T

SASKATOON AND EDMONTON

I

From Winnipeg, on the night of September 10th, we pushed steadily
northwest, and on the morning of Thursday, the 11th, we were in the
open prairie, a new land that is being opened up by the settler.

We were travelling too late to see the land under wheat--one of the
finest sights in the world, we were told; but all the grain was not in,
and we saw threshing operations in progress and big areas covered with
the strangely small stocks, the result of the Canadian system of
cutting the standing stalk rather high up. In the early night, by
Portage la Prairie, we had seen big fires burning in the distance.
They were not, as we at first thought, prairie fires, but the
homesteader getting rid of the great mounds of stalk left by the
threshing, the usual method.

In the early morning mist we came upon the big, flat expanse of Horn
Lake, near Wynyard, over which flew lines of militaristic duck in wedge
formation. The prairies lay about us in a great expanse, dun-brown and
rolling. It is a monotonous landscape, and there were few if any trees
until we got farther north and west.

The little prairie towns appear on the horizon a great distance away,
thanks to the big grain elevators alongside the track. The grain
elevators in these plains are what churches are in Europe; they have,
indeed, the look of being basilicas of a new, materialistic
dispensation.

The little towns under the elevators seem palpably to be struggling
with the inert force of the prairie about them. Prairie seems to be
flowing into them on every side, and only by a brave effort do houses
and streets raise themselves above the encroaching sea of grass. Yet
all the towns have a modern air, too. All have excellent electric
light services in houses and streets, and all have "movie" theatres.

At the stations crowds were gathered. At Wynyard all the young of the
district appeared to have collected before going to school. Catching
the word that the Prince "lived" in the last car, they swarmed round
it. Some one told them the Prince was still in bed, and with the
utmost cheerfulness they began to chant: "Sleepy head! Sleepy head!"

At Lanigan, the next station, a crowd of the same cheery temper also
raised a clamour for the Prince. As a rule he never disappointed them,
and would leave whatever he was doing to go on to the observation
platform at the first hint of cheers. But at Lanigan there were
difficulties. Th