OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT n 



immediately after our twelve o'clock dinner. The 

 adjoining section of land, consisting of the orthodox 

 six hundred and forty acres, was at that time 

 the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 Company. I had always hoped it would be- 

 come my own. In 1906 one could have bought 

 it at five dollars an acre, in 1907 it was offered 

 to me at seven dollars, in 1908 the price had 

 risen to ten dollars, and at last in 1910, when I 

 wanted the south-west quarter for a special pur- 

 pose, the entire section had been purchased by 

 its present owner at about eleven dollars an acre. 

 So that it more than doubled its value in four years, 

 and owed this increase solely to the rising tide of 

 Canadian land values, and without a solitary effort 

 in the matter of contribution from the toil of man. 

 In the day of its virginity a well-worn trail beckoned 

 one through this lovely bit of pasture country and 

 on through the thickly wooded property of my 

 neighbour, John McLeay, to pause at the door of 

 his hospitable shack. Curling respectfully around 

 his potato-bed, it still skirts the bonny wheat-field 

 which, sheltered between two giant bluffs, is always 

 the first in our neighbourhood to pay homage to the 

 harvest sun to wind its way on through the lovely 

 lingering lawless mile of the school section towards 

 that exquisite oasis of the prairie where nature 

 called on form and colour, wind and tide, and all 

 the children of the morning to breathe beauty, 

 which hovers about the hills and valley of Fort 

 Qu'Appelle. On the brow of the southern hill is 

 God's acre, and the very chant of its sleepers is one 

 with the song of the spirit of the morning. " Very 

 pleasant was love and life in the happy valley," they 



