CANADA AS A FIELD FOR EMIGRATION.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1275, 8 May 1880, Page 2

CANADA AS A FIELD FOR EMIGRATION.

Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, of the Celtio ' Magazine, who was .trained to' agrioulture in his youth, and' has" recently visited Canada as the Commissioner, of tne Aberdeen Free Press, writes to that journal in these terms :

In any conceivable circumstances it will be found difficult—ih most cases impossible —to improve one's position, in whatI ever occupation employed, without , a strong effort and a determined resolution. This is especially true of those who may ;find it necessary to leave their native 'land. \ The industrious farmer, who finds it hard to make both ends meet at home* and ; who, after realising any property he may' possess here, has enough/money to take himself and family across to Canada and buy. a reclaimed farm in .any one of the five provinces, will generally a nioe house and suitable farm buildings ready to occupy on his new farm. If ha is able and willing to work it without having to pay too much for farm labor, his other troubles are at an end as soon as he takes possession of hia new inheritance. He can, on these terms, by the mere cultivation of his farm on rational principles, secure abundance of all that is necessary to enable himself and his family to live in comfort, and td start his children in the world fully equipped with an excellent education at the expense, of the State* and sufficient mieans, in most casea, to buy for them farms like his own. To those who may be satisfied with a position, like this, tho»p who prefer an easy start, who are satisfied with all the comforts of life in return for steady labor and ordinary industry, and who are not too, ambitious to secure greats wealth, Canada proper, arid especially *hs Province of Ontario, is much wore suit* able than Manitoba and the North-west Territory. A man who buy and stock a farm can get a good living, such as I havQ described, in any of the five provinces } and in either of them, exQept in the greater portion of the Provide of Quebec, the Scot can settle dawn among his own countrymen, and where he will find the most ample provision made for the free education of his family, from the lowest step of the ladder, up to, and through, the University. He will also, in any Q*\a of these, and in any part of them, find full provision made fov his religious re* quirements; for every Church and BQQt at H°m,e, and a good many besides, are represented and well provided for in all the provinces, Quebec is mainly populated by the French, and the most of Us inhabitants are Roman Catholics. For these and other reasons—to which I shall hereafter refer —mostly political—it not so suitable for the generality of Scottish emigrants a* the other provinces. Any ope with sufficient to buy a farm oan also do fairly well in any of the lower provinces, where, especially in Nova Scotia and in Prince Edward Island, the Highlander wiU meet with some of the finest specimens of hi* own race in existence, Here, however, labor is already sufftcjently abundant and cheap, and only men with a little money ought to emigrate to these provinces. For the Highlander especially, the class of labor most in demand there, even in pj'cs* porous times—that of coal not suitable ; but just now the coal mine* are not paying, ancl there is a superabundance of miners in the ooal districts—two to one at least more than could obtain full employment during the last few years. The Scottish laborer should therefore find way to Ontario, where, as J fthown in my last, plenty of vfoyfe could be obtained even during the long period of unprecedented commercial depression in the Dominion, as well as elsewhere throughout the world, now happily fast passing [ln the lower provinces nearly ftH the Go-, vernment land sor farming purposes and all the within reaqh of road and rail* way communication is already settled. The new settler who would follow the example of the original pioneers of British North America—those who first colonised and reclaimed Upper and Lower Qwdft and its provinces—mu§ti flow srept hia course to the West—to Western Qntario, Manitoba, tfye !Sforth-:we§t. Territory, In the former there are immense quant}* ties of land suitable for settlement, arid which can be had for the mere taking ; while in the latter there are incalculable millions of acres, admitted by all who have seen the country to be the finest laft4 in the world, produQing, _ any manure, for several years in from 35 to 5,5 bqshels of wheat pey. aore, weighing 62 to 64 lbs per bushel j and ao easily brought under cultivation that it only requires an ordinary plough and a pair of oxen.

The editor of a Chicago ' Commercial Advertiser whq jq to have spoken iu top glowing tprips of Canada, viajtefl the Proyinpe of Manitoba in 1877, and gays of itthat the crop of wheat'-' in the previous year was about 450,000 bushels, giving a general average of 631bs to the bushel; and some fields showed a much higher average—in orq case 681bs, while another of 200Q averaged 661bs, producing 46 and of flour tq the bushel. He further aay« that as tuany as 100 bushels of oats per acre haye been raised, and barley as high as <3O bushels to the acre, weighing from 50 to 551bs;:tp..the bushel. "Typnipi yielded as high as IQQQ bqshels per acre, 500 to-.700 beiflg quite common" , I(o that the Ontario fawner is so anxious ta get hols of the wealthy British farmer to relieve him. of his present reclaimed holding at a good price, and sq enable ftifli to go West and talce possession of such a ri oh territory } bo easily brought :n<lor culiivirion and so vastly productive ini i.ii --'f-'ig' t, ii.ciu vri.fi a .le ih .n uia i)r"' st!iir (:'iiii|i.ti-;ilivt;!y cxli iust) il lu,i|.>ii- , This is the place fur. ihuynngrdutpossossijd of beaus to go' to, tJe must, of course,

Ie willing to rough it for a few years ; bat then he wiQ find, in addition to his profits from farming operations, in a rich virgin soil, without the expense of clearing the forest, as in the old provinces of Canada, and without the expense of manure, that be had been getting wealthy-while asleep; that his lands daily increasing in vol tie, even in ordinary circumstances, from the surrounding improvements, the advancement of civilisation, and by the labor and progress of his immediate neighbora. In many instances those now taking up free homestead farms, or buying preemptive lots in the North-West, will one day And themselves wealthy at a bound, from the fact of their lands being required in a great many cases for building purposes, in a country where towns are being founded almost weekly, and where they grow in a .very few years from nothing to cities of many thousand inhabitants. The city of Winnipeg m 18* 0 had only a population of 253 souls; in 1873 it had 2200; in 1877 it had over 8000; and it has been growing at an incredibly rapid rate since. Other towns are ""»irfng proportionate progress; and those who were enough to own the land on which they are built are becoming rich without any effort of their own beyond their natural shrewdness and pluck in originally emigrating to a country which they saw was sure to progress, and be-

come great at no distant period. It must naturally follow that those now investing their money in land in these Jforth-West territories will, at no very distant date, reap a good harvest, for their property will become valuable, merely by the improvements made in their immediate neighborhood by the new settlers in the country. Some of the opponents of the present Government object to a system which produces such resalt3 r 33 unfair to the settler, who has to work hard to improve his own possession, and by so doing increases the value of his neighbor's, who had purchased his land, without any effort or outlay on the part of the owner. It must, however, be admitted by those who do not look at the question through political spectacles that, inasmuch as a railway 13 wanted throngh this vast territory, and which, when finished, will vastly benefit all—those who get their land 3 free on condition that they settle upon it as well as those who purchase theirs —some arrangement must be made by which funds with which to construct a railway can be raised ; and selling part of the land seems a reasonable way of doing so. The mere accident that the labor of the settler to improve his free homestead wSI raise the value of the contiguous plot, for which the owner had to pay in cash, dues not appear to me a hardship of which any one can fairly complain. It is, in fact, a mere political cry, which will not for a moment stand the application of unbiassed discussion and common sense.