in my husband's district, we raised wheat that was pronounced by
competent judges to equal the best that ever grew in Ontario.

The land is fertile and essentially a grain-bearing soil. It is easy
to clear, and is comparatively very level. There is ample opportunity
to utilize miles upon miles of it, and the farms that exist, at
present, are evidences of what others might be. No one can tell the
number of people that there is room for in the country. Europe's
millions might emigrate and spread, themselves over that immense
territory, and still there would be land and ample place for those of
future generations. We were eight hundred miles from Winnipeg, and
even at that great distance we were, to use the words of Lord
Dufferin, "only in the anti-chamber of the great North-West."

The country has been well described by hundreds, it has also been
falsely reported upon by thousands. At first it was the "Great Lone
Land,"--the country of bleak winter, eternal snow and fearful
blizzards. Then it became a little better known, and, suddenly it
dawned upon the world that a great country lie sleeping in the arms of
nature, and awaiting the call of civilization to awaken it up and send
it forth on a mission of importance. The "boom" began. All thoughts
were directed to the land of the Rockies. Pictures of plenty and
abundance floated before the vision of many thousands. Homes in the
east were abandoned to rush into the wilds of the West. No gold fever
of the South was ever more exciting, and to add thereto, they found
that the government proposed building a line of railway from end to
end of the Dominion. Then the Frazer, Saskatchewan, Red River and
Assiniboine became household words.

In this story of a fancied land of plenty, there was much truth, but