ON AGRICULTURE TO CANADA 191 



is not so easy as it seems. A settler, who is unmarried, or who has 

 left his wife at home — for a pioneer's life in the west is no life for a 

 woman — may do this without much money, provided he is of the 

 stuff pioneers are made of, and is willing to settle on a farm in a 

 district, where there is no schoolmaster, and no doctor, and no 

 railway, and has resolved to accept the rigours of a Canadian winter, 

 and all the hardships and all the loneliness that go to make up a 

 pioneer's life. He may live on his farm for six months every year, for 

 three years, breaking up the necessary thirty acres by contract, or 

 otherwise, finding what work he can in the winter to help him to live 

 and face another summer on his farm, thus keeping the wolf from 

 the door while fulfitUing the conditions of his land grant. But such 

 a course is beset with innumerable difficulties. It is not easy thus 

 to work oneself into a farm. One-fourth of all those — many of 

 whom, however, were not ploughmen — who have tried it in Canada, 

 have given it up. 



Purchase 



For the ordinary man who does not care to be on the frontier of 

 civilisation, fighting nature at every step for a foothold, it seems 

 to us better that he should remain a hired hand or a tenant farmer 

 till he has made £400 or £500. With this money he could purchase 

 a farm not very far from a railway station in a partially settled 

 district. Hundreds of such farms are in the market. Many of 

 them can be got in good districts at from 10 to 15 dollars an acre — 

 the price payable one-fifth on purchase and the other four-fifths by 

 four equal yearly instalments, with interest at 6 per cent, on the 

 unpaid balance. A man deciding to adopt this course will have 

 hard enough work and will have to exercise the strictest economy 

 in spending his money, but it will be trifling compared with the work 

 of the lonely homesteader. It will be lightened by the comforts 

 and the social intercourse of a partially settled district. There is 

 rich reward for such a man, and for the homesteader too, if he 

 perseveres unto the end. There is independence ; there is comfort 

 and plenty ; there has sometimes been, and there may yet be, 

 great wealth. 



A Scotch Colony 



It were worth while making the pathway of the Scotch farm 

 labourer to a homestead of his own in Canada a little easier. It 

 might be done with advantage to the mother country and the 

 colony, and with profit to those who did it. Other countries are 

 doing it for their people. We might do it for ours. It means the 

 flotation of a company on business lines. No other proposition 

 is worth considering. Thousands of acres are available in different 

 parts of Canada for such a purpose. The policy of the company 

 would be twofold. It would, in the first place, be a farming com- 

 pany. The farm would be worked on such an extensive scale that 

 it could afford to engage ploughmen, not for eight months, but for 

 twelve months every year. Its ploughmen would be drawn from 

 Scotland, and good wages would be paid to good men. Scotch 



