To "mixed farming" as well as to the production of grain alone, or of live stock, all this enormous region lends itself. Before the country was opened and rendered accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific, the region was practically a wilderness. The land was fertile, the numerous rivers and the lakes provided a sufficiency of water and generally promising conditions, but until transit was provided all these were unavailing. Prosperous towns have now sprung up all along the line of the railway, and the settlement of the country progresses with incredible swiftness. The settler arrives with his twentieth-century equipment. The contrast between the manner in which Canada is being gracefully and luxuriously settled, and that of the mid-nineteenth-century settlement of the western part of the United States, is something with which to reckon. The Canadian pioneer arrives in his Pullman car instead of the "prairie schooner" that slowly and wearily traversed the plains west of the Mississippi. He starts a steam engine to plough the land, and if trees or stumps come in his way he exterminates them with celerity by machinery. When the harvesting time comes, wonderful mechanisms cut the grain and bind it, while his trucks are perhaps equipped with motor power and swiftly carry the grain direct from the threshing-machines to the elevators, from which it is shipped to market. {293} Wherefore, indeed, should he taste drudgery? Is he not the heir to all the ages? The marked liberality of the Canadian Government in its universal provision for higher education is one of the features of the Dominion that can never be too deeply emphasised. Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton are all seats of universities, whose privileges are open to women on equal terms. At both Winnipeg and Saskatoon are also agricultural colleges, offering practical instruction in scientific farming, and the ways of wealth are at once made plain for the youth of the region. [Illustration: Mount Robson Glacier] The telephone service is practically universal, welding into unity all the labour on a great farm of hundreds of acres, and enabling the farmhouse to be in touch with city and town. Appreciating the importance of this, the government of each province lends substantial aid in the instalment of telephone service, and the main telephone lines in these three western provinces are owned and operated by the government. Thus all agricultural communities are linked together in close contact and communication. Social conditions thereby establish themselves on a satisfactory basis. The comfort of the rural home is assured. There is no isolation to be encountered. Good roads, railway facilities of the best order that the world can afford, telephones, and telegraphs make possible a social life impossible under former pioneer conditions. {294} Churches spring up wherever there are people, for religion and education go hand in hand in Canada.