44 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



towns vied with each other as to which was to have the greater 

 honour in entertaining us. The Strathcona people, as we have 

 pointed out, met us when we arrived and showed us round part of 

 their district. The Edmonton people had us the next day. It was 

 the Strathcona people's turn now. We were driven ten or fifteen 

 miles into the country. We stopped at the farm of a Mr Ellett, 

 ten miles from Strathcona. He was a jeweller in London and came 

 to Canada in 1885. He knew absolutely nothing about farming 

 till 1888, when he settled down in this district. He homesteaded 

 160 acres. In 1890 he bought 200 acres, part of which cost six 

 dollars and part twenty dollars an acre. One hundred acres are now 

 broken up and the rest is in grass and scrub. He sows wheat when 

 he breaks up his land, then oats, then barley, with rye, or timothy, 

 or brome, and he leaves the grass down three years. Sometimes 

 he summer fallows after the oats and before the barley. He keeps 

 forty head of Aberdeen-Angus cattle. He also breeds horses and 

 pigs. After leaving Mr Ellett's farm we turned the horses' heads 

 towards Strathcona, where the Board of Trade, not to be outdone 

 by the Edmonton Board of Trade, entertained us to lunch. Before 

 We had well begun, the Edmonton people had arrived with rigs 

 to take us round the city of Edmonton. It was a kindly rivalry, 

 all to our advantage, and if the Edmonton people were to any 

 extent having the monopoly of the Commission, it must, we suppose, 

 be due to the fact that Edmonton is the capital of Alberta and has 

 a population of over 20,000, while Strathcona, which possibly will 

 one day be the residential part of Edmonton, has only a population 

 of from 4000 to 5000 inhabitants. The afternoon was spent in 

 visiting the old fort of the Hudson Bay Company, the coal mines 

 along the river bank, and the telephone system, which is worked 

 at the central office automatically. Headed by four pipers, the 

 Commissioners, or what was left of them, proceeded to the station as 

 modestly as they could, followed by a crowd of interested spectators, 

 who cheered lustily as we steamed out of the station for Prince 

 Albert. 



We cannot speak of the country from Edmonton to Battleford 

 for we passed it in the night. From Battleford to Warman the 

 prairie is rolling and flat by turns. At Warman we were met by 

 the Acting Mayor of Prince Albert, who had arranged that we 

 should leave the train at Clouston and drive to Prince Albert, eleven 

 miles distant. On the way we visited a large farm owned by 

 Mossom, Boyd & Company, Ontario, consisting of three sections. 

 Three hundred and twenty acres are under crops. After breaking 

 the land, the rotation is — first year, wheat ; second year, oats ; 

 third year, barley ; fourth year, summer fallow. Wheat then 

 follows, and the rotation is the same as before. Stock, however, is 

 their great stand-by. They keep 600 head of good Hereford cattle. 

 They also specialise in horses, favouring the Suffolk breed. After 

 examining the stock we drove round the farm, and from the hill-top 

 had a magnificent view. We could see twenty miles in every 

 direction, but the land, save here and there, where homesteads were 

 cleared, was nothing but scrub. Lunch, provided by the Prince 



