rails across the wilderness called in Colonel A. D. Davidson to aid them. Davidson is the father of the American invasion of Canada, canny and wise in all matters of real estate. One of his trusted lieutenants is Thomas Darling, who speaks habitant French like a native. Back on the other side of Mount Royal went Mr. Darling, visiting one after the other of the habitant farmers and securing from each an option on his holdings of fertile, melon land. Sturdy, simple minded, conscientious folk are these habitants, slow to move and cautious in all of their dealings with strangers. It took a diplomat to handle them, but once Jean Francois had given his word, Mr. Darling knew that he could rely on it. It took almost two years to get all the desired land under option. Then, one day, a few months ago, Mr. Darling put more than a million and a half dol-. lars in cash into a hand satchel and went back over the mountain again to pay for the farms he had agreed to buy. Other interests were in the field, and to have checks flying around in the number and for the amounts that would have been necessary never would have done at all. The currency was relatively a small part of the amount required to carry out the general plan, but it was large enough to be unique in surburban land operations. Lest any one suppose that this is another case where a grasping corporation took shrewd advantage of the innocent farmer, it may

517

be as well to state that practically all of the habitants of Mount Royal will be able to retire and live at their ease hereafter on the income derived from the sale of their melon patches. One man, for instance, was paid $117,000 for his comparatively few acres. The largest farm of all brought nearly $800,000.

Plans have been prepared for an unique, model city, which is to be built on the purchased farms. All the business houses will be confined to four streets which run diagonally across the site from corner to corner. There are restrictions which forbid the building of apartment houses and no house to cost less than three thousand dollars will be permitted.

With this great project out of the way, the actual work of boring the tunnel through Mount Royal was begun on May 1st; a great gang of "hard-rock men" starting in at the same time on either side of the mountain. The stone removed from the western opening will be used in grading and paving the streets of the new city of Mount Royal and also in ballasting Canadian Canadian Northern lines. The debris taken from the eastern end of the tunnel will be utilized ing an elevated embankwhich the tracks of the

Northern will run

in buildment, over Canadian straight

through the city of Montreal to the banks of the St. Lawrence, where they will join the tracks of the Montreal Harbor Commission.

In its size and equipment, the Mount Royal tunnel will be very much like the Pennsylvania tube under Manhattan Island. Trains will be operated in the tunnel by electricity, and are expected to run at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The work of construction is in charge of S. P. Brown, the young engineer who directed the Pennsylvania cross-town construction in New York. The work begun at both ends, nearly two months ago, will be pushed night and day until the two bores meet in the heart of the mountain. It is estimated that fifteen hundred men will be at work for eighteen months.

Meanwhile, on the slopes to the west, the town of Mount Royal is already beginning to rise. Like water long penned behind a dam, the people of Montreal will rush through to fill it as soon as the

way is made. It is planned that the new town shall be organized under the Des Moines commission plan of government, and in its construction advantage will be taken of every improvement which modern methods can suggest.

Lying between the site of the new town and Mount Royal and the Riviere Des Prairies, there is still a considerable tract of land. The projectors of the great Georgian Bay Canal project, who hope to carry the wheat of western Canada through a short loop to the Atlantic are planning to use this river as a link in their chain. That will mean the building of great docks, warehouses, elevators and railway terminals along its banks.

Altogether, this great railroad project means a new era of expansion and prosperity for Montreal. The most remarkable fact about it is that so far as the railroad is concerned, the whole tremendous undertaking will practically pay for itself.

Na letter to Prof. William T. Hornaday, dated September 21, 1887, Colonel I. R. Dodge gives some information as to the almost incredible mass of bison he had met with near Fort Larned, on the Arkansas River, in 1872. "The great herd on the Arkansas through which I passed could not have averaged, at best, over fifteen or twenty individuals to the acre, but was, from my own observation, not less than twentyfive miles wide, and from reports of hunters and others it was about five days in passing a given point, or not less than fifty miles deep. From the top of Pawnee Rock I could see from six to ten

miles in almost every direction. This whole vast space was covered with buffalo, looking at a distance like one compact mass, the visual angle not permitting the ground to be seen. I have seen such a sight a great number of times, but never on so large a scale." In a report of the Smithsonian Institute Professor Hornaday estimates that "the actual number of buffalo seen on that day by Colonel Dodge was about 480,000, not counting the additional number taken in at the view from the top of Pawnee Rock, which would bring the total up to a round half million. If the advancing multitude had been at all points fifty miles in

length-as it was known to have been in some places at least-by twenty-five miles in width, and still averaged fifteen head to the acre of ground, it would have contained the enormous number of twelve million head. But, judging from the general principles governing such migrations, it is almost certain that the moving mass advanced in the shape of a wedge, which would make it necessary to deduct about two-thirds from the grand total, which would leave four million as our estimate of the actual number of buffaloes in this great herd, which I believe is more likely to be below the truth than above it."

It seems difficult to realize that of the millions that once roamed our plains, there are today less than one thousand pure-blooded American buffaloes, a mere handful of an animal it was thought impossible to exterminate, and one which the Indian firmly believed issued from the earth continually, and was therefore inexhaustible. Yet today the death of a buffalo is such an important event that it is immediately telegraphed all over the country. It was only about twenty-five years ago that the buffalo's extinction was first predicted, and since that time dozens of attempts to pass legislation to protect the buffalo have failed. t is true that the Federal Government maintains a small herd in Yellowstone Park, but it is not multiplying rapidly enough to ensure the propagation of the buffalo with any certainty; and the only hope for the permanent preservation of the American bison lies in the united effort of the authorities at Washington with the various private owners of buffalo in the West.

No man living has done more to save the buffalo from utter extinction than Major Gordon W. Lillie, the white chief of the Pawnee Indians, who maintains the largest herd of pureblooded buffaloes in existence

at his great ranch outside Pawnee, Oklahoma. Not long ago the Major was instrumental in the preparation of a bill introduced in Congress asking that immediate steps be taken to perpetuate this purely American animal. "When it is known," he said to the writer recently, "that only twenty per cent of the existing buffalo are cows, and that a buffalo cow calves only every two years, the difficulty to be contended with in present day perpetuation is only too apparent. The bill we prepared carried with it an appropriation for the purchase of pureblooded buffalo, the purchasing of a great ranch far removed from civilization, the fencing of same, and an appropriation for its maintenance.

"Buffalo will not thrive when surrounded by civilization. They multiply better when turned out winter and summer alike, as Nature intended they should be. A buffalo calf will survive a blizzard that would mean death to the toughest of ranch cattle, and buffalo will find food in the deepest snow, through which ranch cattle would not be able to move.

"It is my intention to donate my herd of pure-blooded buffalo to the Government, and, from my experience with buffalo on my ranch at Pawnee, Okla., I am convinced that by assembling all the majority of pure-blooded buffalo that their propagation can be secured and the total extinction of the American bison prevented."

Regarding the present value of the buffalo to cattle growers, it has been known for over two hundred years that the buffalo herds contentedly with domestic cattle, and crosses readily with them.

Under present conditions the stockman simply stakes his cattle against the winter elements and takes his chance on the results, which are governed by circumstances wholly beyond his control.