Canadian Agriculture. 
247 
of Canada, on the occasion of his Lordship's visit to Winnipeg, 
in August, 1877, the following words occur: — 
" It was here that Canada, emerging from her woods and forests, first gazed 
upon her rolling prairies and unexplored North-West, and learnt, as by an 
unexpected revelation, that her historical territories of the Cauadas, her 
eastern seaboards of New Brunswick, Labrador, and Nova Scotia, her Lauren- 
tian lakes and valleys, corn lands and pastures, though themselves more 
extensive than half-a-dozen European kingdoms, were but the vestibules 
and ante-chambers to that till then undreamt of Dominion, whose illimitable 
■dimensions alike confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the verifica- 
tion of the explorer. 
" It was here that, counting her past achievements as but the preface and 
prelude to her future exertions and expanding destinies, she took a fresh 
departure, received the afflatus of a more imperial inspiration, and felt herself 
no longer a mere settler along the banks of a single river, but the owner of 
half a continent, and in the magnitude of her possessions, in the wealth of her 
resources, in the sinews of her caaterial might, the peer of any power on the 
earth." 
The reason that Manitoba remained so long unnoticed, and 
practically unknown by the outer world, was undoubtedly the 
difficulty of getting to the Province. Viscount Milton and 
Dr. Cheadle, writing some six or seven years previous to the 
Red River Rebellion, observed * : — 
" The farmers of Red Eiver are wealthy in flocks, and herds, and grain, more 
than sufficient for their own wants, and live in comparative comfort. The 
soil is so fertile, that wheat is raised year after year on the same land, and 
yields 50 and 60 bushels to the acre, without any manure being required. 
The pasturage is of the finest quality, aud unlimited in extent. The countless 
herds of bufi'alo which the land has supported are sufficient evidence of this. 
But, shut out in this distant corner of the earth from any communication 
with the rest of the world — except an uncertain one with the young State of 
^linnesota by steamer during the summer, and with England by the 
Company's ship which brings stores to York Factory, in Hudson's Bay, once 
a year — the farmers find no market for their produce." 
And it is possible that some of the soldiers who served in the 
Red River Expedition regret they did not seize the opportunity 
which, according to the following remarks of the Marquis of 
Lome, was oflFered to them | : — 
"Many speak as though the experience of farming in the province of 
Manitoba dated only from yesterday ; but this is not the case, for Lord Selkirk 
many years ago brought in a colony consisting of Scotchmen from his estates 
in the north, taking them by Hudson's Bay up the Xelson Eiver to Lake 
Winnipeg, and then settling them not far from where the present city stands 
Ohen called Fort Garry), at a place named Selkirk. It is curious how few 
of the members of that force under Sir Garnet Wolseley, which put down the 
hah-breed insurrection in 1870, seem to have been sufficiently impressed by 
the experience of the Selkirk settlers, for the soldiers were not desirous to take 
* • The North-west Passage by Land,' p. 39. 
t • Canadian Pictures,' p. 137. 
