CURRENT LITERATURE.
Life and Labour in the Far, Far West. By W. Henry Barneby. (Cassell and Co.)—This book is properly described by its author as " notes of a tour " in the Western States, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the North-West Territory. It is certainly not a book in the literary sense of the term, and we are glad to learn that this is "the first, and probably the last venture" of the writer as an author. It is one of those books that are due to the kindness-and blindness, real or pretended—in this case, as the chief mover was the author's wife, we hope it was real—of friends. Considered purely as notes, and as a great and decidedly unwieldy guide-book, the book, however, is not without merit. We learn nothing new or even interesting till the writer is landed in Manitoba. There, and in the North-West, as a professed agriculturist, his judgment on the resources of the country are presumably of some value. He seems to have found the natural fertility of the soil quite up to its reputation ; but already reduced, by reckless and utterly unscientific raising of continuous wheat crops, to a miserable condition. When he was in the country in 1883, the present depression in things was in full operation, and lands bought by speculators were already lying idle and unoccupied. Yet he appears to have thought that there is plenty of scope for the bond - fide settler, who is prepared to live on his lead and treat it in a rational way. The success of a Mr. Harmer in Southern Manitoba was a good instance of what could be done by real work. He had come from Ontario in 1878, had spent £82 in hard cash in taking up 160 acres of homestead and the same number of pre-emption land, cultivating it for three years, and building a dwelling-house which would contain his wife and two or three children ; and had sold it in 1881 for 12,000 dollars, or £2,400. He had then reinvested 9,000 dollars in land, 4,000 in an " improved " 160-acre farm, and the rest in 740 acres of grazing land ; and his experience was that from the 160 acres of farm alone be cleared about £200 a year, or 25 per cent., not counting, of course, the growing value of the land, which, indeed, for the moment, is
hardly growing at all, but which must gronP again with the next recovery in general values. Perhaps even a more striking instance of what honest labour could do was that of this same Mr. Harmer's brother-in-law, who had to borrow even the ten dollars with which to pay for the registration, on taking up a 160-acre homestead. He started with absolutely nothing. He worked off the loan and made the subsequent payment of ten dollars by working as a hired labourer ; he then set to work to break up the land and build the necessary "dwelling-house" by digging a hole in the ground, over which he raised a stick roof, thatched with straw ; and here he lived daring the six months' winter, giving his labour, meantime, in exchange for his brother's team-work in the previous summer. Before the completion of the three years (specified by Government as giving a title to the land), "he was able to raise the regulation framed house 18 ft. by 16 ft., and his property is now worth 3,000 dollars (2600)." This surely is a suffioiently inviting prospect for the English agricultural labourer in exchange for the dreary outlook of wages decreasing with decreasing strength, the " public " for pleasure, and the workhouse for a home in his old age. Mr. Barneby travelled a great deal on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and gives an interesting, though dull and badly written account of the mode of life of the navvies, and the extraordinary speed at which the line was being pushed on. He saw a double gang lay 6# miles in a single day—a record which had been previously beaten by a quarter of a mile, by a single gang. At that pace it should not be long before the whole of British North America is united by the completion of the line, a material assistance to the intending emigrant. To such, Mr. Barneby's book may be safely recommended as a useful collection of facts, statistics, and carefully formed opinions.
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