I turned out first in the morning, as I was going to cook the breakfast, and found it decidedly cold. When I went to the farm for milk and eggs the nice woman would not let me pay for them. We found great generosity wherever we went. We had brought sufficient water from Winnipeg in the ferrostate flask for tea, but this was too precious to use for washing up, so we had our first experience of getting water out of a prairie well. This shortage of water and the expense of boring very deep wells is one of the farmers' great trials. In certain places you have to go down forty feet for water. If there is no gasolene engine or windmill it has to be drawn up with a bucket and rope. This is by no means easy, the problem being to prevent the bucket from floating empty on the surface of the water. To avoid this you have to swing the bucket so that it falls in sideways and fills itself, but if you are not very careful when drawing it up it will sway violently and spill half the contents. On this first occasion, having proudly drawn up my water, I essayed to take it away in our canvas bucket, but not knowing the habits of the latter it turned over just as I had got it filled. Afterwards I circumvented it by weighting it with a stone or propping it up. When at last we were all ready to start, the engine unfortunately wasn't. I thought that the sparking plugs had probably got damp with the heavy dew, or had got oily, so I took them out and cleaned them and also cleaned the carburetter. In the meantime Winifred went off to the neighbouring town to fetch help from a garage, but they were all too busy with motor tractors to come. Presently two farm men came and talked to me and helped to undo screws, but did not seem to know much about a car. The small boy from the farm saved the situation by his cheerful chatter. He kept telling me that the radiator was like a letter-box. At last I got the car to start, and then it went very well. The trail was very sandy, bordered with coarse grass and prickly scrub, and there were hills at intervals. The car skidded badly in the sand, and once swung round broadside on up a bank, and nearly turned over. We had to cut down some of the thorny bushes in order to get it out without damaging the headlights. We had not gone much further before the car stuck in the sand again, going up a hill. Some men came by in a car and advised me to tighten the gear pedal, which I did. New cars need continual adjustment at first, of course. When we had done about fifty miles I thought that the engine smelt hot and found that the fan was not working, so I screwed up the belt and it was all right for a time. We passed through several towns that day, and stopped for the night near a slough, outside Alexandra. For the first time we were hushed to sleep by the "Canadian Band," as the frog chorus is called.