276 
Canadian Agriculture. 
commenced with less than 200/. capital, frequently with less 
than 100/., and sometimes with none. On the other hand, cases 
are recorded in which the initial capital ranged to as high as 
2000/. The eighty or ninety farmers who furnish information 
under this head report their financial position as improved, and 
in some cases very markedly so. 
Hitherto the ZSorth-West has derived the greater proportion 
of its settlers from the eastern provinces of the Dominion, chiefly 
Ontario. The arrivals from Europe have been almost entirely 
from the British Isles, but the country has not been opened 
up long enough to allow of any marked influx of population 
from the other side of the Atlantic. That has yet to come. 
As the railway systems are extended in the Xorth-West the 
old-fashioned bullock freight-trains will disappear. These, 
consisting of some dozen waggons lashed together in pairs, with 
sixteen or eighteen bullocks attached to each, were the common 
means of transport between the scattered forts of the Hudson's 
Bay Company. The old unswerving Indian trails are much 
used as roads ; but when dry and free from ruts, the beaten 
prairie makes a very good road, the chief obstacle being the 
numerous holes and burrows made by gophers, which often 
render travelling awkward for horses ; the buckboard, however, 
is very light, and its four large wheels specially adapt it to 
prairie travelling. 
During the long winter the soil becomes frozen to a depth 
of six or seven feet, and as the upper layers thaw first and 
allow seeding to be effected, the progressive thawing of the 
lower layers, as the summer heat increases, provides an ascend- 
ing current of moisture, which, meeting with the heat from 
above, constitutes a kind of natural hot-bed, and this phenomenon 
no doubt partly accounts for the A'ery rapid rate at which 
vegetation proceeds during the brief period of growth. 
At the present time the three most prominent and instructive 
features in the agriculture of the North-West are probably the 
Bell Farm, the Experimental Farms of the Canadian Pacific 
Railwa} , and the Cattle Ranches of Alberta, and I proceed to 
give some account of these in the order named. 
The Bell Farm. — There is perhaps no enterprise in the North- 
West better known in England, at least by name, than the Bell 
Farm, which is so called after its manager. Major W. R. Bell. 
It is situated at Indian Head, in Assiniboia, 312 miles west of 
Winnipeg, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and is included 
in the operations of the Qu'Appelle Valley Farming Company, 
Limited, whose capital comprises 120,000/. in shares of 20/. 
each, of which 45 per cent, is paid up. The entire farm occu- 
pies an area of 54,000 acres, and it was organised in 1882, so 
