In North-West Canada. 197 



thermometer registering thirty degrees below zero. Every 

 lake and slough is frozen over, and not a bird or living crea- 

 ture is to be seen. A dead silence reigns from morning until 

 night, unless a howling blizzard is raging. But we will only 

 think of this country as seen in its summer garb, and as I sit 

 before a cabinet full of specimens and open drawer after drawer 

 and gaze with admiration on the birds' eggs and skins collected 

 there, and examine the beautiful forms and colours, I think of 

 the North- West as I saw it in summer. Every clutch of birds' 

 eggs distinctly brings to mind the spot where it was collected 

 and the surroundings, and my mind travels hundreds of miles 

 away to the western prairies, carpeted with myriads of sweet- 

 scented flowers and fragrant wild roses. I think of the bluffs 

 and the rivers, lakes and sloughs, fringed with rushes and 

 dotted over with hundreds of wild fowl, and the great over- 

 arching dome of deep blue, and the balmy atmosphere, soft 

 and sweet as from a bank of flowers, exhilarating as the 

 breath of the north always is. And now, gentle reader^ whether 

 you be a naturalist, sportsman, or angler, if you wish to form 

 a correct impression of the extent. and magnitude of the Can- 

 adian North-West and its wonderful resources, take a trip from 

 Winnipeg to Vancouver, and after having ridden across seas of 

 green for hundreds of miles at a stretch, crossed mighty rivers, 

 climbed dizzy heights, beheld snow-capped mountains, seen 

 great glaciers, passed through frightful gorges, shot grizzly 

 bears under the shadows of the mountains of the setting sun, 

 hunted a cougar or black bear with dogs, coursed antelope 

 with greyhounds, had your hair stand on end by seeing a wolf 

 worried to death by high-mettled hounds, hunted musk ox, 

 moose or cariboo with Indians or mounted police, seen lakes 

 blacken over with myriads of water fowl, caught magnificent 

 seven and eight-pound- trout and whitefish, landed a mighty 

 maskinonge or salmon you could scarcely carry, got lost in a 

 willow swamp, or lost your way on an alkaline or cactus flat 

 in some semi-deserted, treeless expanse, where no sign of life 

 breaks the terrible solitariness from horizon to horizon, you 

 are likely to return home a wiser man as regards the resources, 

 extent, character and probable destiny of the North- West. 



