Manitoba is Western in its spirit and its sympathies. Before the building of the Canadian Pacific its communication was with Minnesota. Its interests now largely lie with its southern neighbors. It has a feeling of irritation with too much federal dictation, and frets under the still somewhat undefined relations of power between the federal and the provincial governments, as was seen in the railway conflict. Besides, the natural exchange of products between south and north—between the lower Mississippi and the Red River of the North and the north-west prairies—is going to increase; the north and south railway lines will have, with the development of industries and exchange of various sorts, a growing importance compared with the great east and west lines. Nothing can stop this exchange and the need of it along our whole border west of Lake Superior. It is already active and growing, even on the Pacific, between Washington Territory and British Columbia. For these geographical reasons, and especially on account of similarity of social and political development, I was strongly impressed with the notion that if the Canadian Pacific Railway had not been built when it was, Manitoba would by this time have gravitated to the United States, and it would only have been a question of time when the remaining Northwest should have fallen in. The line of the road is very well settled, and yellow with wheat westward to Regina, but the farms are often off from the line, as the railway sections are for the most part still unoccupied; and there are many thriving villages: Portage la Prairie, from which the Manitoba and North-western Railway starts north-west, with a population of 3000; Brandon, a busy grain mart, standing on a rise of ground 1150 feet above the sea, with a population of 4000 and over; Qu’.ppelle, in the rich valley of the river of that name, with 700; Regina, the capital of the North-west Territory, on a vast plain, with 800; Moosejay, a market-town towards the western limit of the settled country, with 600. This is all good land, but the winters are severe.