134 Bird-Nesting 



CHAPTER XVII. 



URING the night we passed the celebrated Bell 

 farm, embracing 100 square miles. At Indian 

 Head, near the centre of the farm, the headquar- 

 ters buildings may be seen on the right. This is a 

 veritable manufactory of wheat, where the work is 

 done with an almost military organization, ploughing 

 by brigades and reaping by divisions. Think of a farm where 

 the furrows are ordinarily four miles long, and of a country 

 where such a thing is possible to plough one furrow outward 

 and another returning is a half day's work for a man and a 

 team. There are neat stone cottages and ample barns for 

 miles around, and the collection of buildings about the head- 

 quarters make a respectable village. 



In other parts the fat lands of the North-West are being 

 rapidly taken up, and the rush of immigration to Canada pro- 

 mises to be greater than ever this year, and those coming are 

 of the right class, agriculturists with a capital of from $500 

 to $1,000 to begin upon. 



Ontario is also becoming alarmed at the number of farmers 

 who are leaving this spring for the North-West. Ontario can- 

 not afford to allow Manitoba to be populated at her expense, 

 although it is a fact that agriculturists can do much better in 

 the North-West than in Ontario. Here is a picture of what 

 is repeating itself every day : A group of families start from 

 the older provinces in early spring, because, though they may 

 have to suffer peculiar hardships at that season, they are 

 anxious to put up their buildings and gather a partial crop 

 from the upturned sod before the first winter comes. 



The farms consist, at the outset, of the vast stretch of un- 

 tilled land that has waited long for the plough ; the farm 

 house is the emigrant's wagon or " prairie schooner," the sta- 

 ble the sky, and their bed a waterproof or rug on the prairie. 



