In Nortli-West Canada. 197 



thermometer registering thirty degrees below zero. Every 

 lake and slough is frozen over, and not a bird or living crea- 

 ture is to be seen. A dead silence reigns from morning until 

 night, unless a howling blizzard is raging. But we will only 

 think of this country as seen in its summer garb, and as I sit 

 before a cabinet full of specimens and open drawer after drawer 

 and gaze with admiration on the birds' eggs and skins collected 

 there, and examine the beautiful forms and colours, I think of 

 the North- West as I saw it in summer. Every clutch of birds' 

 eggs distinct!}^ brings to mind the spot where it was collected 

 and the surroundings, and my mind travels hundreds of miles 

 away to the western prairies, carpeted with myriads of sweet- 

 scented flowers and fragrant wild roses. I think of the bluffs 

 and the rivers, lakes and sloughs, fringed with rushes and 

 dotted over with hundreds of wild fowl, and the great over- 

 arching dome of deep blue, and the balmy atmosphere, soft 

 and sweet as from a bank of flowers, exhilarating as the 

 breath of the north always is. And now, gentle reader, whether 

 you be a naturalist, sportsman, or angler, if you wish to form 

 a correct impression of the extent and magnitude of the Can- 

 adian North-West and its wonderful resources, take a trip from 

 Winnipeg to Vancouver, and after having ridden across seas of 

 green for hundreds of miles at a stretch, crossed mighty rivers, 

 climbed dizzy heights, beheld snow-capped mountains, seen 

 great glaciers, passed through frightful gorges, shot grizzly 

 bears under the shadows of the mountains of the setting sun, 

 hunted a cougar or black bear with dogs, coursed antelope 

 with greyhounds, had your hair stand on end by seeing a wolf 

 worried to death by high-mettled hounds, hunted musk ox, 

 moose or cariboo with Indians or mounted police, seen lakes 

 blacken over with myriads of water fowl, caught magnificent 

 seven and eight-pound trout and whitefish, landed a mighty 

 maskinonge or salmon you could scarcely carry, got lost in a 

 willow swamp, or lost your way on an alkaline or cactus flat 

 in some semi-deserted, treeless expanse, where no sign of life 

 breaks the terrible solitariness from horizon to horizon, you 

 ai-e likely to return home a wiser man as regards the resources, 

 extent, character and probable de«tiny of the North-West. 



