Arizona republican., 1908-06-21
TiE ONC0MING WAVE
OF DUTCH IMMIGRATION
Movement Which PeopIed England
and Scotland 1900 Years Ago Now
Felt in Western Canada.

Calgary, Alberta, June 12.-(Special
Correspondence of The Republican,
BY strange coincidence this part of
Canada has witnessed during the past
few months the last act of drama of
International interest. which had its
beginning in distant Europe fifteen
centuries ago. Driven by the same
pressure of increasing population that
forced their ancestors to seek homes
in the British Isles. the farmers of Hol-
land are beginning to migrate to this
part of Canada. The new settlers, who
are increasing in numbers every
month, come from that particular re-
'gion along the shores of the North Sea
that was the cradle land of the Anglo
Saxon peoples. Thus by a curious
chance the wave of the movement
which peopled England ard Scotland
is now bringing together in this new
world district at the base of the Rocky
Mountains the descendants of those
Angles and Frisians VINO left their
homes in the fifth century and the
descendants of those who stayed by
their farms and fishing nets in Hol-
land and Schleswig Holstein.
The particular district to which the
immigration is directed is the Bow
River Valley Reservation, a tract of
100000 acres formerly belonging to
the Dominion of Canada, ne-third of
which has just been opened up for set
Element. The entire tract is four times
the size of the state of Rhode Island
and contains the largest irrigation pro-
ject on the content. Several hundred
of the thrifty Ouch farmers with their
wives and children are settling in this
district alone and they are declared to
be the advance guard of a general
movement similar to that which has
been taking place for so long in Italy
and the Scandinavian and Slavic coun-
tries.
This community is different from
any other in the United States or Can
ada because of unique experiment in
agriculture witch is being undertaken
there this year by the Dominion and
Provincial governments with the new
settler as a beneficiary. This expert
ment, which is being watched with in
terest by the United States department
of agriculture at Washington and ag-
ricultural experts elsewhere, is a sys-
TEN of farming by proxy" by which
the settler is assisted in preparing his
farm, breaking his land, planting his
crop, and, in the end, marketing parts
of his produce, in this work the rail-
road also plays an important part. The
purpose of the system is to promote
intensive farming and to help the set
tier get established during his first
season on the land.
The area included in the plans is
tract of prairie plateau in southern AL
berta, $50 miles long by forty miles
wide and shaped like an enormous
crescent, with its southern boundary
along the Bow river. On the west are
the foothills of the Rock Mountains.
while on the east is a gradual slope
toward the fertile plains of Saskatche-
wan and Manitoba. The land original
ly belonged to the Dominion of Cana
da but was turned over to the Canad-
ian Pacific railway on the understand
ing that the railway would construct
and maintain an irrigation system, for
which the water would be furnished at
a nominal rate. The project, which
exceeds many times over the largest
works of the United States reclamation
service, called for the excavation of
the enormous mass of 24,750,000 cubic
yards of material at a total cost of
between five and six millions of dol
lars. Some idea of the gigantic nature
Of the undertaking may be had from
the fact that the canals and bitches to
be dug if put end to end would
stretch 1900 miles. One section of this