When the frontier question was settled, or supposed to be settled, in 1846, a serious omission was made. On [a]A Hog Makes Trouble] the mainland the British and United States territories were divided, clearly enough, by the 49th parallel of latitude; but when the sea was reached the line was simply ordered to follow “the middle of the channel” between Vancouver Island and the United States part of the mainland. Now there are a number of islands between Vancouver and the mainland of the United States, and therefore several channels through which the frontier might be imagined to run.

The island of San Juan, which belonged to our country or to the United States according as one channel or another might be considered the frontier, had been used by the Hudson’s Bay Company as a cattle pasture since 1843. In 1852, the “Americans” landed a sheriff and a customs officer on the island and tried to collect taxes from the British herdsmen, who refused to pay and hoisted the Union Jack.

Here were the makings of a pretty quarrel; and in 1859, when an “American” settler killed a Hudson’s Bay hog for rooting in his garden, the naval and military forces of Queen and President came within an ace of opening fire on each other.

Before this calamity could occur, however, the British Government proposed arbitration. The dispute dropped out of sight when the energies of the United States Government were distracted by the Civil War. For twelve years the settlers and hogs of San Juan were kept at peace by British and United States detachments of equal strength, and the two forces got on famously together. At last, in 1871, the German Emperor was called in as arbitrator, and traced the frontier through a channel which gave San Juan to the United States.

CHAPTER VI
The Windows Opened

FOR HUNDREDS of years the West had now been explored—inland, to find new routes for the fur trade, and up in the north to find a new sea route from Europe to Asia—but no explorer had come in to find new homes for his fellow-men.

In the middle of last century, however, the Government of Canada sent up a scientific expedition to find out the real facts about this country—for one thing, whether it was fit for agriculture. The fur traders said it was not. People overseas, and most people even in the Province of Canada, actually believed this, just as a great French writer a hundred years before had comforted his fellow-countrymen on the loss of “New France” by asserting that Canada itself was only “a few acres of snow.”

Some of the more enlightened Canadians, however, were pretty sure that the common belief was a monstrous delusion; though even they, if any one had told them the West would yield 900,000,000 bushels of grain in a single harvest, would have smiled as at a fairy tale.

Even without going very far west, the explorers of 1857 and 1858 saw enough to convince them that many million acres of the prairie were arable land of first quality. One of the chief men of the expedition, S. J. Dawson, wrote:

“Of the valley of Red River I find it impossible to speak in any other terms than those which may express [a]A Paradise of Fertility] astonishment and admiration. I entirely concur in the brief but expressive description given to me by an English settler on the Assiniboine, that the valley of Red River, including a large portion belonging to its great affluent, is a ‘Paradise of fertility’ . . . Indian corn, if properly cultivated, and an early variety selected, may always be relied on. The melon grows with the utmost luxuriance without any artificial aid, and ripens perfectly before the end of August. Potatoes, cauliflowers, and onions, I have not seen surpassed at any of our provincial fairs. The character of the soil in Assiniboia [now Manitoba], within the limits of the ancient lake ridges