few miles, and one is in a land where
the roads--if any--are but the merest trails, where the silent and
brooding prairie (hereabouts blessed with trees) stretches emptily for
miles by the thousand.

Turn the car north, and it heads for "The Great Lone Land," that
expands about the reticent stretches of the Great Slave country, or
follows the Peace River and the Athabasca beyond the cold line of the
Arctic Circle.

To get to these rich and isolated lands--and one thinks this out in the
lounge of an hotel worthy of the Strand--the traveller must take
devious and disconnected ways. Railways tap great tracts of the
country, going up to Fort McMurray and the Peace River, and these
connect up with river and lake steamers that ply at intervals. But
travel here is yet mainly in the speculative stage, and long waits and
guides and canoes and a camping outfit are necessary.

In winter, if the traveller is adventurous and tough, he can progress
more swiftly. He can go up by automobile and run along the courses of
the rivers on the thick ice, and, on the ice, cross the big lakes.

Though the land is within the Arctic Circle, it is rich. I talked with
a traveller who had just returned from this area, and he spoke of the
superb tall crops of grain he had seen on his journey. It will be
magnificent land when it is opened up, and can accommodate the
population of a kingdom. The growing season, of course, is shorter,
but this is somewhat balanced by the longer northern days and the
intense sunlight that is proper to them. The drawbacks are the very
long winters, loneliness and the difficulties of transport.

Edmonton, sitting across the gorge of the Saskatchewan, feeds these
districts and reflects them. Because of this it is a city of
anachronisms. High up on the cliff, its site chosen with the usual
appositness of Canada, is the Capitol building, a bright and soaring
structure done in the latest manner. Right under that decisively
modern pile is a group of rough wooden houses. They are the original
stores of the Hudson Bay Company, standing exactly as they did when
they formed an outpost point of civilization in the Northwest.

It is obviously a town in a young land, pushing ahead, as the Prince
indicated in his speech to the Provincial Government, with all the
intensity and zest of youth, having all the sense of freedom and
possibility that the rich and great farming, furbearing and
timber-growing tracts give it.