I have seen too many evidences of wealth, natural and acquired, to doubt of the greatness of the future which is opening in the Far West to the citizens of the Republic; but I also have witnessed, even from the windows of a railway train, sufficient to make me aware of the great struggles which must be made by pioneers, and by the early colonists and settlers in these distant regions, before the conditions of civilised life be fulfilled. There can be no question of the severity and length of the winters, but then we were told on all sides, with a concurrent testimony that could not be disputed or doubted, that the exceeding dryness of the climate renders the most excessive cold of very much less actual consequence to the sufferer than it would be in a country where there is moisture in the air. In fact in these Prairie regions, when the thermometer is perhaps 15° or 20° below freezing point, the cold is not so severely felt as with us when it is only 2° or 3° below 32°. The existence of insect plagues--bugs and beetles of all kinds, or at least many destructive species--the prevalence of drought, violent tornados, the sudden rising of great rivers, forest and grass fires, all and each present elements of insecurity for the harvest. It would seem that one of the most serious mischiefs which the early settler has to encounter--I do not speak of the Indians, who are only to be found in certain districts far away from the region of which I am writing--is the insufficiency of the capital with which most of them begin life. They think that when they have got a square of land they have an assured subsistence, but when they come to break it up and to procure seed and agricultural implements, in a country where labour is scarcely to be had even on exorbitant terms, they find that their little capital with which they commenced--the greater part of which was probably absorbed in the erection of the humble dwelling in which they are content to live at the beginning--is quite insufficient to meet their needs and to enable them to tide over the interval between their establishment on the land and the time when any reward can be reaped for their labour. They and their families must live; food must be bought; and so it is that among these outlying settlements there is one sure harvest to be reaped--that is, the gain of the money-lender, I will not say usurer, who advances on the security of the land sums for which he charges 10, 15 or 20 per cent. interest. Formerly the struggle was not so severe as it is now, because the land was more accessible, and speculators, whose operations have attracted unfavourable comment, had not come into possession; but now it will be very hard indeed to obtain at moderate rates any land on the great lines of railway of a superior quality, except at a high price; and the settler is obliged to go far afield, and to strike out into the country which has not been appropriated by the land-shark.