A GRAND WHEAT COUNTRY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 58

A GRAND WHEAT COUNTRY

THE PRAIRIE PEOPLE. (By H. Whates, the “Standard” Commissioner.) Writing from Craven, Qu’Appelle "Valley, Assiniboia, under date April 12th, Mr Whates says:—On the prairie every one drives. The only pedestrians you will see are the ohildren wending their way along the trail' from some isolated farmhouse to the nearest school, which may be anything from one mile to three from home. ; If you are a newcomer, and wish to make the acquaintance of your neighbours, you “hitch” a horse to a “rig,” j or conveyance, and strike a road, jogging along until you come to a house, or within hail of some one working with a team in a field. No introductions are necessary. Every one is pleased to know you, to tell you everything about himself, to learn whatever you choose to disclose of your own affairs; and you will not want for a midday meal. Social custom requires that the stranger who is several miles from a village or town where accommodation is to be had for payment shall be entertained to dinner and his horse given stable room and a feed. One may learn more of the conditions of life by driving over these great plains than in any other way. WHITE FARMHOUSES DOT THE PLAIN, and here and there are long broad patches of rich black earth, lined with furrows, which iun straight as a ruler for half a mile or more. Snowbirds, with a ringlet of black round the throat, flit over the grass or thread a devious way through the short stubble of last year’s wheat field; the meadow lark is singing in the heavens, and large heavy thrushes will be startled from the neighbourhood of the trail as the horse passes their haunts, and after a short flight will be lost again in the thick dead grass. The bright-eyed venturesome little gopher will scamper across in front of the horse’s feet, and from the security of his hole in the ground will watch you for a moment, wag his tiny -fore feet, and then turn a somersault and disappear. You may come upon a great white owl, whose plumage is flecked with black, and he will watch you with round yellow eyes as though he would contest the path before he , will deign to rise and seek some other resting place. Or with noisy rustling wings three or four prairie chickens, as they call the pheasants of this region, will fling themselves upwards with a startling clatter and fly away with outstretched necks. The trail takes you past a ploughed ! field. Two men are at work with teams of four horses attached to drills or seeders. Their lands adjoin, and each is 1 engaged in sowing wheat. They stop i their work for a talk as you check your horse. One of them is a young Canadian, square-headed, square-jawed, and , with those peculiar dark brown, lustrous eyes which suggest a possible strain of Indian blood. The other is a SCOTSMAN FROM MIDLOTHIAN, a long-limbed, big-boned, strong-fea-tured, blue-eyed man of three or four and twenty. He is “hatching” it in a little “shack” over yonder, and has been doing that for three years, baking his own bread, cooking his own meals, and mending his own clothes —or, rather, not mending them, for his clothes are ragged. His appearance is wild and unkempt, for he has not shaved for a week, and his hair is in wisps round his neck. (The man who “batches” it on the prairie can do most things for himself, but he cannot out his own hair.) He was, he told me, farming a quarter-section. He had not done badly. It was a grand wheat country. There was nothing like it—not even in Scotland. The life was a hard one, no doubt. It was rough for a man living alone, but one got accustomed to that. The winters were severe, but he had never had a day’s illness and had scarcely felt the cold—only once, when he went cut, in a temperature 54 below zero, to see another farmer to the westward, was caught in a blzzard, lost the trail, and got home again only by accident. But it was a splendid climate —co-id yet with so much sunshine. And the CROPS WERE MAGNIFICENT. A man could do better than in the Old Country. There could be no doubt of that. To this view the Canadian gave enthusiastic assent. H'is “Oid Country” was -clown East”—in Ontario. Farming on the prairie was child s play comr pared with such work in that province. 'The land there had to he cleared of timber, some of it three to four feet across,

and the returns were so poor. One got very little for the Lumber. The merchants took good care of that. The work of tearing the dead stumps out of the ground was terrible. It was back-break-ing labour, wearing out a man before he was forty. A lifetime had to be spent in clearing the land, and, when it was cleared, the soil was poor. Here all that had to be done was to break up the prairie, and back set the sods—plough the ground over a second time, and somewhat deeper, so as to facilitate the rotting of the grass roots. Then it could be sown, and the soil was so rich that the crop was abundant. He had been on this quarter-section for three years, and had done well. He was a bit behind —which meant that he had either a mortgage on his land or he was in debt for horses or implements. But he was sowing more this year, and a good crop would “put him on his feet.” Anyway, he was

MAKING A LIVING , for his wife and two children besides himself, and with much less toil and trouble, and far better prospects, than if he had stayed down East, grubbing at tree stumps, cultivating patches of poor soil, and keeping a few cows. A drive through the “bluffs” brings you again into more level country, and here you come upon a little farmhouse, and make the acquaintance of its occupants, whose midday meal you will be asked to share. The farm, which is a mile square—a whole section —is worked by a widow, her brother, and three sons. She- and her husband were born in Ireland, and came to Canada when they were quite young. The husband served as a volunteer during the first Riel Rebellion, and was rewarded by a land grant of half a section in the North-West territories. Here they settled with their young children and the wife’s brother. For some years they had a terrible time, and were often so poor, the widow will tell you, that they could scarcely afford to give a chance wayfarer a bit of bread and a mug of tea. They had to-

LEARN HOW TO FARM the prairie, and successive seasons of drought nullified their efforts. Being, however, too poor to get away and start afresh in Ontario, where they had originally settled, they had to remain where they were. There being no alternative to making the best of it, they stayed on. The years of drought passed, and prosperity came their way. As the boys grew up homesteads were taken for them, and the more cultivation was extended the better off tbe family became. The death of its head made no change in their fortunes, for by the time this occurred the boys were growing into manhood. The widow and her brother have no fear of the future, even should years of drought recur, for I gathered that both of them had a goodly store of money in hand. Nor have the boys any fear, for they are practical and expert farmers, who know how to prepare the soil so as to conserve the moisture it contains after the winter snows. They were admirable examples of young Canadian manhood —strong, well set up, in vigorous health, and more- than contented with their lot. Leaving this household of prairie pioneers, you drive across another stretch of rolling country. On the east is a broken scrubby land, more or less covered with stunted timber. This you will learn, was once the home of a number of SCOTS CROFTER FAMILIES, who were settled here under a colonisation scheme associated with the name of Lady Cathcart. The little -beetlebrowed Irishman, who has accompanied you from the farmhouse a part of the way in order that you may “strike” the right trail, will point out to you a tiny cemetery, where fifteen of these people lie buried. He well remembers them coming twenty years ago. Their lands, he says, were badly selected. They were fisher folk, not farmers. They did not know how to prepare the soil and sow the seeds and use the implements with which they were supplied. They would go across the praisie to the valley of the Qu’Appelle and pass their days fishing. Their animals and farms were neglected. Moreover, the times were bad. They fell into such a condition of poverty that relief had to be sent them. After a mile or two you reach once more the level prairie—the tenacious black lands which are unsurpassable for the wheat grower s purpose. A stalwart man of middle age, his black hair plentifully streaked with grey, stands at a four horse drill. HIS ROUGH CLOTHING

is covered with innumerable darns---neat circular or oval darns, cleverly stitched by some one to whom the use of the needle is an art. You stop tor a chat, and when he knows your name, and which farmhouse you come from, he talks freely. He came from Elgin twenty-five years ago, and homesteaded here with his wife. Now he is the owner of a square mile of the best wheat land in the world. You learn afterwards that he is one of the wealthiest farmers in the country side. He, too, went through a period of hardship and poverty. The years of drought almost drove him off the prairie. But when a change came for the better, he made money freely enough to buy out neighbours who did not share his stubborn

faith in the soil. The North-West, he will tell you, is the finest country in the world—a farmer’s Life the most natural and independent of any. Ho is something of a thinker, this Scotsman, for he discourses at length upon the incomparable advantages of life in a country where a man can acquire laud, of his own, where poverty such as is known in Europe does not exist, and where A MAN IS VALUED solely for what he is and can do. There is growing up here, he declares, a race which is physically, intellectually, and morally—he puts significant emphasis on .the last word—superior to that of the Old Country, about whose future he shakes his head dubiously. Ask him whether he has come across many English people, and he will reply in the affirmative. A few have done well, but the majority not well. Many with money come to grief in prairie farming, and with wbat they could save from the wreck of their fortunes went further west—to British Columbia, where the climate is milder. English immigrants without money seldom succeed, simply because the majority of them are from great cities. That, at least, is his view. But English agriculturists—men who have been born and bred to farm labour —are fairly certain of success, if they have the sense to profit by the experience of tbe earlier settlers.