an Icelander opulent enough to have rented a house.  Those who could
not gain admittance to this house slept under the high board sidewalks,
then a feature of the new town.  I remember as a child watching them
sit on the high sidewalk till it was dark, then roll under.
Fortunately it was summer, but it was useless for people in this
condition to go bare to the prairie farm.  To make land yield, you must
have house and barns and stock and implements, and I doubt if these
people had as much as a jackknife.  I remember how two or three of the
older women used to sit crying each night in despair till they
disappeared in the crowded house, fourteen or {xiii} twenty of them to
a room.  Within a week, the men were all at work sawing wood from door
to door at a dollar and a half a cord the women out by the day washing
at a dollar a day.  Within a month they had earned enough to buy lumber
and tar paper.  Tar-papered shanties went up like mushrooms on the
vacant lots.  Before winter each family had bought a cow and chickens.
I shall not betray confidence by telling where the cow and chickens
slept.  Those immigrants were not desirable neighbors.  Other people
moved hastily away from the region.  Such a condition would not be
tolerated now, when there are spacious immigration halls and sanitary
inspectors to see that cows and people do not house under the same
roof.  What with work and peddling milk, by spring the people were able
to move out on the free prairie farms.  To-day those Icelanders own
farms clear of debt, own stock that would be considered the possession
of a capitalist in Iceland, and have money in the savings banks.  Their
sons and daughters have had university educations and have entered
every avenue of life, farming, trading, practicing medicine, actually
teaching English in English schools.  Some are members of Parliament.
It was a hard beginning, but it was a rebirth to a new life.  They are
now among the nation builders of the West.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Canada's nation builders
consisted entirely of poor people.  The race movement has not been a
leaderless mob.  Princes, nobles, adventurers, soldiers of fortune,
were the pathfinders who blazed the trail to Canada.  Glory, pure and
simple, was the aim that lured the first comers across the trackless
seas.  Adventurous young aristocrats, members of the Old Order, led the
first nation builders to America, and, all unconscious of destiny, laid
the foundations of the New Order.  The story of their adventures and
work is the history of Canada.

It is a new experience in the world's history, this race movement that
has built up the United States and is now building up Canada.  Other
great race movements have been a tearing down of high places, the
upward scramble of one class on the {xiv} backs of the deposed class.
Instead of leveling down, Canada's nation building is leveling up.

This, then, is the empire--the size of all the nations in Europe,
bigger than Napoleon's wildest dreams of conquest--to which Canada has
awakened.[1]


  [1]COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF AREAS OF CANADA AND EUROPE

  Canada . . 3,750,000 square miles   Europe . . 3,797,410 square miles

  Maritime Provinces   Square Miles                   Square Miles
    Nova Scotia  . . . . .   20,600   England  . . . . .    50,867
    Prince Edward Island      2,000   Germany  . . . . .   208,830
    New Brunswick  . . . .   28,200   France   . . . . .   204,000
                             ------   Italy  . . . . . .   110,000
                             50,800   Spain  . . . . . .   197,000
  Quebec   . . . . . . . .  347,350   Austria and Hungary  241,000
  Ontario  . . . . . . . .  222,000   Russia in Europe   2,000,000
  Manitoba
  Saskatchewan              204,000
  Alberta  . . . . . . . .  350,000
  British Columbia   . . .  383,000
  Unorganized Territory of
    Keewatin   . . . . . .  756,000
    Yukon  . . . . . . . .  200,000
    MacKenzie River and
      Ungava . . . . . .  1,000,000


  COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF POPULATION IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

        United States                         Canada
  In 1800 . . .   5,000,000           In 1881 . . .  4,300,000
   " 1810 . . .   7,000,000            " 1891 . . .  5,000,000
   " 1820 . . .   9,600,000            " 1901 . . .  5,500,000
   " 1830 . . .  12,800,000            " 1906 . . .  6,500,000


It will be noticed that for twenty years Canada's population becomes
almost stagnant. The reason for this will be found as the story of
Canada is related.  If she keeps up the increase at the pace she has
now set, or at the rate the United States' population went ahead during
the same period of industrial development, the results can be forecast
from the following table:

  United States in 1840 . . . . . . 17,000,000
    "      "    "  1850 . . . . . . 23,000,000
    "      "    "  1860 . . . . . . 31,000,000
    "      "    "  1870 . . . . . . 38,000,000
    "      "    "  1880 . . . . . . 50,000,000
    "      "    "  1890 . . . . . . 63,000,000
    "      "    "  1900 . . . . . . 85,000,000


{xv} A few years ago, when talking to a leading editor of Canada, I