The settler's plough has transformed many a league of North-West prairie into the finest wheat-fields in the world. The process of settlement is going on with increasing rapidity. Hamlets, villages, and towns are rising where the conditions are favourable. The church and the school-house, unfailing signs of religion and civilization, appear at frequent intervals. There are many "junctions" where branch railways start from the main line, in order to render available for settlement millions of acres, fertile, well-watered, richly wooded, inviting the husbandman with the promise of abundant harvests.

A railway ride through nine hundred miles of prairie enables the tourist to see towns like Brandon, Regina, and Calgary, and many smaller ones, which have rapidly become important as centres of commerce, and the growth of which indicates the steady development of the surrounding country. Calgary is the centre of vast "ranching" enterprises, the place of the vanished buffalo being taken by immense herds of cattle intended for far-distant markets. The westward horizon seems closed against further advance, guarded by the snow-crested bastions of the Rocky Mountains. But the swift-flowing Bow River furnishes a key to the very heart of the mountains. The railway track keeps close to the river, which in fact digged out for it this "gap" and the whole pass long ages ago. We glance at the Kananaskis Falls, which are a prelude of wonders to come. Banff National Park has numerous attractions to induce the tourist to take a few days for the study of these majestic mountains at close quarters.