These manufacturing towns are spread over the Province in a way rather strange to Old Country men, whose centres of industry are generally to be found clustering in a few districts marked out for such a purpose by particular local advantage. There is no “Black Country” in Ontario. There is, however, one district where manufacturing towns are particularly numerous, in the south-west part of the Province. There is no coal-field here, but the great coal-fields of Pennsylvania lie just across Lake Erie; and this region has the enormous advantage of lying within easy reach of Niagara Falls. The glory of the Falls is their beauty, and it is to be hoped that their beauty and grandeur will be religiously preserved for ever. The Falls, however, provide an enormous force, which can be used without destroying or greatly injuring their appearance. This force is already being developed by the Ontario Government and private enterprise, and is being conducted through electric cables to the manufacturing towns, where it will provide motive power for almost unlimited machinery. At Sault Ste. Marie, where the water of Lake Superior pours out into Lake Huron, a gigantic iron and steel industry is being developed. At the upper end of Lake Superior again are the twin seaports, Fort William and Port Arthur, where millions of bushels of prairie grain are loaded yearly in a multitude of steamers and shipped down to ports on the eastern shores of Lake Huron. [Illustration: GALA DAY AT WINNIPEG.] Travelling westward I passed out of Ontario with its lakes and wooded hills into Manitoba, the first of the Prairie Provinces. Within the memory of middle-aged men Manitoba and all west of it was practically a grass-grown wilderness, spangled during the summer months with a succession of flowers of many varieties that grow magnificently—some of them such as are the pride of gardens at home. There is a picture of the Provincial capital, Winnipeg—which is now as large as Bradford—in 1872, showing a tiny market town of about 2,000 population. Among the figures in the picture is that of the late Lord Strathcona, then the directing spirit of the Hudson’s Bay Company. To his enterprise is largely due the subsequent development of the country. The population to-day exceeds 200,000, and the city, at the fork of the Red River and the Assiniboine, in addition to being the corn exchange of the West, is becoming a manufacturing centre of the first importance. Main Street, Winnipeg, is a scene of surpassing interest to the English visitor. I was told that, if you knew how to distinguish them, you might meet in a walk along Main Street people of forty nationalities. At night it dazzles with the glare of its electric lights. There are hotels to suit every pocket, great departmental stores employing each their 500 to 2,000 “clerks,” shops fitted up in the most modern American style and offering the world’s best to the Winnipeg folk and visitors to the city,