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LOOKING EASTWARD OVER HUDSON BAY FROM RUINS OF OLD FORT AT CHURCHILL.

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FORT CHURCHILL, WESTERN COAST OF HUDSON BAY.

Located at mouth of Churchill river, District of Keewatin. A possible future railroad and trans-Atlantic steamship terminus.

discovered it (1611), was turned adrift in an open boat by his mutinous crew, being never afterward heard from. This great sea, six times as large as all the Great Lakes put together and stretching into the very heart of the North American continent, has been shunned for three centuries, as though the weird story and unknown fate of the wild and daring Hudson had cast a superstitious dread over the hearts of adventurous pioneers, and they dared not encamp on those shores where perchance the phantom skiff might pass and the unburied ghost frown upon their intrusion. A fort was

built at Churchill, and in time a small hamlet, called York Factory, sprung up at the mouth of the Nelson River; but for the most part the country was given over to Eskimos, Indians, and fur-traders. While an enormous grain trade and freight traffic developed along that commercial midway of America, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, the shorter outlet to the Atlantic was left desolate and forsaken. Even now, it is said that not five thousand out of the five and a-half million Canadians have ever seen the waters of their great possession, Hudson Bay.

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HUDSON BAY.

YORK FACTORY, AN IMPORTANT POST AT MOUTH OF NELSON RIVER, WESTERN COAST OF With the more northerly port of Churchill, it commands attention as a seaport affording a possible terminus for important railroad and trans-Atlantic steamer lines.

A HUDSON BAY ESKIMO.

But there must be some reason why this route through Hudson Bay is not used. Yes, there is an apparent reason, at least. The possibilities of the route have been officially recognized since 1884, when the Dominion Government sent out an expedition to investigate its merits. This trip in the ship Neptune lasted for three seasons; and the party returned an adverse opinion of the new route, because they said that the

mouth of the Bay was blocked with ice so as to be unnavigable except during about three or four months in summer. In 1897, another ship was despatched by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in compliance with many requests upon the part of his constituents, as they felt that political reasons had colored the report of the first expedition. But vested railroad interests again secured the decision, and the route through Hudson Bay was declared impracticable. But the length of the season was determined, the period of open water being placed between the first of July and the first of October. The people, however, were not satisfied with the results which had been obtained, and another expedition was despatched in 1902, with the twofold purpose of establishing Canadian supremacy on the waters of the Bay and finding out how long the passage through Hudson Strait was open. They returned last fall, and declared that the way was available for transportation during four or five months of the year; and the sending of another expedition to the same waters this summer has given additional impetus to the movement for the establishing of a traffic route through Hudson Bay to Liverpool.

Many people to-day think of Northwestern Canada as a bleak, barren country, as cold as Alaska or Greenland. But in areas which are in the same latitude as Greenland, fine wheat crops have been raised. At Fort Providence, nearly 1,200 miles north of Montreal, they raised and harvested a large crop of wheat in ninety

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NEWFOUNDLAND GOVERNMENT STEAMER NEPTUNE FAST IN THE ICE IN HUDSON BAY. Eskimo snow-hut encampment near by. Photo taken by the diffused light of a northern night.

days. And the cost of transporting this crop to the Atlantic by way of Hudson Bay, would be only about one-half the cost by the present route through Montreal. And the same proportion of saving in shipping cost holds westward, clear to Vancouver. From Vancouver to Liverpool, there is a saving of 1,300 miles by the Hudson Bay route. As the route has been found to be open until the first of October, ample time is given for the shipping of the season's wheat crop.

The tremendous amount of territory that will be affected by this new grain route makes Hudson Bay one of the greatest inland trade arteries of the world. Vast agricultural lands stretching as far west as the Canadian Rockies and a thousand miles north of Montreal, are included within the cost-saving reach of this New-World Mediterranean. In the valley of the Saskatchewan is grown the finest hard wheat in the world, and this great river is navigable for 1,500 miles, giving direct water communication into the very heart of Canada from points of junction with the new route. The vast territory of the Peace River will, in future, produce millions of bushels of grain. The Red River valley, extending

far into the United States, is already pro ducing 50,000,000 bushels of cereals. The part of the Red River lying south of the international boundary, has been made navigable for hundreds of miles. A little work on the part of the Canadian Government will allow boats to navigate clear to Lake Winnipeg. From there to Hudson Bay is 700 miles, along which the Nelson River affords a possible waterway, which, with dredging, can be made safe for large river steamers. Thus, again, there is the possibility of direct water communication with Europe through the very center of the American continent, and at a saving of a thousand miles over the route through the Great Lakes.

Here, then, is the opportunity, perhaps the greatest opportunity of all times, to bring Northwestern Canada a thousand miles nearer to Europe, and place the farmers who cultivate 600 million acres of land in control of the grain markets of the world by making possible a fifty per cent reduction in cost of transportation. To attract and control the future traffic of the Hudson Bay route, would be-it would seem to control the destiny of all Western Canada and the commercial supremacy of the New World.

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EERING over the rim of the precipitous canyon of the Snake river some twenty years ago, a young Easterner beheld a mirror for his own fertile imaginings. It was not the glint of the river's sinuous majesty that made him dream his dream, but two little lakes of that same deep blue which makes the artist dream in the grotto of Capri. These Western waters, however, were unflecked with shades of moody introspection: they metamorphosed the whole region into scenes which bespoke unflagging energy. The tiny but unfathomed lakes trickled through scores of ditches until hundreds of acres of the canyon bed were transformed to orchards of peaches, apples, cherries, and plums. The Indian trail over the 700-foot perpendicular wall became a good and much-traveled road; and beyond the rim of the canyon, hundreds of feet above the bed of the river, the unending desert sprang into goodly towns and waving fields without number.

Have the visions which made men of old leaders of their fellows degenerated in these latter days to mere dawdling

reveries? Not unless this day twenty years ago be accounted as no longer modern. To-day at this point in the canyon, there grow great orchards, and the fruit from these has taken first prizes at the Chicago, Paris, St. Louis, and Portland expositions. land expositions. The spring of 1905 saw hundreds of freighters with fourand eight-horse wagons wending their way down the old Indian trail-now a good road- to be ferried across the Snake river, and to climb the road on the heretofore trailless wall of the other side. What went they out into the wilderness for to see? As we followed through the dust of their deeprutted road the seventh day of August, last year, we came, three miles beyond the rim of the canyon, to a town of two thousand which answered the question.

About a $100,000 building-the then unfinished hotel-men, women, and children were gathered for common rejoicing over the fact that they, the inhabitants of Twin Falls, would henceforth have railroad communication with the rest of the world, and that they were able this same day to hold

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