This luxury cannot be expected in Moose Jaw. Here there is no water at all. Last year the farmers had no rain, and they fear they will have none now. As it is, the prairie begins to look a little scorched. I should be loth to spend the remainder of my days here; but a farmer may make a living, and so may a farm-labourer. As to any other class of people here, there is no opening at all. The town is full of shopkeepers, barristers, auctioneers, and dealers. Mechanics who come out will starve. When the land around is taken up they will have a chance, but not till then.
As I sit, a dark figure beckons me to come to him. He has a Jim Crow hat, a blanket around his martial form, and a gayer one in front. He has rings in his ears, bracelets on his arms, and a string of some kind of beads around his neck. He offers me his hand, and I shake it. Then I commence a conversation. ‘What you called?’ I say. He makes an unintelligible reply. ‘You Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or Robinson?’ I ask; and again he gives an unintelligent grunt. I offer him a cigar, and he sits down on his haunches in the shade. He is one of the Black Bull men, who have been chased from the States, in consequence of having made that part of the world too hot for them. They are not natives of this country, but have settled in the prairie two or three miles off. I tell him to be a good boy, and I dare say he will obey my injunction as literally as any other man in England or anywhere else.
Again I look, and two red-coated warriors greet me. They are on the look-out for contraband, and are as fine and clean and well-set fellows as any I have seen anywhere. They belong to the mounted police, and live chiefly in the saddle, as there are but five hundred of them to all this gigantic North-West. I had already made their acquaintance. At the first station we came to after leaving Manitoba, one of them came into the car, gave a searching glance all round, and then walked out. ‘What was that for?’ I asked the General. ‘Oh! he has come to see if we have any whisky. They are very particular. I was coming this way once, when a fellow traveller took out his pocket flask and began drinking. The mounted policeman who saw him do it immediately took his flask from him, and emptied it there and then.’ This strict prohibition is the result, not of the prevalence of Temperance sentiment in the North-West, but rather of fear of the Indians, who are better shots than the mounted police, although not so well provided with fire-arms. The people seem to anticipate that the law will be relaxed when the whites are more numerous and the Indians fewer. The law has had good results, nevertheless. In obedience to it the German gives up his lager-beer. And next to the Scotch the Germans make the best emigrants.