36 



vicinity. The wheat crop, what there was of it, considering the dry weather, was good. But 

 fully one-hfilf of the settlers had no wheat at all ; their sole dependence was corn and potatoes. 

 In many instances the very uncertain product of prairie od. Thus nearly half of our 

 people were dependent solely upon the two above articles, both of which were almost entirely 

 swept away by drought,ft)ugs and locusts combined. Ever;/ family nearly, that was able to do 

 so, having friends in Iowa and Missouri, have gone there to winter, some may return, others 

 never will. Many proved upon their claims and have left the country forever. The number 

 of actual homestead settlers is thus reduced fully one-half in my own neighbourhood, and of 

 that one-half, not one family in ten have provisions, fuel or clothing to last them through the 

 winter. Fully two-thirds have not food enough to last until the 1st of December. I find 

 from conversation in Kearney, with settlers both north and south for a distance of thirty to 

 fifty miles, that the same statement holds true over almost the entire region. Thus notwith- 

 standing the (77/ of some of our papers that "we are not beggars," more than two-thirds of 

 those now on their homesteads must either beg or starve. In less than thirty days there will 

 be starvation and death unless these needs are promptly met. 



'■ There is no corn, no oats, no. feed of any kind for .stock, except what is shipped in from 

 a distance. There is no fuel except coal, at from $8' to .§11 per ton. There is no work, no 

 money. There is no seed corn, and in very many instances, no seeds of any kind for another 

 year's planting. On the 13th inst., I met two of my neighbours. One has a family of six 

 to provide for, three of them young children. Says he : 'I have just flour enough to last 

 until Saturday night.' The other has a family of ten, four of whom are sick, and have been 

 since September. One child, a bright boy of some four years, has lost the entire use of his 

 limbs, and now has to have the care of a helpless babe. This man has flour for t«n days, and 

 potatoes that will enable him to get along for a week or two longer. Last winter this family 

 of children were entirely without shoes or stockings, with clothing just sufficient to cover 

 nakedness, and ragged at that. The writer of this article has flour for a week — fifty pounds 

 — and pays for it in breaking one acre of prairie, thus giving three dollars in work for $1.20 

 worth of flour. He does not state this complainingly, being glad to get work to feed his 

 five babies at any price. I merely give these three cases as a sample. While I give but 

 three, there are many others all around me in fully as deplorable a situation. This want ex- 

 tends over the whole area of country, west, north and south, and the farther the settlement 

 is from the supplies, the greater the wants and privations of the settlers." 



The Plague op Locusts in Manitoba. 



Thus far we have been describing the extent and the terrible results of this year's 

 plague of Locusts in the Western States of the Union. We have now, unhappily, to record 

 its occurrence in our own new Province of Manitoba, which adjoins the State of Minnesota, 

 so frequently referred to above. From the following record of visitations previous to this 

 year, it will be observed that they were, in almost all cases, simultaneous with those in the 

 neighbouring States, that we have described in the earlisr part of this paper. For this record 

 we are indebted to the letter of the Winnipeg Correspondent of the Toronto Globe, which ap- 

 peared in that paper on the f)th of August last: — 



" Grasshoppers first appeared in Red River towards the end of July, 1818, six years 

 after the commencement of the settlement. They covered the settlement belt, but did not 

 utterly destroy the wheat crop, it being nearly ripe at the time. Barley and other crops 

 were swept away. They deposited their eggs and disappeared, and the following spring the 

 crop of young grasshoppers was immense. These departed before depositing their eggs, but 

 devoured all vegetation on their route, thus destroying all the crops of IS 19. Great num- 

 bers came in during the season of 1819 and deposited their eggs, so that in 1820 the crops 

 were again all destroyed. Thus for three successive years were the crops in this country 

 destroyed by these pests. They then disappeared for thirty six succes.sive years, the nest 

 visitation being in 1857, when they visited the Assiniboine settlement, doing but little injury 

 beyond depositing their eggs. The following season their progeny destroyed all the crops 

 within their reach. In 1864 they again appeared in considerable numbers but did little 

 injury to the wheat crop. The following year the young grasshoppers partially destroyed the 

 crops, leaving many districts entirely untouched. The largest swarm ever known came 

 in August, 1867, but the crops were so far advanced that season that they did but little in- 



