From the windows and balconies of the Fort Garry Hotel the view is magnificent--St. Boniface, with its splendid cathedral group, Assiniboine Park, and the Legislative Buildings, with two rivers winding away into the vast spaces of the prairie--all make up a panorama never to be forgotten. The interior of this alluring house is singularly charming to the eye. The furnishings are rich and yet have that air of simplicity that appeals to the artistic sense--grey marble floors with soft rugs and the main dining-room all in cream and gold. The foyer and loggia connecting the banquet and ball rooms suggest the ancient cloister with their vaulted ceilings and the mediæval lanterns for electric lights. The café has marble wainscoting, suggestive of some old baronial castle, while in the grillroom there is oak panelling {155} that would delight old England. There are three hundred rooms, two hundred and thirty-five of which have private baths while the others have easy access to bathrooms. What a contrast of living is thus revealed between the fastidious and luxurious life of the twentieth century and that of the primitive days of a hundred years ago when the old Fort Garry occupied the site of this hotel! For fully fifty miles west of Winnipeg extends a belt of land some 300 miles in width, provided with good water found at reasonable depths, which is the marvel of the world for grain raising. This Red River Valley is the great wheat-producing region of the continent, and the journey of nearly eight hundred miles from Winnipeg to Edmonton reveals vast fields of golden grain, while along the route the colossal elevators loom up in the level expanse like some colossal fortifications. Winnipeg has been from the first a predestined centre of commerce. It is the metropolis of the transcontinental lines and is the one supreme gateway through which all travellers and all traffic from ocean to ocean must pass. No other city on the western continent has such an absolute monopoly of all transit from the east to the west, or the reverse.