194 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



grow wheat a long way from a railway station. Transport, on the 

 other hand, is indispensable to the fruit trade, and transportation is 

 one of the real difficulties in British Columbia. The fruit-grower 

 is thus forced either to confine himself to land in the immediate 

 vicinity of a railway or go into a fruit district already developed. 

 In both cases, land sells at extravagant prices. There is even more 

 need here, in some respects, for settlement on the colony system, 

 than there is on the prairie, because co-operation and transport 

 facilities are of the essence of fruit-growing, and they would be the 

 immediate and natural outcome of a colonisation scheme. But 

 there are more difficulties. The initial expenses would be much 

 greater. More capital would be tied up for a longer period of time. 

 The scheme would take a generation to work out unless the settlers 

 were monied men. But it could be done. Some thousands of 

 acres could be got outside the present fruit districts at a com- 

 paratively low figure. A colonising company could, with a steam 

 stumper, clear four or five acres on each holding. It could erect a 

 cottage for each settler. It could do both at very much less cost 

 than the settler could do himself. The difference in the cost of 

 clearing and building would represent a very good profit to the 

 company, and would not increase the price of the holding to the 

 settler. Such a work is worth doing among the mountains of 

 British Columbia as well as on the plains of the North-West. It 

 would constitute another link in the long chain that will in the years 

 to come help to bind together the far-scattered portions of our world- 

 wide empire. 



LOGAN BERRIES, BRITISH COLUMBIA 



