DISCOVERY OF MARQUIS WHEAT 217 



opening of the first railway in the province in 18Y8 giving 

 direct access to St. Paul from St. Boniface, and with the 

 prospect of the completion of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 

 way which would connect the prairie with eastern ocean 

 ports, grain dealers, farmers, and railway men became con- 

 vinced that a great export trade in wheat would soon be 

 developed in the Canadian West. In 1883, therefore, by 

 which time the introduction of the purifier into flour mills 

 had greatly enhanced the value of hard spring wheats, an 

 effort was made to improve the quality of the crops. To 

 this end a large amount of Red Fife was brought into 

 Manitoba from Minnesota. 



In 1882, James Hartney imported into Manitoba from 

 Minnesota a car-load of Red Fife. He sowed it on vir- 

 gin land and it produced a splendid crop. Some of the 

 grain was shown at an exhibition held in the fall of the 

 year at Winnipeg, and it carried off the prizes of the Cana- 

 dian Pacific Railway Company and of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company for the best ten bushels of wheat. At that time 

 the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was hard at work 

 constructing its great line of steel across the continent, and, 

 with a view to future business, was anxious to demonstrate 

 the agricultural possibilities of the West. About 1882, 

 therefore, the Company began to make a series of experi- 

 mental farms all along the line from Winnipeg to Calgary. 

 Horses and plows, accompanied by laborers, were conveyed 

 by train ; and, at intervals along the line, whenever there 

 was found a piece of open, level, promising-looking land, 

 plows, horses and men were detrained and the virgin soil 

 was turned up ; and in the autumn the land was back-set. 

 The Company sowed all these new farms with Red Fife 

 purchased from Hartney in the winters of 1882 and 1883, 

 with the result that the amount of Red Fife available for 



