ines of longitude or latitude, and are thus very
different from our county boundaries, which have grown up anyhow. This
province we are now in, Manitoba, has recently been increased by an
immense area of land in the north, so that it now has a seashore on
Hudson Bay, but before that it was nearly square. The farms are measured
out in the same exact way too; men have land given to them in sections a
mile square, and a man can take more than one section, or he can have a
part of one, but every bit of land granted is marked out evenly like the
squares on a chess-board.

The days of our journey east seem to be just a succession of endless
cornfields and grain-elevators, with glimpses of busy towns and small
stations. And in the evening we see a yellow glow of sunset lighting up
the uncut fields in a splendour of light that is worth coming far to
see. There is a very striking difference about the twilight here and in
the East. You remember there how night seemed to shut down close upon
sunset, here the light remains on in the sky for many hours, even at
nine o'clock we can see the hands of our watches.

Every now and then we discover our watches are an hour slow, and we have
to jump the pointers on. This is because Canada and the States are
divided up into strips by north and south lines, which mark off the
time to be kept in each. As I explained long ago--how very long ago it
seems!--America is too vast a continent to keep one set time from shore
to shore, as we do in our little country, so it was found convenient to
make definite lines, each one hour apart, all the way across.

Then we arrive at Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba and the largest
corn-market in the world. The town is almost exactly half-way across
Canada. But we are not going to stop here, for towns do not interest us
so much as nature, though if we could have had a peep into the wide main
street, with its towering buildings, remembering it was a prairie trail
thirty years ago, it would have been worth while.

The rest of that day we run through much prettier scenery than the
cornland, which has become very monotonous, and at night-time arrive at
a place called Port Arthur, where we are going to leave the train and
explore the Great Lakes. Well may they be called "Great"! In Lake
Superior, the largest of the five, you could put the whole of your
native land, Scotland, and have nearly two thousand square miles left
over! This is the largest fresh-water lak