Besides owning and working so many means of communication, this amazing railway company has endowed Canada with a chain of sixteen fine hotels, including the famous Château Frontenac at Quebec—a stately structure that cost £600,000 and has accommodation for a thousand guests; the Royal Alexandra, at Winnipeg, which, like the hotel at Vancouver, yields a yearly profit of £12,000; the Empress, at Victoria, which annually puts £14,000 into the coffers of the company; and the luxurious hotels, fitted with exquisite taste, at Lake Louise, Banff, and other health resorts in the mountains. There is one thing that the C.P.R. does not do—it does not go in for farming. It might do so. It has enough land to carry on farming operations upon a scale commensurate with its other affairs, and to the tune of an annual profit that could not fall far short of £10,000,000. Providing and organising the necessary labour would constitute a difficulty (because, in a country where everybody can secure his own freehold, and grow prosperous in cultivating it, no one is content long to till the soil for an employer, let the wages be never so high). Still, the history of the C.P.R. affords abundant proof that it is not to be baulked by a difficulty; and therefore we must look in another direction for the reason why the C.P.R. does not farm, and probably has never so much as thought of doing so. Such action would be contrary to the purpose, policy and principles on which the fortunes of the C.P.R. have been founded. It is there to assist, not to compete with, the population. It sells its land. The quantity it sold last year was 975,030 acres, at an average price of £2 13s. 3d. per acre—an average price, by the way, that leaves out of account the irrigated land, of which 145,421 acres were sold, at £5 10s. 9½d. per acre. Mention of the irrigated land prompts some reference to an undertaking which, while sufficiently interesting on its own merits, serves as an excellent illustration of the enterprising spirit in which the C.P.R. promotes the welfare of Western Canada and its people.