DAYS IN THE WOODS 273 



growing country confined to the great tract that 

 drains into Lake Winnipeg. If anyone will look 

 at the isothermal line upon a map, he will find 

 that it takes a tremendous sweep northward a 

 little to the west of the centre of the continent, 

 and includes the great Peace River valley, a portion 

 of the Athabaska district, and of the valley of the 

 Mackenzie River. The day will come when wheat 

 will be grown in that country within a very few 

 degrees of the Arctic Circle. Nature has been 

 bountiful to these north-western provinces. The 

 warm breezes from the west waft them prosperity, 

 but it is their northern position which proves the 

 only drawback to them. The chief difficulty is a 

 difficulty of communication. The value of land, 

 in a country where land is plentiful and cheap, 

 depends upon the cost of transporting the produce 

 of the soil to market. The great wheat-producing 

 region I have described is at present tapped by a 

 line of railway running south through the United 

 States. That cannot be called a natural, or 

 altogether a proper outlet. It is not worth while 

 anticipating any serious difficulty between the 

 United States and the British Empire. We may 

 for practical purposes dismiss that contingency 

 from our calculations, as one most unlikely to 



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