matter.

"After long storms and tempests overblowne

The sun at length his joyous face doth cleare," sang one of Shakespeare's gentlest friends, Edmund Spenser, poet of Faery. And the master of the English drama has shown us in his greatest romantic comedy how true is this of human life and of non-human Nature. Indeed, the oneness of humanity and Nature and Deity, their accordant and unified symbolism, is everywhere suggested in "The Tempest," alike in its moments, its movement, and its motive. Into its higher, serener air are to be found converging all the old, familiar currents of life and thought, the light-hearted joys of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Twelfth Night," the courage and zest of the historical plays, and the cloudy glooms of "Lear" and "Hamlet," and all of these are here made tributary to one end, the justifying of the idea of a God of goodness. Not that the earlier plays are less than this-indeed, in some instances they are much stronger both structurally and dramatically-but Shakespeare seems here to be but little concerned with his responsibilities as playwright (he follows the classical unities, it would appear, chiefly for the sake of avoiding mechanical preoccupations as far as possible), and much concerned with the final rounding of his philosophy of life. If "Hamlet" says No where "A Midsummer Night's Dream" says Yes, "The Tempest,' for its part, utters Yes once again, but it is not the old Yes of care-free youth.

The Shakespeare of "The Tempest" seems to remind the Shakespeare of "Hamlet" and "Lear" that there is a wistful breath of would-be utterance in the great tragedies that must now be given its opportunity, a silver lining that must yet become the means and minister of a spreading glory. And "The Tempest" is the opportunity and the glory.

We enter the region of enchantment in the first act through the gateway of reality, and in the last act we are to regain reality through enchantment's aid.

Life is one, Shakespeare seems to say, whether known or unknown, but its meanings will never be sounded by those of scoffing and unbelieving spirit. The mystery and the holiness of life, its vision and its reminiscence, are purely symbolic.

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like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

As Prospero typifies Providence,—a progressive, dynamic Providence, who, in the climax of his force-power, rises into a higher love-power through a wonderful expression of self-renunciation; so Ariel typifies the light and aspirant in Nature and humanhood; and Caliban their baser and darker instincts. Service is sacred to the best in Ariel, but so is opportunity; service is repugnant to Caliban, because he has not yet understood that opportunity comes through service, that there is no freedom save moral freedom, and that moral freedom has to be earned and struggled for. Caliban's drunkenly triumphant song of rebellion contrasts

How fleeting a moment in the history of mankind!

Manitoba was admitted to the Confederation in 1870, British Columbia in 1871, Prince Edward Island in 1873, and in 1882 the Northwest Territories of Alberta, Assiniboia, Athabasca and Saskatchewan were organized with local administration at Regina. These territories, now, since September 1, 1905, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, were in the days of our "school geography" Hudson's Bay Territory or Rupert's Land. The resources of the country were beginning to be known through the phenomenal results of agriculture in Manitoba, and even before Confederation efforts were made to bring this vast and fertile tract out from under the Hudson's Bay Company's ownership and control. Successful negotiations in 1886 -approved by the Canadian Parliament in 1869, led the Hudson's Bay Company, in consideration of certain lands near their trading posts and £300,000 sterling to surrender to Canada this wide domain. Out of the surveys that followed these negotiations grew the first Riel or Red River Rebellion, which resulted largely from the want of tact on the part of the Government Surveyors on the one hand and the ignorance of the half-breeds on the other.

Seven treaties were made with the Indian Tribes between 1871 and 1877, who received reservations and annuities of moneys and benefits for transferring their immemorial sovereignty to the Canadian Government. To the honor of the name and fame of Canada, these treaties have been faithfully kept, so that for the Indian relations of this Dominion no Canadian ever wore the blush of shame.

It may be said here that the history of the Indians north of the forty-ninth parallel has been radically different from that of the Indians south of it. One need not ask why, when one knows that not only Canada but the Hudson's Bay Company has kept faith with the Indian. No one who has ever traveled through the

farther north and had close associations with the northern Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company need be told of the secret of their success of two and a half centuries. If the Honorable Adventurers of the Hudson's Bay have made great dividends in fur, they have yielded security and comfort to the Indian Tribes, and to Canada, peace.

The second and more serious Riel Rebellion in the eighties grew out of a situation very similar to the first. Perhaps more than to any other one agency, credit for the speedy overthrow of this insurrection is due to Sir Adolphe Caron, now a resident of Ottawa and Quebec, an able lawyer and a charming host, who for the exercise of a brilliant military talent while Minister of Militia at the time of the second Riel uprising, probably by his foresight, decision and despatch saved Canada a long and bloody war. For this signal service he was knighted by Queen Victoria, and was for eighteen years Minister of the Crown, until the Liberals came into power.

The British North American Act of 1867, under which the former provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick became the Dominion of Canada, made provision in general terms for the addition of that vast and fertile area which both the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company, for their own profit, had been so long discouraging for purposes of settlement and agriculture. The farmer drives the fur-bearing animals away, and the furs of Canada have been for two and a half centuries practically the sole wealth of the Indian and the Hudson's Bay Company. The frozen spaces and the inhospitable wastes of the

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Great Lone Land" were the bugbears kept well to the front before the world, and it was not until about eleven years ago that any great movement set in toward the settlement of the western portion of it. This was when the Liberal Party came into power.

On September the first, 1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan were added to the

provinces of Canada. These provinces were formed out of the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Assiniboia, Athabasca and Saskatchewan, with 63,523,000, 57,177,600, 153,260,000 and 69,200,000 acres respectively. Alberta, the new province, comprises now Alberta Territory, the western part of Athabasca to the sixtieth degree parallel which is also the northern boundary of British Columbia, and a strip off the western part of Assiniboia and Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, the new province, comprises the part of the old Territories of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia to the Manitoba boundary line and the eastern part of Athabasca. These two provinces are principalities, each larger than France, both nearly as large as Alaska. Each is five times the area of Illinois and Iowa combined, and on the maps of both you could lay the maps of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Kansas, Kentucky and throw in the New England States.

The mere element of bigness is of itself striking, almost startling, but it is not so interesting as some further facts, concerning this latest opened and last great virgin arable area on the North American Continent. The most striking features of this wonderland are the facts that there is surprisiugly little unavailable soil and that nearly all of it is so wonderfully fertile. While the wheat crops in the United States in one year averaged 14.5 bushels to the acre, those of Manitoba averaged 26 and the Territories 25. This is a fair average comparison of amounts. But the Canadian wheat is better than ours. No. 1 Manitoba wheat has become famous and millers buy it to mix with our American wheat for the best flours. The old Territory of Saskatchewan had alone 50,000,000 acres which can all produce No. 1 Manitoba wheat, and all this will be under cultivation in a few years. At the very low average of twenty bushels, that would give a billion bushels a year. In the two present provinces with Manitoba are

171,000,000 acres of wheat lands-all capable of producing much the highest grade of wheat the world has yet known. When we consider that Canadian freights are cheaper to Europe; that farmers can sell worn-out land for eighty to one hundred and twenty dollars an acre in the United States and buy for eight to twelve dollars in Canada that which will produce forty to fifty per cent. more wheat of a better quality, is it any wonder they are leaving us ?

Great Britain imports in wheat and flour the equivalent of 200,000,000 bushels of grain annually. The old territory of Saskatchewan, while feeding Canada, could feed Great Britain and France and the German Empire and have wheat to spare. And this is less than a third of the capacity of the new Northwest with its 171,000,000 acres of wheat lands.

The agricultural population of a country is the most useful and the most valuable. When we consider that from St. Paul alone, with their many household goods, horses and cattle, at times one thousand American farmers a week have been trekking across the Canadian frontier, and when we remember what is coming in at Castle Garden,-we pause. This American invasion has been going on now with increasing volume, for some years preëmption entries alone reaching 60,000 a year.

There was scarcely any interest in the Canadian West until Clifford Sifton took the helm of the Interior Department. The movements he inaugurated regarding immigration and transportation are the movements that have created the great Northwest of to-day. He was Attorney-General of Manitoba before he was appointed by Sir Wilfred Laurier the youngest member excepting the Prime Minister of what Mr. Stead has called the most effective and business-like Cabinet of modern times. When the great Northwest is supporting a population of 50,000,000 people, as it can and will do, yonder they will think of Clifford Sifton as indeed the "father of his country" for

he has been the creator of the new Northwest.

Clifford Sifton is one of the great constructive statesmen of Canada, one of the architects and builders of the New Canada, the Canada to which his chief and colleague referred recently when he said: "If the nineteenth century was the century of the United States the twentieth century is the century of Canada."

When Mr. Sifton took the reins, the white population of Manitoba was about 210,000. That of the Northwest Territories, now Alberta and Saskatchewan, as nearly as can be ascertained, was about 90,000. As matters stood at that time, there was practically no substantial increase in the population of Manitoba and the Territories: the movement out being just about as great as the movement inwards. Any addition from the outside was largely the result of a small movement from Eastern Canada, principally the province of Ontario. In particular, the present district of Alberta was suffering from serious stagnation. Settlers had begun to move out of Alberta in large numbers and there appeared to be at that time no immediate prospect of anything better. A careful examination of the condition of affairs showed that the main difficulty against which the settlers had to contend was the lack of a market for anything except wheat, which was not at that time raised in Alberta in any considerable quantities. The outward movement and the stagnation were immediately overcome by the construction of the Crow's Nest Pass Railway. It furnished an immediate market for enormous quantities of coarse grains and produce raised in Alberta, and in one short season raised the whole district from a state of financial stringency to one of comparative comfort. In addition to the temporary relief that was afforded, the market of the mining districts of Southern British Columbia was permanently rendered available for the farmers of the prairie regions. Thenceforward Alberta has been prosperous

and has attracted settlement in a volume which has increased year by year.

The southern portion of Alberta has also largely profited by the development of irrigation works. These were undertaken in the first instance by an irrigation company headed by Mr. E. T. Galt, of Montreal. They were given some assistance and encouragement by the Dominion Government and constructed extensive water courses and engaged in settlement work with the result that many thousands of settlers have been brought in and settled in their tract, and extensive farming operations are now carrled on where nothing in the nature of agriculture was formerly possible. The sugarbeet industry, established at Raymond, which is carried on on an extensive scale, is the direct result of the irrigation work initiated by this company.

Later on, the C. P. R. was induced to accept from the Dominion Governmentas part of its land grant, 4,000,000 acres of land, which is practically to a large extent arid, and which requires irrigation. The company was induced to do this by the results of the Galt Company's irrigation work. The C. P. R. has now undertaken the necessary expenditure and this enormous tract is already artificially irrigated and under cultivation.

The two questions which were of importance in connection with the development of Western Canada were: Firstthe getting of an agricultural population, and, second-furnishing the necessary railway facilities.

In the early days many tracts of land were settled up, and, being distant from the railway, receiving no attention, and having no prospect of any, the settlers gradually abandoned their farms and left the district deserted. This had occurred so frequently that any careful observer must have been convinced that a rapid development of transportation facilities must accompany anything in the nature of active colonization work.

Bearing this in mind, the first thing