EARLY HISTOEY OF WHEAT-GEOWING 9 



if these regions were occupied by an industrious popula- 

 tion, they might afford ample means of subsistence for 

 thirty millions of British subjects." ^^ So anxious was 

 Lord Selkirk to encourage agriculture that before his ar- 

 rival, in 1815, he had authorized Semple and Robertson 

 to offer on his behalf a prize of £50 to the farmer who 

 should raise the largest quantity of grain in proportion to 

 the number of hands employed.^" 



Lord Selkirk left the Settlement on September 9, 1817, 

 for Montreal in order to answer charges brought against 

 him at the instigation of the JSTorth-West Company. The 

 litigation in which he became involved affected his health, 

 which he attempted to recover by a visit to Pan in France. 

 There his end came on April 8, 1820 ; and the man whose 

 indomitable spirit caused the sowing of the first fields of 

 wheat in western Canada and who, with the insight of a 

 seer, foresaw the present and the future agricultural pros- 

 perity of the far-spreading prairie-land, now lies buried 

 in a French graveyard. The North-West Company and 

 the Hudson's Bay Company settled their differences by 

 am'algamation in 1821, a year after Lord Selkirk's death. ^^ 



IV. The First Farms 



The Eed Eiver Settlement, in the first few years of its 

 existence, concentrated its farming operations in what is 

 to-day known as the municipality of Kildonan. It was 

 arranged that each settler should purchase one hundred 

 acres of land at five shillings an acre, but Lord Selkirk 

 relinquished his claim to payment, when he visited the 



19 Ibid., p. 185. 



20 Selkirk to Semple and Robertson, letter written December 18, 

 1815, Selkirk Papers. 



21 Chester Martin, Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada, Oxford, 1916, 

 p. 165. 



