AN INHOSPITABLE LAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10058, 1 June 1910, Page 4

AN INHOSPITABLE LAND.

It was stated recently in the cablegrams that Sir John Taverner (Agent-General\ for Victoria) had received a communication from a resident of British Columbia stating that settlers in that portion of Canada, "numbering about a thousand familites," were desirous of migrating to Australasia. So far no further reference to the proposal has been made in the cablegrams, and it is impossible to say at present what foundation there may be for this statement as to,.a widespread desire to desert Canada for Australasia. The unknown correspondent, it appears, exhibits considerable reticence in his letter to Sir John Taverner, a noticeable omission being his neglect to i mention what district in Biitish Columbia the dissatisfied settlers reside m. It is assumed, however, that the cause of the reported dissatisfaction is the severity of the climate. As js perhaps only to be expected, the official handbook of the Canadian Emigration Office in London speaks in high terms of the climate of British Columbia, which is stated to be distinguished by "an almost total absence of extremes of heat and cold," though the compilers of the handbook admit that there are cold spells "when the mercury falls below zero." The meaning of the latter admission is rather indefinite, it being left to the enquirer's* imagination to decide how far the mercury is liable to sir.k when it starts on its downward course. There appear, however, to be several distinct varieties of climate in British Columbia, and though it may be endowed with pleasant summers, it ids, in parta, a cheerless ard inhos- | pitable land in winter. A recent number of "London Opinion" supplies a very different picture of a Canadian winder to that drawn by the partial pens of the compilers of the official handbook. According to "an experienced journalist," who has twice travelled through Canada recently, and spent the greater portion of one winter there, the prairies in winter are' for many miles "a frozen hell." He gives a startling account of the sufferings of the settler : who is obliged to live during the enforced idleness of a "sub-Arctic winter" on slender resources accumulated as a worker for others during the summer. The • settler's hut is a dot in a sea of snow, with silence everywhere, and the cold frequently 50 degrees below zero, a sleeper's breath sometimes becoming solid ice oh the blankets. This writer even goes so far as to say that the intense loneliness brings on "prairie madness," a malady that often leads the sufferer to self-destruction. These are things regarding which the emigration literature preserves cautious reserve, preferring to dilate upon the charms of the Canadian summer.