THE GREAT NORTHWEST 233 



ways, opera house, fine stores and a hotel that would 

 put to shame many metropolitan hostelries. It has a 

 frontage on the main street of 216 feet, is seven stories 

 high, with a rotunda forty by ninety feet and a dining- 

 hall fifty feet wide, ninety feet long and twenty-six 

 feet high, grandly lighted by three copper electroliers, 

 aided by a blaze of wall fixtures. Then there are 

 massive stone fireplaces and also a balcony at one end, 

 on which an orchestra enlivens the dinner hour. 



The hotel has Turkish and ordinary baths, private 

 supper and dining-rooms, and is heated by steam and 

 lighted throughout by an elaborate electric plant. 

 The charges are from three to seven dollars per day, 

 and at these prices the house is well supported. This 

 hotel, this city, and this Canadian Pacific Railroad 

 with its progressive management are indexes of the 

 enterprise of the Canadian Northwest. Here the 

 " star of empire " may well hold its sway ; here future 

 provinces and cities will rise from the level table-land 

 of the prairies, by the limpid waters of the Assiniboine 

 and Red Rivers, to grow rich, prosperous and happy 

 in the lavish and generous returns from the tillage of 

 a fruitful soil. Future colonies will leave their mother 

 country, where the " dry husks of poverty " have been 

 their support, and find here a glorious paradise of 

 plenty. Here will grow up a strong-lunged, magnetic 

 generation which must wield a beneficent influence 

 upon the rest of Canada and why not upon those 



