2 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



nothing to be done but to try again; but again Fortune 

 refused to smile upon the newcomers, and the crop of 1814 

 was as bad as its predecessor.* But Scotch persistency 

 was to win in the end, for the third attempt at wheat-grow- 

 ing, made in 1815, was eventually brought to a successful 

 conclusion. 



The failure of the first two crops of wheat was due 

 partly to the fact that the earliest settlers to arrive at the 

 Bed Kiver were crofters who knew more of fishing than of 

 farming, and partly to the absence of adequate farm im- 

 plements. There was not a plow in the whole colony, the 

 one harrow was incomplete and could not be used, and all 

 the labor of breaking up and working over the tough 

 prairie sod had to be done with the hoe.* The Indians 

 looked on with surprise and amazement at the man with 

 the hoe seeking to gain a sustenance from the soil, and to 

 show his contempt for such work nicknamed the colonists 

 " Jardiniers." ' 



The fertility of the soil along the banks of the Red Eiver 

 was doubtless just as great when the colony was founded 

 as it is to-day. Although the cereals of 1813 and 1814 

 failed, other crops, such as potatoes and turnips, did well 

 from the first. Miles Macdonell, writing in the winter of 

 1813-1814 and telling of the harvest in the previous year, 

 says ® : "I had five or six hundred kegs of potatoes and 



tawa, I am indebted to my colleague, Professor Chester Martin, who 

 kindly gave me access to the notes which he made when studying 

 the original documents. 



3 Ihid. July 25, 1814. Macdonell says: "Wheat, pease, beans, 

 Indian corn, rye, and hemp entirely failed." Selkirk Papers, p. 

 1183. 



*G. Bryoe, The Bomantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists, 

 Winnipeg, 1909, pp. 87-88. 



^Ibid., pp. 20-21. 



« Miles Macdonell in a letter to Auld, February 4, 1814, Selkirk 

 Papers. 



