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Looking at the whole country thus spread out, it may be broadly divided into three great sections. From Lake Superior to the eastern boundary of Manitoba there is a stretch of nearly four hundred miles of mining and lumbering country, with a great deal of arable land interspersed. The most important metal is gold, which is being produced in steadily increasing quantities. There are subsidiary metals, such as silver and copper; while other useful but less noticed minerals, as limestone, brick and pottery clays, emery, etc., are being found and developed as the population increases and railways and roads are extended. Iron ore is found on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, but mines have not yet been developed owing to impediments in the navigation of the Red River.

Woods, partly in Minnesota and partly in Ontario. The logs cut here along the Rainy River are towed across the Lake of the Woods and cut in the big mills at Rat Portage and Keewatin. The annual cut in these mills is about 50,000,000 feet. The waters of the Lake of the Woods reach the sea at Hudson Bay after a course of something over a thousand miles, while the waters of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, which take their rise in this same region, only reach the sea after travelling more than twice this distance. The consequence is that the northern rivers, for part of their courses, are a series of waterfalls, thus producing almost unlimited water-power. With the advance of electricity these powers will be made much more valuable, and even now one big power plant is ready, while some of

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out of this immediate territory, Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis may be mentioned as promising still greater things in this regard. Whitefish, sold all over the continent, is the chief product, while of late years the preparation of caviare from sturgeon roe has been becoming a matter of importance. The fish exports from Manitoba are already over $200,000 in value per year.

The next four hundred miles from Winnipeg (roughly speaking, half-way to the Rockies) include the great hard-wheat fields of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. The remaining stretch of four hundred miles to the foot of the Rockies

300 miles long and 60 miles wide. There are, as has been said, these diversities, but the general characteristics are as pointed out, the centre the great bread-basket of the world, and the west the great pasture-land.

To confine the view to a still more limited area, take Manitoba as representing the central portion. Manitoba is the best developed of all this territory, and yet the Provincial Premier, the Hon. Thomas Greenway, himself a farmer and a master of agricultural statistics, says that not one tenth of the arable land of the Province has yet been taken up. The Hon. Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Inte

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is the great ranching ground, where thousands of cattle browse summer and winter, to be shipped, when fattened on the prairie grass, by hundreds of train loads to England, as well as to other parts of Canada, east and west.

In each of these sections there are great diversities. There is a great deal of grainraising in the western part of the Territories, particularly along the eastern slope of the Rockies, northward toward Edmonton. The Territories have their coal deposits along the Saskatchewan and toward the international boundary, while on the other hand Manitoba has her forests of spruce, tamarack, and jack-pine in the northern part around those three great lakes that have already been mentioned, the largest of which, Lake Winnipeg, is

rior, in a recent speech gave the figures more exactly, stating that Manitoba's great crops had been raised upon 4,500 square miles of land. When it is seen that the total land area of the Province, excluding lakes and rivers, is placed at 73,000 square miles, it will be realized that Premier Greenway was well within the mark in his statement. Yet this Province, with only the fringe of her lands cultivated, last year produced, as the result of the labor of 32,000 farmers, about 30,000,000 bushels of wheat. As an illus-> tration of what these figures mean, take the great State of Minnesota, which is reported in the American press as being the greatest wheat-producing State in the Union. In the same year Minnesota produced 78,000,000 bushels. The population

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devoted to other crops, but this will be many times more than offset by the great increase of wheat production in the Territories. Besides this, Manitoba produced among other farm products in 1898: 17,300,000 bushels of oats; 4, 300,000 bushels of barley; 2,400,000 bushels of roots; 3,250,000 bushels of potatoes; and dairy products to the value of $410,000. There were 42,000 head of cattle and 23,000 hogs exported or packed in the Province, and farm buildings to the value of $1,469,000 were erected. These figures do not include the Territories, but are restricted to Manitoba alone, and they are for an average, not an exceptional year. In Canada, so far as the production of wheat is concerned, Manitoba stands first now, producing about fifty per cent more wheat than the Province of Ontario with ten times the population.

These facts are scarcely yet realized in eastern Canada, which has passed through three stages in regard to the great West. First there was a stage of undue expectancy in the period of the boom, followed by a period of cynical doubt and unwarranted depreciation. The West came to be regarded as a costly appendage to the other parts of the Dominion, when as a matter of fact the West in her hardest years paid more than dollar for dollar for all the benefits she received from the East.

This stage of neglect and lack of appreciation continued until within recent months, when certain indisputable facts caused Canadians to revise their former opinions. There is first the constantly

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not more than 350,000 people, has risen to be the third city in the Dominion in regard to bank clearings, customs returns, and postal business. The returns in these departments for the fiscal year 1897-98 are about as follows: customs, $1,100,000; inland revenue, $500,000; postal receipts (city only), $110,000. The Winnipeg bank clearings in 1897 were $84,400,000 and in 1898 $90,600,000. And the point is that these increases go on so rapidly that no other city will overtake Winnipeg. Population is now pouring into this country at such a rate that persons well qualified to

couver, and Winnipeg. Winnipeg is rapidly becoming an important railway centre, thirteen railways or branches radiating from it to all points of the compass, and these lines are constantly being extended, opening up new districts west. north, and east of the city. In the last ten years more railway-building has been done in Manitoba than in all the other Provinces put together. Two roads-the Canadian Pacific and the Northern Pacific railways-already connect it with Lake Superior, and the third is now under construction.

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ing the holder of the balance of power in Canada, and what this means can be foreseen when it is remembered that the West is almost wholly engaged in the extractive industries, while the East is largely a manufacturing country. One is the complement of the other, and in the recognition and proper legislative appreciation of this lies the hope of Canada's rapid and permanent progress.

WINNIPEG, MANITOBA.

JAMES LAWLER.

THE BOYHOOD HOME OF ADMIRAL DEWEY

OWNS. like individuals, sometimes have greatness thrust upon them. Such has been the lot of Montpelier, Vermont, the birthplace of Admiral George Dewey. Until one day last summer Montpelier was notable only as a neat New England village, set amid some of the most beautiful scenery of the Green Mountain region. Not one in a thousand of the inhabitants of the United States had ever heard of it, and those who had knew it only as the capital of its State. In a night and a day all this was changed. The battle of Manila was fought and won. The name of Dewey became familiar to millions of people, and in the chorus of eager inquiries about him and his life attention has been drawn to Montpelier, the town in which he was born.

Montpelier was settled late in the last century. From that time until its selection as the capital of the State, in 1805, its history did not differ from that of hundreds of other New England towns. Since then the natural tendency of the most able professional life of a State, as well as of a nation, to centre at the capital city, has

given its society an intellectual and moral standard which has not been surpassed by that of any town or city in New England.

The location of the capital at Montpelier naturally was accomplished only after a good deal of strife with other rival towns. Among those who were most instrumental in securing the prize for Montpelier was its schoolmaster and town clerk, David Wing, Jr., of whom it is even now told that he named his eight children respectively Debby Daphne, Christopher Columbus, Algernon Sidney, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Maria Theresa, David Davis, Caroline Augusta, and Maximus Fabius. No wonder that Admiral Dewey, who grew up a child in the same town, rejoices that he has no middle initial and that his name is plain George Dewey.

The first State capitol, a wooden building, was erected in 1808. This lasted until 1832, when it was replaced by a granite building very similar in plan to the present structure. This building stood well back from the street and some distance above it. The broad walk from the State House to the street is laid out irregularly

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