Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1892 — The Great Plains of Canada. [ARTICLE]

The Great Plains of Canada.

C, A. Cenaston, in August Century, No one, I think, who is acquainted with the great plains of our own western continent lying north of the can read the naratives of the expeditions sent out in search of the Jeannette explorers, or .Mr. Geo. Kennan’s accounts of Siberian travel, without being impressed with the likeness suggested between the Asiatic' steppes and the “Great Lone Land'’ of the western hemisphere. Many of Mr. Kennens descriptions of the country through which he passed on his memorable journey to the penal colonies and the prison mines of eastern Siberia are eqiAlly well suited to the almost boundless tracts west of Hudson Bay, a and northward to the region of the Great Slave Lake. Indeed, I know of no more graphic and truthful portraitures of many parts of what used to be marked on the maps, as British North America,and is now more commonly known as the British Northwest, or the Canadian Northwest, than these same narratives; but I am sure no words or pictures can adequately convey to the mind the real impressions which these regions make upon one who lives among and travels over them in long journeys in summer and winter. It is one thing to talk of vastness and solitude and silence, of transparent air and illimitable sunshine in summer, or of fierce, howling winter tempest shutting down about the lonely traveler as he struggles forward, the only spot of color in the weltering waste of snow, with no frendly shrub or tree or sheltering hill greeting his tired senses, only to find an enforced halting-place where darkness overtakes him from whose frozen torpor and death no morning may arouse him —it is quite another to have experienced these things in one’s own person. Among the mountains there are grandeur and solitude: mists wreathe the lofty summits, aud lie along the valleys where the rivers run; morning and evening bathe the snowy, ice-clad peaks in floods of golden and crimson glory; from moment to moment shadows, tints, and tones of color come and go to mark the passing hours; and climb where you will, the prosDect is always limited, bounded, varied. Even the barren, unsociable sea is not without changing aspects and motions, fraught, indeed, at times with danger abd terror: but traveler who has passed many seasons in the grandest mountain scenery, or has sailed on many, a sea, has vet to find, in an acquaintance with the great plains, & new set of novel and strange experiences. ~