missionary, was He had gained

persuaded them to leave a place where they had no right to remain, and to settle on a spot to the south which belonged to them. The Rev. Mr. Clark, a Church of England labouring among these Crees. their confidence, and he induced them to begin cultivating the soil. He showed them how to set to work, and in 1878 they had good crops of potatoes. In 1879 they had crops of various sorts of vegetables and of some kinds of grain sufficient to provide for their wants, and leave them a surplus to sell. Other Indians are copying what the Crees have done, and it is probable that the experiment so successfully begun on a small scale will prove of inestimable benefit to the Indians as a body. They must cultivate the soil, be fed by the Government or starve. Year after year buffalo are growing scarcer. Once the Indians become habituated to tilling the soil, they will give even less trouble than they now do to the Canadian Government.

Out of consideration for the Indians and in continuance of the policy of the Hudson Bay Company, the sale and manufacture of intoxicants are absolutely prohibited throughout the NorthWest Territories. The Governor-General of the Dominion is alone empowered to give a licence for manufacturing intoxicants there, while the

86

Sale of Intoxicants Prohibited.

Lieutenant-Governor of the Territories may

issue a licence allowing them to be sold or kept, under the condition of making an annual return to the Minister of the Interior of the licences issued and of the quantity and nature of the intoxicants to which they refer, that return to be laid before Parliament. Owing to attempts to defeat the operation of such an Act the definition of intoxicants is made to include every conceivable form of intoxicating beverage or solid substance, the words of the Act being: "The expression 'intoxicating liquor' shall mean and include all spirits, strong waters, spirituous liquors, wines, fermented or compounded liquors or intoxicating fluids; and the expression intoxicant' shall include opium or any preparation thereof, and any other intoxicating drug or substance, and tobacco or tea mixed, compounded or impregnated with opium, or with any other intoxicating drug, spirit or substance, and whether the same or any of them be liquid or solid." Though not himself a total abstainer on principle, the Governor has become one during his term of office on the ground that he could not well enforce the Act if he made himself an exception to its provisions. He is beset with applications for licences; indeed, the enforcement of the law against the use of intoxicants gives him more annoyance and labour than any other of his duties. He thinks the prohibitive system works well on the whole. Whether

An

it can be upheld when the country is more densely populated remains to be seen. The newly-arrived settlers complain bitterly about the Act. English farmer's wife told me that she missed her glass of beer at dinner more than anything else, and that if she could enjoy it again, she would not regret having left her old home.

At present, the Governing body of the NorthWest Territories is nominated by the GovernorGeneral in Council; provision is made, however, for the nominated being transformed into an elected body. Whenever any district of 1000 square miles contains a population of not less than 1000 adults, exclusive of aliens or unenfranchized Indians, the Lieutenant-Governor may proclaim it an Electoral District and desire the people to return a representative. Should the number of adults rise to 2000 then a second representative may be returned. When the Council shall consist of 21 elected members then it shall cease to be a Council and will become the Legislative Assembly of the North-West Territories. This transformation is now in progress and, when it is completed, it will be seen whether the people desire to continue the prohibitions as to intoxicants which are now imposed upon them by the Dominion Parliament.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CANADIAN FAR WEST.

Ir is a misfortune that the most widely-read descriptions of the vast and sparsely peopled region of Canada, extending from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, chiefly relate to its appearance in the winter season. Hence the notion prevails that the "Great Lone Land" is an illimitable wilderness, covered with snow and intersected with frozen rivers over which people journey on sledges drawn by unruly dogs. All countries in the temperate zone have their winter, yet it produces a misleading impression to depict them as if the winter state were the normal one. I have seen snow lying thickly in sunny Provence and in the Riviera along the Mediterranean which is supposed to be an Earthly Paradise, and I have felt the cold more keenly there than I have done when Fahrenheit's thermometer indicated 20° below zero in the coldest part of the North

American Continent. A lesson soon learnt, and not rapidly forgotten by the visitor to the part of North America where the winters are most severe, is that the position of mercury in a thermometer is no criterion of the cold experienced. So long as the air is still, any person warmly clad is almost insensible to cold. When the temperature is at the lowest point in Manitoba, it is the rule for the air to be absolutely still. At Pau, in the Pyrenees, the thermometer frequently falls far lower in winter than at Nice on the Mediterranean; but, as the atmosphere is so calm at Pau that, for days or weeks together, not a breath of wind stirs the withered leaves on the trees, the sensation of cold is much less than in the warmer but more agitated air of Nice. During a Canadian winter, the sky is clear and the sun shines brightly day after day, and hence, though the mercury may be very low and the indicated cold very great, the feeling is one not of depression but of exhilaration, and the fact of the cold seems to be forgotten. Admiral Sir George Back told a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1857, that at Fort Reliance, near the Arctic Ocean, he had seen Fahrenheit's thermometer indicate 70° below zero. Being asked as to the effect of the extreme cold on himself and his party, he replied, "I cannot say