LANDS OF MONKS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 31 December 1915, Page 3

LANDS OF MONKS.

In the very month of tiro White Sea there is a bleak island, which can only be reached in safety during the s’ mcr months. Here, cut off from the world, live a number of monks in monastery of their own building. the lonely winter nights, when the sea is one mass of ice for miles around, these ascetics practise their secret religious rites, safe in the knowledge that no man not of their faith can overhear them. The monks possess a splendid steamer, with large g,olden cross at its bow, i r which they sail- the seas, in summer.

It is- interesting to know that among the most successful farmers in Canada arc the Trappist monks, wlm reside in monasteries at Tracadie; at Oka, in Quebec; and at St. Norbet, on the Red River. At these places they have turned hitherto worthlbss tracts of land into fertile farms, the produce of which brings them in hundreds of pounds.

At one of their farms during a recent season they harvest 12,000 bushels of grain. At St. Norbet the Trappists have a creamery, a hennery with hundreds of fowls, and the best horses that money can buy.