At night
a couple of dances took place in adjacent boarding-houses, which
banished sleep until a great uproar arose, ending in the partisans
of one house cleaning out the occupants of the other, thus reducing
things to silence. We knew then that we had returned to earth. We
had dropped, as it were, from another planet, and would soon, too
soon, be treading the flinty city streets, and, divorced from
Nature, become once more the bond-slaves of civilization.
Conclusion.
I have thought it most convenient to the reader to unite with
the text, as it passes in description from place to place, what
knowledge of the agricultural and other resources of the country
was obtainable at the time. The reader is probably weary of
description by this time; but, should he make a similar journey,
I am convinced he would not weary of the reality. Travellers,
however, differ strangely in perception. Some are observers,
with imagination to brighten 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.
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