The Nevada County picayune., 1908-09-03
TIE LAND OF GRAIN
 BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

.,.hor of American Farmers Build :. ., New Nation in the North"- ,aa arsnads-The Land of Greater lid uo,er-"Tre Invasion of Canada by lar .rerican Farmers"-"A Thousand u;,es on Horseback Across the Do. n .inion Provinces" Etc., Etc.
 yotsoyely many years ago the major e ,,r of people in the United States d ,a,sbed at the prediction that the day mae coming when Western Canada ,ouId far outstrip this country in ' ,ha raising of grain-when, in other " rords it would become the great
 hread-basket of the world. During the nost three or four years the enormous , n,odrction of grain in the Dominion West has thinned the ranks of those rho doubted the destiny of Canadas vast grain growing regions; the crops N this year will dispel the doubts of the
 romaining few. From Winnipeg
 westward to the foothills of Alberta
 over a country nearly thousand
 miles in width, the grain production this year will be something to almost stagger the belief of those hundreds of thousands of American farmers whose average yield is not more than from ten to fifteen bushels of wheat in the acre, and who are finding that their product is also outclassed in quality by that of their northern neghbors.
 The enormous grain crop of this year in the Canadian West may truth fully be said to be the production of "a few pioneers.' Only a small per centage of the unnumbered millions of acres of grain land are under culti- yation notwithstanding the fact that tens of thousands of homesteads were taken up last year. And yet, when all the figures are in, it will be found that the settlers of the western prai- ries have raised this year more than 125000 GOO bushels of wheat, 100 000,- 900 bushels of oats and 25,000000 bushels of barley. It has been for tune making year for thousands of American farmers who two or three years ago owned hardly more than the clothes upon their backs, and whose bumper crops from their homesteads will yield them this season anywhere from s1 300 to $2, 300 each, more money than many of them have seen at one time in all their lives.
 Very recently I passed through the western provinces from Winnipeg to Calgary and in the words of fellow passenger who was astonished by what he saw from the car windows in Manitoba, we were, metaphorically speaking, in a land of milk and honey The country was one great lEeep of ripening grain. In fact, so enormous was the crop, that at the time there were grave doubts as to the possibility of GETTING ENOUGH BINDER TWINE TO SUPPLY THE DEMAND. A situation like this has never before been known in the agri- cultural history of any country.
 Before l made my first trip through the Dominion west I doubted very much the stories that I had heard of this so-called grain wonderland across the border. l believed. as un- numbered thousands of others be- lieyed, that the stories were circulated mostly to induce immigration. l quick ly found that 1 was wrong. As one Alberta farmer said to me few weeks ago, If the whole truth were told about this country I don't sup pose you could find one American in ten who would believe it.
 This year the prospects of the wheat crop of Saskatchewan, Mani toba and Alberta are an average of over TWENTY-FIVE BUSHELS TO THE ACRE, and that this grain is far superior to that raised in the states is proved by our own govern ment statistics, which show that American millers are importing mil lions of bushels of Canadian hard" to mX with the home product in order that THIS HOME PRODUCT MAY BE RAISED TO THE REQUIRED STANDARD. It is peculiar fact that while the Dominion Government IS anxious for it's western provinces to fill up with the very best of immi- grants, there has been no blatant or sensational advertising of those lands. For this reason it is probable that not one American farmer out Of hfty knows that Canada wheat now holds the worlds record of value-that, in other words, it is the best wheat on earth and that more of it is grown to the acre than anywhere else in the world.
 brief study of climatic conditions, and those things which go to make climate, will show that the farther one travels northward from the Mon- tana border the milder the climate be- comes-up to a certain point. In other words, the climate at Edmonton, Alberta, is far better than that or Denver, 1,5OO miles south; and while thousands of cattle and sheep are dy- ing because of the severity of the