“If you are a great people,” as Joshua told an Israelite tribe when it wanted more land, “then get up to the wood country and cut for yourselves there in the land of the giants.” Only there are no giants, either men or trees, to be encountered in the prairie backwoods. Still keeping a south-easterly course, we come out of the woods again and rub our eyes. Are we back in the middle of last century? Buffalo in thousands roam the plain beneath. Newcomers? Yes, but the oldest of old-timers, too. Not one was to be seen when we passed here twenty years ago. But the Dominion Government bought up a few hundred surviving in the United States and fenced in a prairie “park” at Wainwright as a sanctuary for these original inhabitants of the West. They have thriven and multiplied fast. A wonderful sight, that shaggy monarch of the ancient plains and all his wild barbaric following. . . . And over there, a few miles away, a fair-haired girl is milking a sleek imported Shorthorn, a cow with a pedigree of thirty proud generations. . . . The old and the new, the native and the immigrant; and what a contrast! They are not so different as their skins appear. Some interesting alliances have been made between the wild buffalo and tame cattle. But more success is hoped from a union arranged between buffalo and yak, the long-haired cattle of the cold Himalayas. The good old buffalo “robe” is again on the market, for hundreds of the band have now to be killed every year. The park is becoming a fur farm as well as sanctuary. [Illustration: _Lake Louise—Rocky Mountains National Park_] [Illustration: _Mount Robson—Jasper National Park_] [Illustration: _The E. P. Ranch, High River, Alta. The Prince of Wales and his Canadian Home_] Scores of private fur farms, nearly all devoted to fox raising, have been established in the West, though the East has still ten times as many. This will become one of our leading industries. Trapping, in comparison, is a wastefully laborious and crude as well as cruel method, though still by far the chief source of the Dominion’s fur supply—and Canada is “the last great fur preserve of the world.” In 1924 Saskatchewan sent out 1,161,805 pelts, Manitoba 711,778, Alberta 503,070, British Columbia 180,844, the North West Territories 164,903, and Yukon 50,070, or 2,772,470 in all. Of the 70,029 beaver, British Columbia contributed 21,509, Alberta coming second with 20,057, and Manitoba third with 14,806. Of the 233,037 ermine or weasel, Saskatchewan sent 82,437, Manitoba 63,054, Alberta 57,962, and British Columbia 25,128. The muskrat numbered 2,121,929, of which 1,006,863 came from Saskatchewan, 554,716 from Manitoba, 331,144 from Alberta, 108,632 from the North West Territories, and 85,670 from British Columbia. The beaver catch showed a great increase over the previous year’s figure, 51,737; but the muskrat total fell heavily, as the number taken in 1923 had been 3,100,074.