In former times, when a preserve for fur-bearing animals under the sway of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it was reputed to be “little better than a waste and howling wilderness, wherein half-famished beasts of prey waged eternal war with a sparse population of half-starved savages; where the cold was more than Arctic, and the drought more than Saharan;” and that--to quote the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons a few years ago--“these territories were bound by frost and banked by fog, and woe betide any unfortunate individual who might be so far diverted from the path of prudence as to endeavour to settle in those parts.”[20] But the accounts sent to this country soon after the first rush of emigrants to the land of gold, differed widely from the old story. It was now as much the interest of speculators and property-holders to attract emigration by exaggerated praise of the colony, as it had formerly been that of the Hudson’s Bay Company to repel it, and keep their possession intact by representing it as a barren wilderness. The most glowing reports were sent home, and were published in the leading newspapers. The new colony was represented as a very paradise for the farmer, and many men went out believing this, to find bitter disappointment in the reality. Neither of the two accounts is correct; the truth lies, as is usually the case in like matters, between the two extremes, and we have been induced to set forth the truth somewhat fully, from a desire to do away with the injurious misconception which has prevailed on this subject.