The location of Edmonton is much like that of St. Louis. The city is on a large river in the midst of a farming region almost as rich as the Mississippi Valley. It is in the northern part of the wheat belt, and the surrounding country is adapted to mixed farming as well as wheat growing. It produces enormous crops of oats, barley, and timothy. I have seen wheat near here so tall that it almost tickled my chin, and oats and timothy as high as my head. The land will raise from seventy-five to a hundred and twenty-five bushels of oats to the acre, and an average of forty bushels of winter wheat. The farmers are now growing barley for hogs; they say that barley-fed pork is better than corn-fed pork. They also feed wheat to cattle and sheep. Indeed, when I was at Fort William I was told that thousands of sheep are fattened there each winter on the elevator screenings. I am surprised at the climate of Edmonton. For most of the winter it is as mild as that of our central states. The weather is tempered by the Japanese current, just as western Europe is affected by the Gulf Stream. The warm winds that blow over the Rockies keep British Columbia green the year round and take the edge off the cold at Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton is an important coal centre, with thirty mines in its vicinity. Indeed, Alberta’s coal deposits are estimated to contain 1,000,000,000,000 tons, which is one seventh of the total supply of the world. It is eighty per cent. of Canada’s coal reserves. Coal is found throughout about half of the province from the United States boundary to the Peace River, and is mined at the rate of about five million tons a year. Half of the product is lignite, about two per cent. anthracite, and the remainder bituminous. Nova Scotia is a close second in the coal production of the Dominion, and British Columbia ranks third. Because of the long haul across the prairies, Alberta coal cannot compete in eastern Canada with that from the United States. Even the mines of Nova Scotia are farther from Canada’s industrial centres than is our Appalachian coal region. Cape Breton is more than a thousand miles from Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, and about two thousand miles from Winnipeg. Scranton, Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is only four hundred miles from Toronto, and Pittsburgh but three hundred and sixty-seven. Consequently, Alberta coal supplies little more than the local demand. Of the three hundred mines in operation, only about seventy are important. Many of the others, some operated by only one man, are known as “country banks.” In these the coal is dug out by the farmers, who often drive thirty miles or more to one of the “banks.” At some places bunk houses and stables have been erected to provide shelter for settlers who cannot make the round trip in one day.