12 JOURNAL AND PliOCEE DINGS 



Hugh Poison, born in Kildonan, Sutherlandshire, Scotland ; emi- 

 grated to this country in 1815 ; died 1887, aged 81 years." 



The foreigners at Winnipeg provide a most interesting study, 

 as you see them arriving at the C. P. R. station or passing along 

 the streets. The writer was very favorabh' impressed with the 

 neat appearance of the women, and the willingness to work of the 

 ^i-ien — about 2,000 are employed by the corporation in Winnipeg. 

 In the British a~nd Foreign Bible Society they have been asked for 

 the Scriptures in a.3 languages. There are grounds for hope that 

 these peoples will make peaceable, contented citizens because they 

 will improve their conditions and become prosperous. 



In the trip westward over the prairie you are impressed by the 

 vast extent, and wide wheatiields. It is a land of grain-elevators. 

 The country, however, is not a dead level. Portage La Prairie has 

 an altitude of 800 feet; Brandon, 1,150; Broad\new, 1,950; 

 Ou'Appelle, 2,050; Regina, 1,875; Moosejaw, 1,725; Swift Cur- 

 rent, 2,400; Medicine Hat, 2,150; Galgary, 3,388. At Brandon 

 there is a government Experimental Farm, where they are success- 

 fully evolving hardy apples, etc. Small fruits do well. At Broad- 

 view there is an encampment of Cree Indians ; at Indian Head, an- 

 other experimental farm ; near Regina, headquarters of the North 

 West Mounted Police — a force of 840 men ; at Moose Jaw you find 

 stock yards as well as grain elevators. You are now entering the 

 ranching country. On the prairie you can see the buffalo trails 

 •and wallows, and the mind wanders back to the time when the 

 prairie was black to the horizon with these furry beasts. Near 

 Swift Current there is a sheep-farm of some 16,000 sheep. There 

 are many alkaline lakes in this neighborhood, and wild geese and 

 ducks abound all through the country. 



Medicine Hat is in the centre of ranching country which ex- 

 tends thence on to Calgary. Here the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 is proceeding with irrigation canals to convert this country into 

 "farm lands. This has been done successfully in Southern Alberta 

 by the Mormons. The people of Calgary boast to you of their fine 

 climate, favored as they are by the chinook winds. On over the 

 foot-hills to the Rockies, the first view of which was that of bold 



