traction for most readers." Standard

"As up-to-date as the news in one's
morning newspaper, as romantic as a
novel." Observer

"As a book of reference this volume
ought to form part of the library of
every student of the History of the Near
East. " Pall Mall Gazette

THE WALLS of CONSTANTINOPLE

By B. GRANVILLE BAKER

Illustrated by 30 Line Drawings by the Author.

"The work of a man to whom the
marvellous romance of the great
city on the Golden Horn has ap-
pealed irresistibly. The reviewer, who
has not been in Constantinople for
nearly seven years, finds the old wonder,
awe, and amazement stirring his pulse
as the author's facile pen and clever
pencil bring back the old sights, the old
stories. . . . Captain Baker has studied
his subject well."

Illustrated London News

Royal 8vo. Cloth. 16/- net

"His pages make delightful reading
.... the book, as a whole, is worthy
of all praise." Pall Mall Gazette

"If the walls of Constantinople must go
we may be doubly grateful to the writer
of this monograph for the memorial he
has given us, both with pen and pencil."
Westminster Gazette

"A handsome, well- written, capitally
illustrated volume. 1 '

Manchester Courier

LONDON: W. J. HAM-SMITH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

THOUGHTFUL, TELLING & TIMELY

THE AGE OF FOLLY

A Study of Imperial Needs, Duties and Warnings
By CHARLES J. ROLLESTON

Demy 8vo. Cloth. 5/- net
The Writing on the Wall

Behind the Mask

Wasted National Resources

The Hunting Grounds of Croesus

Our Neglected Gardens

Revival of Agriculture

Aid for the Enemy

The Sceptre of Power

The Lesson of Rome

The Lesson of Spain

The Lesson of The Netherlands

The Voice of Cassandra

The Leakage of British Wealth

The Manufacture of Paupers

Mischievous Charity

" Mr. Rolleston's book is a thoughtful and telling effort, as the
result of much miscellaneous hard reading and thinking, to induce
this country to shake off slackness, and work out its salvation by
business-like resolve to set the house in order. . . . An informing
book, showing on the one hand how the country is frittering itself
away, on the other the great things it might make of itself and its
Empire." The Pall Mall Gazette.

"A book that is worth careful study and discussion." The Globe.

"We recommend the book as a very thoughtful and timely dis-
cussion of problems which in the near future threaten to take upon
themselves a vital importance in the history of our land and its
Empire." The Academy.

" Most valuable, for it examines certain growing weaknesses in our
national life which may be counteracted with a bolder consolidated
energy, though with neglect they may become serious." The World.

"The book is a sober, sensible and thoroughly 'facty' statement
of an urgent case." The Dundee Courier.

" The book is interesting, containing as it does much information
which may be new to readers with no special knowledge of national
problems. It is written with earnestness and sincerity." The Glasgow
Evening News.

" Mr. Rolleston deserves the thanks of all Britons who love their
country. We could wish that the lessons which he teaches could be
burnt into the minds and hearts of his countrymen." Bristol 'I imes.

"Every good Englishman should read the book." Army and Navy
Gazette.

LONDON: W. J. HAM-SMITH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

POPULAR NOVELS at I/- net

"Volume

A WIFE BY PURCHASE

By PAUL TRENT

Author of " The Vow"

"The question is no new one in fiction,
but it has seldom been presented with
such power." Scotsman

I "A timely story of West African life. . .
The book is admirably written."
Yorkshire Observer

'Published

POTIPHAR'S WIFE

By KINETON PARKES

"A story so powerful, original, so full of
vigorous and convincing characterisa-
tion and of sheer human interest, that
one really feels tempted to hail Mr.

Parkes as the 'Hardy' of Derbyshire, for
the book is worthy of comparison with
Thomas Hardy's Wessex romances."

The Lady

PINK PURITY

By GERTIE de S. WENTWORTH-JAMES

'A cl ever piece of work. " Morning Post
'We have little doubt but that it

will prove to be one of the most popular
novels of the season." Madame

THE HALF-SMART SET

By FLORENCE WARDEN

"This is the best book Miss Warden has
written."

A berdeen Free Press

"A capital story. . . . will delight her
(the author's) large circle of admirers.
Liverpool Post

THE ROME EXPRESS

By Major ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

"Certainly the best detective book of
this or any recent season. . . . Any
reader who opens it with the resolution
that he will read a chapter of it and then
resume his ordinary occupations, is

likely to be surprised out of such good
intentions. The story grips you like a
vice. There is not a superfluous word
in the 215 pages."

MR. MAX PEMBEKTON in ths Sketch

THE CALL OF THE SOUTH

By LOUIS BECKE

The Daily Chronicle, referring to the
Six Shilling Edition, says: "Worth ten
times the price."

"Simply packed with incident of great
pith and moment."

Daily Telegraph

LONDON: W. J. HAM-SM1TH, 6 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DA
STAMPED BELOW

AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS

WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.

NOV 26 1946

NOV 87 *

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JUN 27 1972

LD 21-100m-12, '43 (8796s)

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY