398 Our North Land. 



rapidly, if protected from prairie fires. Wood for fuel has not been 

 very expensive, and already arrangements have been made for 

 bringing coal into market, of which important mineral there are 

 vast beds farther west. The whole of the vast territory from the 

 Boundary to the Peace River, about 200 miles wide from the Rocky 

 Mountains, is a coal-field. Water is found by digging wells of 

 moderate depth on the prairie. The rivers and coolies are also 

 available for water supply. Rain generally falls freely during the 

 spring, while the summers and autumns are generally dry. 



Manitoba has already communication by railway with the Atlan- 

 tic seaboard and all parts of the continent southward; this is 

 over the United States system of railways. But the Canadian 

 Pacific road, which already extends through the Province, will be 

 completed in a few months, so that one can get into the cars at 

 Halifax or Quebec, and travel continuously over Canadian soil to 

 Winnipeg, and thence on to Port Moody in British Columbia. 

 What the Province now requires is railway connection with Hud- 

 son's bay, the great North American inter-ocean ; when this is 

 established it will become the centre of attraction to European 

 immigration, and hundreds of thousands of active, energetic settlers 

 will throng to the north-western prairies. 



At present the population of Manitoba and the North- West 

 Territories is not large, but the percentage of its increase during the 

 past five years is very great. The following abstract of the census 

 of Canada for 1871 and 1881, compared, in respect of the Province 

 of Manitoba and the North-West, will be interesting : — 



