at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered
for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, and
other things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as an
oasis in the Sahara.

That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating
balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile
as ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was
broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the
stray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer,
what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an
everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here and
there herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half-
breeds, and white pioneer hunters.

The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of that
time; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, are
true to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced and
opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving towns
where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's post
with its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greet
the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellow
of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou provide
for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science has
given to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephone
are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the United
Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things always
appear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in the
world where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash of
the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon and