In Montana there are a lot of blackguards and daredevils who will run the thing in somehow. Liquor is also brought in by the railway as coal-oil, oatmeal, flour, varnish, and then it is doctored up and sold at £1 the bottle to the thirsty souls. Now, what is the consequence? Why, that, as a local journal remarks, liquor is sold; the dealers are pests and outlaws; they sell their poison for ten times the price of what people who don’t belong to the Blue Ribbon Army call good liquor, and then vanish with their ill-gotten money out of the country, excepting such as they may leave behind them in the shape of fines, when found out. I do think the hotel-keeper has much reason to complain of prohibition. It presses hardly on him, and does not put drunkenness down. I mentioned these facts to a Baptist minister from England, whom I met in Toronto. He would not believe them; I gave him cuttings from newspapers to support my view. His reply was that they were hoaxes. I have now been in Calgary a day, and already I find that these hoaxes, as my friend calls them, are veritable facts.
I believe that many of my travelling companions were a little fresh last night, from their soberness and dejection of manner this morning. They were away down town, and had not returned when I retired to rest; and this morning several of the householders complain of having had their doors knocked at at most unseasonable hours.
At meals I meet queer company. We have a Chinese cook. I have a faint idea that he has murderous designs on us all, his smile is so childlike and bland; yet I prefer his placid pleasant round face to those of his female helps, sour and ill-looking, who earn wages such as an English servant-girl never dreams of. His messes seem to be appreciated, and little is left after meal-time. It is enough for me to see the men eat. Every particle of food is conveyed into the mouth by means of the knife, which is also freely used if sugar or salt be required. Our dining-room is simply a shed, and a very dark one, having a canvas on one side and unpainted deal on the other. Few houses at Calgary are painted, though a painted house looks so much prettier than a deal one that I wonder painting is not more resorted to, especially when you remember how paint preserves the wood. Many of the houses here are brought all the way from Ontario, and, perhaps, this accounts for their smallness. They chiefly consist of two rooms, one a shop, the other a sitting and night-room; and the larger number have been erected within the last few months. What we call in England a gentleman’s house, I should say does not exist in the whole district. A gentleman would find existence intolerable here, though the air is fine, and the extent of the prairie is unbounded. There are two newspapers in the town, and the professions are all well represented.
As to my companions, the less I say of them the better. They are young and vigorous, and use language not generally tolerated in polite society. Their talk is chiefly of horses and bets. They ride recklessly up and down the dusty path which forms the main street, and would not break their hearts if they knocked a fellow down; or they drive light waggons on four wheels, creating the most overwhelming clouds of dust as they rush by. As to their saddles, they are as unlike English ones as can well be imagined, rising at each end, so as to give the rider a very safe seat, while their stirrups are as long almost as the foot itself; but the saddles have this advantage, that they never give the horses sore backs. As to the horses, they are all branded, and turned loose on to the prairie when not required. Most of the men are prospectors—people who go round the country in search of mines; or cow-boys—that is, men employed in the cattle ranches in the district. The cowboy is a fearful sight. His hands and face are as brown as leather, he wears a straw hat—or one of felt—with a very wide brim. His coat or jacket is, perhaps, decorated with Indian work. Around his waist he wears a belt, which he makes useful in many ways. Then he has brown leather leggings, ornamented down the sides with leather fringes, and on his heels he puts a tremendous pair of spurs. The men on the mountains have much the same style of dress, and are fine specimens of muscular, rather than intellectual or moral, development. On the whole, I am not unduly enamoured of these pioneers of civilization; but, then, I was born in the old country, and learned Dr. Watts’s hymns, and was taught to—
‘Thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth has smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English child.’
I see a good deal more of Calgary than I wish to. I feel that I have been made a fool of by the station-master. I am, as you may be aware, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They are some 60 miles off, yet; already I have seen their far-off peaks, glistening with snow, rising into the summer sky. As I have got so far, I must see them. There are trees up there, and the sight of a tree would be good for sore eyes; there are cooling shades out there, and here, though it is but early morning, it is too hot to stir. The scenery out there is the finest to be seen in all the Canadian continent, and I would carry away with me, to think of in after years, something of their beauty. I travelled all this way for that purpose, and hoped to have been off before, and now find I must wait, owing to a blunder on the part of the station-master. He promised he would let me know if he sent a freight-train to the Rocky Mountains. Well, he sent off a train at one o’clock this morning, and never let me know anything about it, and the consequence is I must stay two more days in this dreary spot, without conveniences such as I could find in the meanest cottage in England, and at a cost which would enable me to live in luxury and fare sumptuously at home. One lesson I have learned, which I repeat for the benefit of my readers. Never depend upon other people; hear all they say, and then act for yourself. Had I done so, I should have been now in the Rocky Mountains. I trusted in others, and I am, in consequence, the victim of misplaced confidence.
I gather a few items of interest to intending emigrants. Crops raised in the vicinity of Calgary during 1883 gave the following yields per acre:—Wheat, 33 bushels; barley, 40 bushels; oats, 60 bushels. The Government farm a few miles off, which I have visited, does well. The country round offers especial advantages to sheep and dairy farmers, cheese manufacturers, and hog raisers. My own impression is, and I have mentioned it to several persons who all think it excellent, that any man would easily make his fortune who set up a poultry farm. Eggs and fowls are almost entirely unknown, and if the producer did not find a market here, he could easily send his produce by the railway to where it was wanted. Eggs and fowls help one as well as anything to keep body and soul together.
I am glad I went to church yesterday. My presence there gave quite a tone to the place (said the head man to me this morning), and so far I may presume I did good service. The congregation consisted chiefly of men, and the collection amounted to nearly 16 dollars—pretty good, considering (said the above mentioned gentleman) there are two or three schism shops in the place. In the evening I went to the Wesleyan Methodist schism shop, as he called it, and heard a sermon, which touched me more than any sermon I have heard a long time. As I came out the effect was startling. The sun was sinking in crimson glory just behind the green hills by which Calgary is surrounded. Far off a dim splendour of pink testified to the existence of a prairie fire, while before me stood a gigantic Indian, with his big black head rising out of a pyramid of gorgeous robes, really dazzling to behold. There is an Indian Mission near here, but the Indians are not the only heathens out here.
I have just had a ride in a buck-cart, which is the kind of vehicle the colonists use. It is of boards on four wheels, on which is placed a seat for a couple of persons, while the luggage is piled up behind. Some of them have springs, as fortunately was the case with the one on which I rode, or I should have had a very uncomfortable ride indeed. Perhaps I ought not to be so angry with the station-master as I was when I interviewed him this morning. I have just seen a man who got on to the freight train, but he tells me it was so uncomfortable that he preferred to wait, and got off after he had taken his passage.
Money seems scarce. I have just been to the post-office to send a letter to England. The postmaster could give me no change, and I had to take post-cards instead. I suppose all the money goes to the smugglers. In this small town 500 dollars are sent weekly to Winnipeg for liquor; so much for prohibition in Calgary.