which had been erected at convenient spots. A good deal of land had been ploughed at various times and sown with wheat and oats, but of late years recurrent droughts had made the growing of grain too uncertain, and oats for fodder only were now being grown on a very limited area. In the afternoon Rutherford drove me in his buggy round the 10,000 acre enclosure which had been fenced in by the company, but the greater part of the sheep were pastured on open land belonging to Government which lay behind it at some distance off, and a great part of the hay was also made on land outside the fence, the 10,000 acres being insufficient to support anything like the number of sheep kept there.
I found that the shepherds usually had charge of about 2,000 sheep each, which they watched by day and penned by night, sleeping three or four together in huts and receiving their rations from the farm. Most of them were Canadians or Americans, some English, and I found one from my own county. They were getting from thirty to forty dollars a month and their rations, and were all very anxious to know the future of the company, as they had received no wages for months in some cases and were only kept together by their confidence in Rutherford, whom they knew to be in the same boat as themselves. The lambing season was just commencing and the ewes had to be drafted out as fast as they yeaned to ensure the lambs being properly mothered. Coyotes hung about the neighbourhood and did much damage; and though the ewes were in very fair condition they did not expect to bring up more than about 80 per cent, of the lambs. At the farm was a well-built set of shearing- sheds and drafting-yards, and a lot of machinery and implements which had been brought from England and were in many cases quite unsuited to the country; I heard extraordinary stories of the way in which money had been spent. The wool seemed small in quantity and inferior in quality, and, after reckoning the heavy cost of shearing and transit to market against its low price, did not leave enough to pay the expenses of shepherd¬ ing and wintering the sheep as it ought to have done. When the flock was first started there had been a fair market in British Columbia for fat sheep, though the cost of transit to the coast by the Canadian Pacific Railway was about a dollar a head; now, however, the importation of Oregon sheep to Victoria had closed this outlet, and shipments had been made to Great Britain with fair success. As, however, the sheep were not fat enough to send to England as mutton until they were two or three years old, and the cost of transit was about twelve shillings a head from Swift Current to Liverpool or London, plus the cost of feeding and insurance, I could not see how there was any sufficient margin of profit, after allowing for the various risks of the business, to make sheep-farming a tempting occupation in this country. It seemed that there was nothing to prevent other people coming in and grazing sheep on the Government land, and that if scab broke out, as was very probable, there was no suffi¬ cient law to deal with it, whilst it would be impossible to dip sheep during the severe frost, which here lasts three or four months.
After making enquiries all about from those who had been longest in the country, I found that the climate was getting steadily drier, and in consequence, hay for the winter fodder was scarcer and more expensive
