This reference to irrigation leads us to a paragraph or so on the remarkable work done by the Canadian Pacific in order to make the dry spaces of Southern Alberta blossom like the rose. In years when rain is plenteous the need of irrigation is not so apparent, but on the average there are some areas of that southern portion decidedly dry, although fertile if watered. In days far gone by, these areas were the _habitat_ of the buffalo, and in later years ranchers held thousands of acres under rental from the Government for great herds of cattle and droves of horses. From buffalo to the tame species seemed a reasonable transition, and, barring accidents or untimely weather in winter or summer, the ranchers did business of great value to the country, and in most cases, with reasonable management, made money. Then the Government decided that these great spaces should be thrown open for homesteading, and the wide-reaching range has given place to numerous farms over the same area. This was well enough in wet years, but when the dry years came crop failure stared the homesteader in the face. This led Colonel J. S. Dennis, civil engineer and surveyor, who (like his father of the same name and vocation) has been from early times intimately connected with Western Canada in peace and war, to study the whole situation. There had been some limited areas around Lethbridge irrigated by the old Galt Company, and Colonel Dennis advised the Canadian Pacific to go into the business on a large scale. It took a bold man to give that advice and a determined man to carry it through, at a cost to the Company up to date of the huge sum of sixty millions of dollars. Dennis knew that the Bow River, fed by the eternal glaciers of the Rockies, was an inexhaustible source of water supply if it could be properly harnessed for the task of giving sufficient moisture to the dry spaces of the plain. And this was what Colonel Dennis and his assistants proceeded to bring about by turning the waters of the Bow River in directions where it would do most good in making the wilderness rejoice. For centuries in the ancient mythology of Greece and Rome the fable of Hercules, who cleansed the stables of Augeas, the cattle-king, by turning a river through them, was one of the wondrous tales of the world. That was fable and fiction, but the irrigation plan inaugurated by Dennis in Southern Alberta is fact and reality. It is the biggest irrigation movement on the continent, and for pure romantic interest dwarfs the ancient tale of Hercules into insignificance.