ghten and judgment to weigh, and, if need
be, correct, first impressions; whilst others, with vacant eye,
or out of harmony with novel and perhaps irksome surroundings,
see, or profess to see, nothing. The readiness, for instance,
of the Eastern "fling" at Western Canada thirty years ago is
still remembered, and it is easy to transfer it to the North.

Those who lament the meagreness of our records of the fur-trade
and primitive social life in Ontario, for example, before the
advent of the U. E. Loyalists, can find their almost exact
counterpart in Athabasca to-day. For what that Province was
then, viz., a wilderness, Athabasca is now; and it is safe to
predict that what Ontario is to-day Athabasca will become in
time. Indeed, Northern Canada is the analogue of Eastern Canada
in more likenesses than one.

That the country is great and possessed of almost unique resources
is beyond doubt; but that it has serious drawbacks, particularly
in its lack of railway connection with the outer world, is also
true. And one thing must be borne in mind, namely, that, when
the limited areas of prairie within its borders are taken up, the
settler must face the forest with the axe.

Perhaps he will be none the worse for this. It bred in the pioneers
of our old provinces some of the highest qualities: courage, iron
endurance, self-denial, homely and upright life, and, above all,
for it includes all, true and ennobling patriotism. The survival
of such qualities has been manifest in multitudes of their sons,
who, remembering the record, have borne themselves manfully wherever
they have gone.

But modern conditions are breeding methods new and strange, and
keen observers profess to discern in our swift development the
decay of certain things essential to our welfare. We seem, they
think, to be borrowing from others--for they are not ours by
inheritance--their boastful spirit, extravagance, and love
of luxury, fatal to any State through the consequent decline of
morality. The picture is over-drawn. True womanhood and clean
life are still the keynotes of the great majority of Canadian
homes.

Yet very striking is the contrast with the old days of household
economies, the days of the ox-chain, the sickle, and the leach-tub.
All of these, some happily and some unhappily, have been swept
away by the besom of Progress. But in any case life was too
serious in those days for effeminate luxury, or for aught but
proper pride in defending the