MANITOBA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5265, 7 February 1878, Page 3

MANITOBA.

(From tho Home News , December 13.) The picture drawn by Lord Dufferin, in bis address at Red River, of the undeveloped resources of tin’s singularly richly-endowed region, might seem far-fetched, were it not absolutely borne out by fact. The vast fluvial system which traverses tho territory is geographically exactly as he described it, aud it is well known that it embraces thousands of miles lineal with lakes hundreds of miles square. Yet more undoubted is the teeming fertility of the soil. It is a deep alluvial soil of incomparable richness and unsurpassed productiveness. Wheat has been cropped off the same localities for forty consecutive years without manure, and it shows no signs of exhaustion yet. The rolling prairies are covered with wild grasses, on which stock will thrive aud rapidly fatten ; roots of all kinds grow on the land to perfection ; the finest fruits are found wild in rich profusion. It is not too much to expect that tho stream of emigration will soon flow in this direction. Already two widely distinct races have made permanent settlement. The Mennouites, of Russian extraction, but of German nationality, have chosen Manitoba as their home, and within a very few years have grown prosperous, their homesteads and villages covering many a valley and slope. Icelanders also have deserted their Arctic volcano-vexed island ; and, although little practised in the arts of husbandry, they are so docile, peaceable, and industrious, that they, too, are fast growing into a thriving community. It is no small compliment to British rule that these strangers elect to live under it, eager to share in what Lord Dufferin called “ the eternal possession of all Englishmen, tho brilliant history aud traditions of the pant with the freshest and most untrammelled liberty of action in the future.”