United States during the last fifteen years on such a large scale that the supply was everywhere in excess of the demand; which had been further diminished by the slackness of trade, the scarcity of money, and the substitution of cable-cars for horse-cars in many cities and towns during the last three or four years. At that time the export of horses to Europe had hardly begun, though a few breeders in Montana and other States of the North-West had tried to find a market for the best of their horses in England; but the cost of breaking, handling, railway-carriage and freight swallowed up most of the proceeds. Horses of the cayuse or mustang type were at this time so cheap on the Pacific Coast that I heard of a sale of 5,000 having been made to a firm at Portland, Oregon, for slaughter at five dollars apiece on the range. Whether they were really converted into corned beef or whether the story was only a Western yarn I cannot say; but I was offered my pick of the four-year-olds on a Western ranch, unbroken on the range, at forty dollars apiece, and as these were all got by English thoroughbreds they were of a superior type, of which many would have been fit for hunters in England. I have never seen a country which appears to me so suitable for breeding cavalry horses as this, and notwithstanding the prejudice that many Englishmen have against them, I have found prairie-bred horses as hardy, enduring and sound as any in the world; and if time and patience enough were given to break them and get them into condition, I believe that they would stand far more work and last longer under the hard conditions of warfare than English-bred horses.
I found that Crane Lake, which had been quite a large piece of water when the railway was made, was now, like many of the lakes and streams in the country, rapidly drying up, and I was told that some people who had settled after the opening of the railway had been forced to leave their homesteads owing to the lack of water.
After seeing all that I could at Crane Lake I went on to Calgary, where I had been two years before, and found that agriculture was not at all prosperous in the district, though those ranches which had been properly managed and looked after were still fairly prosperous. Very few of the young Englishmen who had come to this district, and often invested their capital in ranching, had succeeded; many had lost everything and had left the country in despair. Some had struggled on and, having learned by experience, were in a fair way to make a living if not a fortune. A few, mostly Canadians, were in possession of herds which were steadily increasing, and which were turning out annually a large number of good four-year-old bullocks at an average price which then was about forty dollars.
As I wanted to see for myself a few of the principal cattle and sheep ranches near Calgary before making a report on the prospects of the Canadian Agricultural Company, I hired a buggy from the livery stable of a well-known character, Johnny Hamilton, I had already made the acquaintance of this worthy at the hotel, where he and I were always the first down to breakfast, and had sympathised about the difficulty of getting that meal in Calgary at a reasonable hour. He explained to me that the general slackness, apathy and want of go which then pervaded
