At Winnipeg we come into the real North-west, and a condition of soil, climate, and political development as different from eastern Canada as Montana is from New England. This town, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboin rivers, in a valley which is one of the finest wheat-producing sections of the world, is a very important place. Railways, built and projected, radiate from it like spokes from a wheel hub. Its growth has been marvellous. Formerly known as Fort Garry, the chief post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it had in 1871 a population of only one hundred. It is now the capital of the province of Manitoba, contains the chief workshops of the Canadian Pacific between Montreal and Vancouver, and has a population of 25,000. It is laid out on a grand scale, with very broad streets—Main Street is 200 feet wide—has many substantial public and business buildings, streetcars, and electric-lights, and abundant facilities for trade. At present it is in a condition of subsided “boom;” the whole province has not more than 120,000 people, and the city for that number is out of proportion. Winnipeg must wait a little for the development of the country. It seems to the people that the town would start up again if it had more railroads. Among the projects much discussed is a road northward between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, turning eastward to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The idea is to reach a short water route to Europe. From all the testimony I have read as to ice in Hudson’s Bay harbors and in the straits, the short period the straits are open, and the uncertainty from year to year as to the months they will be open, this route seems chimerical. But it does not seem so to its advocates, and there is no doubt that a portion of the line between the lakes first named would develop a good country and pay. A more important line—indeed, of the first importance—is built for 200 miles north-west from Portage la Prairie, destined to go to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. This is the Manitoba and North-west, and it makes its connection from Portage la Prairie with Winnipeg over the Canadian Pacific. An antagonism has grown up ill Manitoba towards the Canadian Pacific. This arose from the monopoly privileges enjoyed by it as a Dominion road. The province could build no road with extra-territorial connections. This monopoly was surrendered in consideration of the guarantee spoken of from the Government. The people of Winnipeg also say that the company discriminated against them in the matter of rates, and that the province must have a competing outlet. The company says that it did not discriminate, but treated Winnipeg like other towns on the line, having an eye to the development of the whole prairie region, and that the trouble was that it refused to discriminate in favor of Winnipeg, so that it might become the distributing-point of the whole North-west. Whatever the truth may be, the province grew increasingly restless, and