DOMINION OF CANADA. 



217 



now increasing with rapid strides year by year. 

 The heaviest immigration in any one year oc- 

 curred in 1847, the year following the Irish 

 potato-famine, when about 70,000 persons en- 

 tered Canada for permanent settlement. The 

 next greatest immigration took place in 1873, 

 when 41,079 people landed. In 1866 only 10,- 

 091 immigrants settled in the Dominion. From 

 that year up to 1873 there was a progressive 

 increase. In 1874 the number fell off to 25,-. 

 263 ; in 1875 it further declined to 19,243, and 

 in 1876 to 14,499, the lowest ebb during the 

 period of depression. In 1877, 15,323 persons 

 from across the sea took up their abode in 

 Canada ; in 1878, 18,372 ; and in 1879 the num- 

 ber leaped up to 30,717. The arrivals for the 

 first three months indicate a total immigration 

 of nearly double that number in 1880. This in- 

 flux is more than neutralized by the exodus of 

 Canadians to the United States, which has been 

 growing constantly larger for several years 

 past, owing to the returning prosperity and 

 higher wages in the United States and the con- 

 tinued depression in Canada, which the pro- 

 tective tariff failed to relieve ; though good 

 crops and revival of the lumber exports to the 

 United States have in 1880 caused the tide to 

 turn. The number of Canadians who crossed 

 the border to settle in the United States in the 

 fiscal year 1878 was 25,568; in 1879 the num- 

 ber rose to 31,268 ; and in 1880 it mounted up 

 to nearly 90,000. 



Among the multitude of unemployed labor- 

 ers in the cities of the older provinces in the 

 earlier part of the year were many immigrants 

 who had been assisted in their passage over the 

 ocean by the Government, which had under- 

 taken to pay to the steamship companies a 

 portion of the fare of such as declared a pur- 

 pose to become farmers or agricultural laborers. 

 To remedy this evil an order in council was 

 issued for the winter months, prohibiting the 

 landing of any passenger not possessing twenty 

 dollars in cash. The practice of partly paying 

 emigrants' fares from Europe was subsequent- 

 ly restricted, as it had been under the former 

 Government, to farm-laborers and domestic 

 servants. 



The obnoxious land regulations in the North- 

 west caused many of the emigrants to the new 

 Canadian wheat-lands to cross the American 

 frontier and transfer their labor and their capi- 

 tal to the equally fertile prairies of Dakota and 

 Minnesota. The number of settlers who took 

 up lands in the Northwest in 1879 is estimated 

 to have been about 10,000. Of these the num- 

 ber who settled in Manitoba was 11,665. The 

 larger share of this immigration came from the 

 older provinces of the Dominion, a few from 

 the United States, and about 2,000 from the 

 British Islands. The Government land policy 

 provoked many complaints from settlers, and 

 was criticised severely by the Opposition in 

 Parliament, especially the plan of reserving one 

 half of the railroad lands for speculators. The 

 lands along the line of the railway are divided 



into belts, the first on either side of the line 

 being five miles broad, the next ones fifteen 

 miles in breadth, and those farther back broad- 

 er. The prices of the land for purchase or 

 preemption were fixed at different figures for 

 the different belts in the order of their remote- 

 ness from the railroad. Each belt was sur- 

 veyed into square-mile sections, of which only 

 one half are subject to homestead and preemp- 

 tion rights, each alternate section being held 

 as a reserve, the proceeds of the sale of which 

 are to be devoted to the building of the rail- 

 road. Of the portion open to settlers 160 acres 

 in each section are given free as a homestead, 

 and each homesteader is allowed a preemption 

 right to 160 acres more. The reserved sections 

 are salable to non-settlers, who are required 

 to pay the purchase-money in ten equal annual 

 installments. The plan of reserving the alter- 

 nate sections to be disposed of to non-residents 

 in the open market, which was adopted as a 

 convenient means of raising money to aid in 

 the extension of the railroad, was vigorously 

 denounced by the Opposition, on the grounds 

 that it would defeat its object by retarding the 

 settlement of the country, and that it was un- 

 just to actual settlers, doubling the cost of 

 roads and schooling for them, and locking up 

 a large portion of the reservation in the hands 

 of land-speculators who would be enriched by 

 the labor of the pioneers. The area of fertile 

 lands in the Northwest Territory is differently 

 estimated at from 150,000,000 to 220,000,000 

 acres. Professor Macoun estimates the extent 

 of land adapted for agriculture and stock-rais- 

 ing between Manitoba and the Kocky Moun- 

 tains at 150,000.000 acres, interspersed with 

 30,000,000 acres of sterile lands, of which two 

 thirds are probably reclaimable. Of the tillable 

 land 46,000,000 acres lie between the fifty-first 

 parallel of latitude and the American boun- 

 dary, the forty-ninth parallel, 88,000,000 acres 

 north of the fifty-first degree, and 16,000,000 

 acres in the Peace River district. The Premier 

 made the statement, based on reports of officers 

 of the survey, that there were 220,000,000 acres 

 in the Northwest east of British Columbia, ex- 

 clusive of the northern part of the Montana 

 desert, or the belt of dry lands immediately 

 north of the American boundary-line, which, 

 however, Professor Macoun thought was quite 

 fertile, as the rainfall is found sufficient when 

 the soil is plowed up and the moisture is al- 

 lowed to penetrate the soil, although the rain 

 evaporates and the herbage withers on the un- 

 broken land. 



The law relating to the survey of public 

 lands in the Dominion requires that the eastern 

 and western boundaries of each township shall 

 be true astronomical meridians, and that the 

 sphericity of the earth shall b allowed for, so 

 that the northern boundary of every township 

 is less than the southern. In carrying out this 

 operation the surveyors are obliged to go over 

 every line twice with chains of unequal lengths, 

 and to regulate their measurements by frequent 



