rising a mile above the sea, have been crossed by the Canadian Pacific Railway.  The giddy heights of the Fraser River Canyon are traversed, and this is but the beginning, for three other great corporations are bending their strength to pierce the passes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.  We see to-day scenes more after the manner of the Arabian Nights Entertainments than of the humble dream that Lord Selkirk dreamt one hundred years ago.

[Illustration:  Hon.  John NORQUAY A native of Red River Settlement.  Became Cabinet Minister in 1871, afterward Premier of Manitoba.]

The towns and cities of Manitoba have sprung up on every hand where the railway has gone and these are but the centres of business of twenty thousand farms whose owners have come to this land, many of them empty-handed, and are now blessed with competence and in many cases wealth.  What a vindication of Lord Selkirk’s prospectus of a hundred years ago when he said:  “The soil on the Red River and the Assiniboine is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture and capable of bearing rich crops.”  Lord Selkirk’s dream is fulfilled, for his land is fast becoming the grainary of the world.  As the traveller of to-day passes along the railways in the last days of August or early in September, he beholds the sight of a life-time, in the rattling reapers, each drawn by four great horses, turning off the golden sheaves of wheat and other cereals.  A little later the giant threshers, driven by steam power, pour forth the precious grain, which is hurried off to the high elevators for storage, till the railways can carry it to the markets of the world to feed earth’s hungry millions.  When the historian recalls the statement that the few cattle of the early settlers had degenerated in size on account of the climatic conditions, that the shaganappi pony could never do the work of the stalwart Clydesdale, and that nothing could result from the straggling flock of foot-sore and dying sheep, driven by Burke and Campbell from far-distant Missouri, we look with astonishment at the horses now taken away by hundreds to supply with chargers the crack cavalry regiments of the Empire, at the vast consignments of cattle passing through Winnipeg every day to feed the hungry, and flocks of sheep supplying wool for Eastern manufacturers to clothe the naked.

One of the greatest trials of the early Selkirk Settlers was to get schools sufficient to give the children scattered along the river belt, even the three R’s of education.  Kildonan parish manfully raised by subscription the means, unaided by Government help, to give some opportunity to their children.  It is a notable fact which emerged in the great School Contention of twenty years ago in Manitoba, that not a dollar had been given to schools as aid by the old Government of Assiniboia.  To-day the glory of Manitoba is its school system.  For school buildings, school organization, attainments of the teachers, and