A Nobleman's View of the North-West 541 



mously joining in happy concord, and rapidly lifting it to the front 

 rank amongst the commercial centres of the continent. We may 

 look in vain elsewhere for a situation so favourable and so com- 

 manding — many as are the fair regions of which we can boast. 

 There may be some among you before whose eyes the whole 

 wonderful panorama of our Provinces has passed — the ocean garden 

 Island of Prince Edward, the magnificent valleys of the St. John 

 and Sussex, the marvellous country, the home of ' Evangeline,' 

 where Blomidon looks down on the tides of Fundy and over tracts 

 of red soil richer than the weald of Kent. You may have seen the 

 fortified Paradise of Quebec, and Montreal, whose prosperity and 

 beauty are worthy of her great St. Lawrence, and you may have 

 admired the well- wrought and splendid Province of Ontario, and 

 rejoiced at the growth of her capital, Toronto, and yet nowhere can 

 you find a situation whose natural advantages promise so great a 

 future as that which seems ensured to Manitoba and to Winnipeg, 

 the Heart City of our Dominion. 



" The measureless meadows which commence here stretch with- 

 out interruption of their good soil westward to your boundary. The 

 Province is a green sea over which the summer winds pass in waves 

 of rich grasses and flowers, and on this vast extent it is only as yet 

 here and there that a yellow patch shows some gigantic wheat field. 

 Like a great net cast over the whole are the bands and clumps of 

 poplar wood which are everywhere to be met with and which, no 

 doubt, when the prairie fires are more carefully guarded against, 

 will, wherever they are wanted, still further adorn the landscape. 

 The meshes of this wood-netting are never further than twenty or 

 thirty miles apart. Little hay swamps and sparkling lakelets, 

 teeming with wild fowl, are always close at hand, and if the surface 

 water in some of these has alkali, excellent water can always be 

 had in others, and by the simple process of digging for it a short dis- 

 tance beneath the sod with a spade, the soil being so devoid of stones 

 that it is not even necessary to use a pick. No wonder that under 

 these circumstances we hear no croaking. Croakers are very rare 

 animals throughout Canada. 



" It was remarked with surprise by an Englishman accustomed 



