Manitoba is popularly supposed to be “as flat as a pancake,” and the prairie about Winnipeg is extraordinarily level in appearance. But, as a matter of fact, the prairie country of the Canadian West consists of three distinct steppes. Of these, Manitoba contains the whole of the first, and a portion of the second steppe. The first slopes gently from the international boundary, where it is about fifty miles wide, towards the far-distant Arctic Ocean, and the site of Winnipeg is only about seven hundred feet above sea-level, but the average elevation of the second steppe, which begins in South-west Manitoba, is about sixteen hundred feet. The face of this second steppe forms the “Riding and Duck Mountains,” and the Porcupine hills, in which is the highest point in Manitoba, 2,500 feet. In the south there are two other elevations named, like many another natural feature of the prairie regions, after birds, fish or animals. These are the Turtle and the Tiger hills. There are also acres of forest land in the north-west and extreme east of the old province, and here and there are small timbered districts, which supply the settlers with a certain amount of house timber and fuel, though not a little has to be imported. Much of new Manitoba is covered with forests, and is likely to supply immense quantities of pulpwood, and timber for other purposes. It is believed also to contain great stretches of good agricultural land; there are hopeful indications of mineral wealth; and its fisheries must be valuable. Finally, this wild north land certainly contains abundance of water power, which in time may make it an important manufacturing region. As yet the worth of its scarcely explored resources cannot be estimated, but quite enough is known to justify the Manitobans in congratulating themselves on the possession of this vast addition to the province. But, leaving new Manitoba out of account, there is no lack of definite information concerning the older portion of this first-settled of the “Prairie Provinces.” If one goes back to explorers and fur traders, its history may be said to begin far back in the eighteenth century with the building of La Verendrye’s little trading post on the site of the modern city of Winnipeg. If we do not care to go behind the first attempt actually to colonize what is now Manitoba, the story stretches just over one hundred years.