94 THROUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIN 



From Mr. Erastus Lawrence, the head of the family, we got 

 definite information regarding the region and its prospects 

 for agriculture. We spent Sunday at his comfortable home, 

 and examined his farm carefully. In front of the house was 

 a field of wheat, 110 acres in extent, as fine a field as we 

 had ever seen anywhere, and of this they had not had a 

 failure, he said, during all their farming experience, the 

 return never falling below foiirteen bushels to the acre, in 

 the worst of years, twenty-five being about the average yield. 

 They sowed late in April, but reaped generally about the 

 15th of August. They had never, he said, been seriously 

 injured by frost since 1884, and in fact no frost had occurred 

 to injure wheat since 1887. There was abundance of hay, 

 and 10,000 head of stock, he believed, could be raised at 

 that very point. Many hogs were raised, with great profit, 

 bacon and pork being, of course, high-priced. One of the 

 sons, Mr. E. H. Lawrence, said he had raised sixteen pigs;, 

 which at eighteen months dressed 370 pounds apiece. At 

 that time there were about 500 head of cattle, 250 horses^ 

 and 200 pigs in the settlement. 



After service at the Reverend Mr. Scott's neat little church, 

 we returned to Mr. Lawrence's, and enjoyed an excellent din- 

 ner, including home-cured ham, fresh eggs, butter and cream. 

 That was a notable Sunday for us in the wilds, and seldom 

 to be repeated. 



Strange to say, we found the true locust here, our old Red 

 River pest, which had quartered itself on the settlement more 

 than once. I examined numbers of them, and found the 

 scarlet egg of the ichneumon fly under many of the shards. 

 No one seemed to know exactly how they came, whether in 

 flight or otherwise; but there they were, devouring some 

 barley, but living mainly upon grass, which they seemed to 

 prefer to grain. They had appeared nine years before our 

 coming, and disappeared, and then, three years before, had 

 come again. 



We found quarters in a large building at the fort, which 

 was in charge of Mr. Wilson, whose wife was a daughter of 



