ockrane, and we could judge what these estates were like.

They are lonely but magnificent. They extend with lakes, close, tight
patches of bush and small and occasional woods over undulating country
to the sharp, bare wall of the snow-capped Rockies. The light is
marvellous. Calgary is 3,500 feet up, and the level mounts steadily to
the mountains. At this altitude the sunlight has an astonishing
clarity, and everything is seen in a sharp and brilliant light.

In the rambling but comfortable house of the ranch the Prince was
entertained with cattleman's fare, and on the Tuesday (after a ten-mile
run before breakfast) he was introduced to the ardours of the
cattleman's calling. He mounted a broncho and with his host joined the
cowboys in rounding several thousand head of cattle, driving them in
towards the branding corrals.

This is no task for an idler or a slacker. The bunch was made up
mainly of cows with calves, or steers of less than a year old, who
believed in the policy of self-determination, being still unbranded and
still conspicuously independent. Most of them, in fact, had seen
little or nothing of man in their life of lonely pasturage over the
wide plains.

Riding continually at a gallop and in a whirlwind of movement and dust
and horns, the Prince helped to bunch the mass into a compact circle,
and then joined with the others in riding into the nervous herd, in
order to separate the calves from the mothers, and the unbranded steers
from those already marked with the sign of Bar U.

Calves and steers were roped and dragged to the corral, where they were
flung and the brand seared on their flanks with long irons taken from a
fire in the enclosure.

The Prince did not spare himself, and worked as hard as any cattleman
in the business, and indeed he satisfied those exacting critics, the
cowboys, who produced in his favour another Westernism, describing him
as "a Bear. He's fur all over." Then, as though a strenuous morning
in the saddle was not enough, he went off in the afternoon after
partridges, spending the whole time on the tramp until he was due to
start for Calgary.

His pleasure in his experience was summed up in the terse comment:
"Some Ranch," that he set against his signature in Mr. Lane's visitors'
book. It also had the practical result of turning him into a rancher
himself, for it was at this time he saw the ranch which he ultimately
bought. It is a very good little property, clos