BOOKS.
THE NEW CANADA.*
THE magnificent picture-book which Mr. Wilfred Campbell has written, and Mr. Mower Martin has illustrated, is better calculated to bring home to British minds the wonders of Canadian scenery than whole volumes of purple prose. In Mr. Martin Canada has an artist who is well fitted to do her justice. Ile has the true sense for both colour and space, and while he is not afraid of rich and startling contrasts, he always contrives to give his pictures something of the clearness and delicacy of the Canadian atmosphere. His treatment of mountain scenery seems to us especially good, and he succeeds in reproducing the curious rock formation with an accuracy which should endear him to the mountaineer. Some of his autumn effects, too, are full of charm. We welcome an art which is original without being extravagant. In a book like this the pictures are the more important part, but it was a good idea to get Mr. Campbell to write the letterpress. He is the most fecund of living Canadian poets, and he is attached to his country with something of the fierce patriotism of the Celt. The key is pitched high throughout, and we hear as much of Canadian ideals and aspirations as of the configuration of the country. Unfortunately, you cannot illustrate an ideal,' and personally we should have preferred a narrative which had more kinship with the pictures. Mr. Campbell quotes a great deal of verse, some of it good, much of it indifferent; but we would gladly barter most of it for a fuller account of the wonderful mountains whose glacier-hung rocks appear in Mr. Martin's pictures. A poet's prose is always a chancy business, and Mr. Campbell is often too flowery for our taste. We wish, too, that he would not use quite so often the phrase " a magnetic personality." It is the worst cliché of American journalism, and a serious man of letters should eschew it. At the same time, he has great merits. At his best he can write with Tower and distinction, and many of his sketches of landscape live in the memory. If he quotes some . indifferent verse, he quotes much that is excellent, both his own and other people's, among which we would single out the Duke of Argyll's really beautiful poem on Quebec. We like, too, his standpoint, which is that of a Canadian of the older school who is undazzled by the glitter of material prosperity. He is always the laudator temporis acti, and his warnings are salutary in the midst of the present feverish progress. " To-day we are told," he writes, " that business methods have superseded the old-time rhetoric, and that the cool head has taken the place of the warm heart. But what has been the result of this reign of business enterprise? We read it in every election-trial, and we see it in the general deteriora- tion of the life about us."
Canada has travelled far since the days when she merely afforded a second title to the Scottish Earl of Stirling. " Viscount Canada" would be too proud an appellation for any subject of King Edward. The Scottish connexion is still maintained, and Mr. Campbell claims his country as the
• (1) Canada. Painted by T. Mower Martin. R.C.S. Described by Wilfred Campbell, LL.D. London : A. and e. Black. [Gus. net.1— (LI Kew Canada and the New Canadians. By Howard Angus Kennedy. With a Preface by Lord Strathcoua. Loudon : Horace Marshall and Sou. [Se. 6d.] "Scotland of America." " The Very semi-poverty of her people, or rather lack of great wealth, coupled with her bracing and vigorous climate, has had much to do with the production of a hardier, more determined race than the country to the south on the whole produces." The names show the relationship,—Fort Garry, the Mackenzie River, the Fraser, Fort McLeod, Selkirk, Strathcona. Mr. Campbell traces in some interesting chapters the growth of the population, and its different sections of French, United Empire Loyalists, and more recent immigrants. His account of the Federa- tion movement is well done. " Localism," he says with truth, "has had too much of its own way during the nineteenth century, and has been literally done to death. It was popular so long as it meant defiance of Downing Street. But now, when it applies to Washington or Ottawa, it is seen to be scarcely so virtuous and admirable an attitude." He shows great good sense, too, in dealing with the labour difficulty in British Columbia, where the exclusion policy, inspired by the Labour Party in the United States, threatens to retard the development of that beautiful district. Perhaps, however, he is at his best in his chapter on "The Canadian Seasons and Woods," where his eloquent and imaginative prose is wholly in place.
Mr. Howard Angus 1Kentiedy in his New Canada deals only with the latest development of the country,—from 1900 Onward, when the serious exploitation of the great wheat areas of the West began. He treats it in a practical way, giving useful information for intending settlers, much as Mr. Whates did in the excellent little book we reviewed last year. He has many qualifications for the task. He took part in the Red River Campaign of 1885, and in the early chapters gives a most entertaining and spirited account of the relief of Battleford. Having known the West in its infancy, he has watched its adolescence, and writes of it as he has just seen it, changing more in half a decade than in the century before. It is the kind of history which is best told in statistics. Mr. Kennedy Makes no apology for his figures, and we make none for quoting them. In 1900 the total immigration into Canada was 23,895. In 1903 the figure was 128,364, and in 1906 215,912. From 1899 to the middle of 1906 there have arrived 289,191 people from the United Kingdom, 261,136 from the United States, and 228,664 from Continental Europe and elsewhere. As for the land, in the three prairie provinces it is estimated that there are 171,000,000 acres Suitable for profitable farming. Of this there remain 75,820,000 acres not yet granted. If the present rate of settlement goes on, this should be exhausted about 1920 ; but a great deal of the land now classed as unprofitable will change its character as settlement advances. Another advantage which Canada possesses is the nature of her railway system. The Federal Railway Commission have power to revise rates and prevent any " combine " which might handicap producers. With all her monster immigration, the West still suffers from a dearth of the right sort of men. Mr. Kennedy mentions an interesting experiment made by One of the largest farmers of getting out ploughmen from Scotland by guaranteeing them a full year's work, instead of only six months'. As for the crop statistics, we shrink from quoting such multiples of million bushels. Mr. Kennedy is very optimistic about the American settlers, who make excellent and exclusive Canadians in a very short time. "How are you going to vote ? " one of the newcomers was asked. " I don't care which side," was the reply. " What I want to vote for is to keep them darned Yankees out." The book Contains many interesting pictures of the settlers' life, of the politicians, the Dukhobors, and of the Indian reserves. Specially valuable is the account of the Farther North, unsettled and almost unexplored. The influence of the Pacific Ocean makes Northern Alberta in winter no colder than Southern Manitoba, and the average summer temperature on the Mackenzie River is nearly as high as that of Dublin. In Yukon the days are so long and the sun so hot that wheat sown in May can be reaped in July. We commend Mr. Kennedy's invaluable little book to all intending emigrants, and to all stay-at-home people who wish to get some knowledge of the greatest economic development which the Empire can show at present.
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