There can be no doubt of the fertility of all the prairie region of Manitoba and Assiniboin. Great heat is developed in the summers, but cereals are liable, as in Dakota, to be touched, as in 1888, by early frost. The great drawback from Winnipeg on westward is the intense cold of winter, regarded not as either agreeable or disagreeable, but as a matter of economy. The region, by reason of extra expense for fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more expensive to live in than, say, Ontario. The province of Manitoba is an interesting political and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of the conflicts between the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwestern Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who began to come in in 1812. Gradually the vast territory of the North-west had a large number of “freemen,” independent of any company, and of half-breed Frenchmen. Other free settlers sifted in. The territory was remote from the Government, and had no facilities of communication with the East, even after the union. The rebellion of 1870-71 was repeated in 1885, when Riel was called back from Montana to head the discontented. The settlers could not get patents for their lands, and they had many grievances, which they demanded should be redressed in a “bill of rights.” There were aspects of the insurrection, not connected with the race question, with which many well-disposed persons sympathized. But the discontent became a violent rebellion, and had to be suppressed. The execution of Riel, which some of the Conservatives thought ill-advised, raised a race storm throughout Canada; the French element was in a tumult, and some of the Liberals made opposition capital out of the event. In the province of Quebec it is still a deep grievance, for party purposes partly, as was shown in the recent election of a federal member of Parliament in Montreal.