424 Our North Land. 



home demand, will be annually exported to Europe. The home mar- 

 ket for meat will continue to grow in proportion to the rapid develop- 

 ment caused by railway construction, and as new towns and cities 

 spring into existence the demand on the stock-raiser will increase in 

 proportion. The prosecution of railways and public works will also 

 create a great demand for meat and agricultural produce to feed the 

 large numbers of men employed ; but, besides all this, the trade in 

 cattle, which is now being carried on so extensively between 

 America and Great Britain, and which is likely to increase every year, 

 will open up a large field for enterprise in the North- West. 



But if agriculture is to be the first, and stock raising the second, 

 great industry of the Canadian North-West, that of pork-raising, 

 not yet undertaken to any great extent, will be the third, and will 

 struggle hard for second place. As yet, but few have turned their 

 attention in this direction ; but when it is considered that peas and 

 potatoes can be grown in such great abundance, and that wheat- 

 bran is superabundant — the ingredients which, when united in the 

 proper proportions, produce the best pork in the world — we may 

 expect that, before very long, pork-raising and pork-packing will 

 become in the North-West what they are in the States of Illinois, 

 Indiana, and Ohio, to-day. The day is not distant, I fancy, when 

 the farmers of the North-West will raise an average of fifty 

 hogs each, and some who will find it profitable to go into the business 

 almost exclusively, will boast their droves of thousands. 



The fuel question of the Canadian North-West is now settled. 

 There is an abundance of coal of good quality. Indeed, the whole 

 territory from the International Boundary Line along the base of the 

 Rockies to the Peace River and beyond it, is one immense coal-bed, 

 and the day is not distant when good coal for domestic and 

 manufacturing purposes will be laid down at the dwellings and 

 business houses in that country at from three dollars to five dollars 

 a ton according to the distance from the mines. Every day brings 

 new and more favourable discoveries in the coal-fields, so that the 

 question of the future supply is no longer one of anxiety. 



Petroleum, too, has been found, and although but little has been 

 done thus far to prove its quality or quantity, enough is known to 



