The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1902-04-15
FROM A CAR WINDOW
An Eastern journalists Impress
sions of Western Canada.
WHEAT YIELDS AMAZED HIM
Country of the Future"
and Opportunity.

Slipping forth from the thick woods
which extend from Rat Portage to Sell
kirk, says Herman Whitaker in Ainslees
Magazine, the Canadian Pacific express
speeds swiftly, over the green prairies of
Manitoba. Tosthe right and left, as far
as the eye can reach, wave fields of the
famous No. hard wheat. Wheat! Wheat!
Miles Of wheat! Seas of wheat undulat-
ing in long green pillows to the horizon!
The variety grown is principally the
Scotch Red Fife, and in 1891 $4,000 Mani
toba farmers raised 10000, 900 bushels IF
this glorious grain. With an increased
area under cultivation the harvest of 1901
has produced in Manitoba and the North
west Territories about 100000 bushels
The yield has varied from tWentyfour
to forty bushels to the acre. The west
could not ofnitself furnish men to handle
this enormous CROP In every city and
town of Ontario and Quebec placards APP
peared offering work in the harvest fields
to 10000 laborers. The Canadian Pacific
railway, which must eventually furnish
transport for the mountains of grain car
ried these laborers at nominal rates. and
for weeks before the fields were fully
ripened the west suffered a peaceful in
vasion by an army of helpers who had
come up to do stroke in the worlds
work; for, year by year. the Manitoba
largely in the statistics of the worlds
supply. The great strength and produc-
tiveness of these prairie fields cannot be
more strikingly illustrated than by quot
ing the yield per acre, produced on plots
of twenty acres cultivated at the govern
ment experimental farms. For wheat the
lowest field was sixty-seven bushels to
the acre, and in several cases it rose to
IA bushels to the acre, and oats averaged
125 bushels to the acre.
Red Fife Wheat.
The Red Fife grown upon the Canadian
prairies is the finest wheat in the world,
and is of suchs-excessive hardness that
ground alone it would dissolve into i'm
palpable POWDER 1t is therefore highly
priced by eastern and European millers,
who require it tomix with softer wheats.
The line within which it can be grown
extends much farther north than is gen
orally supposed; a splendid sample,
weighing sixty-five pounds to the bushel
seven pounds above the eastern legal
standard-has been grown as far north as
Prince Albert; though it's cultivation in
such high ATTITUDES Is necessarily pre-
Curious.
But the uncertainty of large crop
owing to droughts and early frosts, is fast
vanishing. Every year thousands Of
young trees are set out by the farmers of
Manitoba under the direction of the COM
missioner of forestry. In comparative
ly short time these trees will alter the
face Of the country, they will have grown,
as Rossetti says, from fans to suit a
lady,s lap to woods for the winds wan
dering.' They will render the rain fall
more regular, protect from harvest frost,
and act as windbreaks.
Other Occupations.
Wheat raising, though the mainstay Of
the Manitoba farmer, is by no means his
sole occupation. In the northern por-
tion of the province he goes in extensive-
ly for cattle raising and dairy farming; in
which occupations he is favored of the
gods. Kind nature has provided him with
bountiful supply of natural hay of a
high nutritious vale. The thousand lakes
Of the Riding mountains are belted with
broad bands of natural grass, which grow
to such length in wet seasons that a
man may tie two blades together across
the back of his horse. During the sum
mer months the prairie is covered with
rich carpet Of flower bespangled herb
age, over which bands of cattle roam at
will, cropping the sweet grass and stop
ping now and then to sniff the bones Of
departed buffalo
Yet with all these natural advantages
Manitoba is more a country of the future
than of the presen. Not one hundredth
portion Of the arabic land of the country
is under cultivation. And the modified
Malthusianism which seems to be the true
theory of human progress, would lead one
to suppose that land which is now value
less will in the future bring a high price
on the market. oseyidently believes the
British capitalist. md as. an earnest Of the
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