THE PRAIRIES 



The west-bound naturalist, who, from a Canadian Pacific 

 car-window, has been oppressed by the dearth of life in the 

 country north of the Great Lakes, welcomes the change from 

 this desolate region to the poplar-dotted prairies of Manito- 

 ba with their teeming bird-life. Once west of Winnipeg, and 

 even in the ditches made by grading the track-bed — if they 

 be not too near a settlement — Grebes, Coots, and Ducks of 

 various species may be seen leading broods of young; and 

 when the road passes a reed-bordered lake, or slough, the 

 place seems alive with these birds. Bitterns, Yellow-headed 

 and Red-winged Blackbirds, Black Terns and Franklin's 

 Gulls. I recall no railway journey on which more birds may 

 be seen from the train ; and consequently none which 

 arouses in the arriving ornithologist a higher degree of en- 

 thusiastic expectation. 



On June 13, 1901, just after passing through a bird com- 

 munity of this kind, Mrs. Chapman and I left the Canadian 

 Pacific train at Marquette, a station on the prairies, thirty 

 miles west of Winnipeg, bound for Shoal Lake, eighteen 

 miles to the north. Conveyance was eventually secured 

 from a neighboring ranch and the drive was notable chiefly 

 for the numbers of Black Terns which, swallow-like, circled 

 about the wagon, feeding on the insects we flushed from the 

 grass. 



We pitched our tent as near the southern end of the lake 

 as the marshy nature of the ground would permit, and not 

 far from the cabin of an Englishman whose attractive half- 

 breed wife prepared our meals. He acted occasionally as 

 our guide ; devoting himself between trips to Burton 's 

 *' Anatomy of Melancholy " and a cabinet organ which he 

 played with exceptional taste. 



To avoid custom-house and transportation difficulties, 



