‘The worst of all our books on emigration,’ said the editor of one of the dailies to me, ‘is that they give too glowing an estimate of the state of affairs. They say a farmer will do well with £100. This is not sufficient capital as a rule to start with. It is true there have been instances where settlers have succeeded on this sum, but with such a sum as £200, Manitoba offers the farmer advantages such as no other place offers him.’ Here, also, the regular farm-hand is sure of his living. I see an attempt is being made by a gentleman, now in Winnipeg, to plant out a couple of hundred boys—and I hear there is room for them. But there is little building going on in Winnipeg, and the mechanic need not trouble himself to come here. All in this part are loud in condemnation of emigration from the East-end of London. Those poor of the East-end—alas! neither the Old World nor the New seems to know what to do with them. Since this was written I see the Manitoba Mortgage and Investment Company have declared a dividend of eight per cent., an indication that at any rate in their part of the world money is being made.
CHAPTER VII.
LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE.
‘You will find Moose Jaw a very pretty place,’ said a gentleman to me as I left Winnipeg; and certainly it is a pretty place, though not exactly according to an Englishman’s idea of prettiness.
It consists of a railway-station and an assemblage of wooden huts and shops, which have all been called into existence within the last twelve months. It boasts a weekly organ (such as it is), two or three places of worship, one or two billiard-rooms, and a post-office—not a tent, as in some parts of the country in which I have been, but a real wooden-house. The shopkeepers seem to have nothing to do, and the pigs perambulate the streets, evidently enjoying the fine freedom allowed them in this part of the world. There are at this time about 700 or 800 settlers, some of the farmers who came out last year having moved further west.
I am writing in the railway-station, in the waiting-rooms of which are many farmers, all on their way to Calgary—for which place, also, I am bound, expecting to start at the very inconvenient hour of two p.m.
The scene, as I sit, is not cheering. Far as the eye can reach there is the prairie. It was the same all the way from Winnipeg. It will be the same all the way to Calgary, some 400 or 500 miles hence. It is intensely hot, and men and women sit in the open air, under such shade as the wooden houses afford. It is intensely cold in the winter. Not a tree is to be seen, or a hill, or a farmhouse; nothing to relieve the monotony of the sea of grass land on every side, except here and there a prairie fire—the first step to be taken before the farmer commences the cultivation of the soil; and I must own a prairie fire by night is rather a pretty sight.
I parted last night with a General and his wife, who have come to settle about forty miles off. At present he and his family have no fresh meat, and he has to make an arrangement with a Brandon butcher, about a hundred and fifty miles off, to supply him with a Sunday joint. Tinned meats his family have tried, and he has got with him a fresh joint of meat, which he purchased in Winnipeg; but there are prairie chickens always to be had, and in some places, as we came along, we saw an abundance of wild ducks on the Assiniboine River, and in swamps, over which we rushed in the Pullman car.
This luxury cannot be expected in Moose Jaw. Here there is no water at all. Last year the farmers had no rain, and they fear they will have none now. As it is, the prairie begins to look a little scorched. I should be loth to spend the remainder of my days here; but a farmer may make a living, and so may a farm-labourer. As to any other class of people here, there is no opening at all. The town is full of shopkeepers, barristers, auctioneers, and dealers. Mechanics who come out will starve. When the land around is taken up they will have a chance, but not till then.
As I sit, a dark figure beckons me to come to him. He has a Jim Crow hat, a blanket around his martial form, and a gayer one in front. He has rings in his ears, bracelets on his arms, and a string of some kind of beads around his neck. He offers me his hand, and I shake it. Then I commence a conversation. ‘What you called?’ I say. He makes an unintelligible reply. ‘You Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or Robinson?’ I ask; and again he gives an unintelligent grunt. I offer him a cigar, and he sits down on his haunches in the shade. He is one of the Black Bull men, who have been chased from the States, in consequence of having made that part of the world too hot for them. They are not natives of this country, but have settled in the prairie two or three miles off. I tell him to be a good boy, and I dare say he will obey my injunction as literally as any other man in England or anywhere else.