Some are observers, with imagination to brighten and judgment to weigh, and, if need be, correct, first impressions; whilst others, with vacant eye, or out of harmony with novel and perhaps irksome surroundings, see, or profess to see, nothing.

The readiness, for instance, of the Eastern "fling" at Western Canada thirty years ago is still remembered, and it is easy to transfer it to the North.
Those who lament the meagreness of our records of the fur-trade and primitive social life in Ontario, for example, before the advent of the U.E.Loyalists, can find their almost exact counterpart in Athabasca to-day.

For what that Province was then, viz., a wilderness, Athabasca is now; and it is safe to predict that what Ontario is to-day Athabasca will become in time.

Indeed, Northern Canada is the analogue of Eastern Canada in more likenesses than one.
That the country is great and possessed of almost unique resources is beyond doubt; but that it has serious drawbacks, particularly in its lack of railway connection with the outer world, is also true.

And one thing must be borne in mind, namely, that, when the limited areas of prairie within its borders are taken up, the settler must face the forest with the axe.
Perhaps he will be none the worse for this.