3-070-956 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

N.-West Territory of Canada: sketches by the Marquis of Lorne: Red-Deer River from the S. bank, 1881.Engraving from '...sketches with which we have been favoured by his Excellency the Marquis of Lorne, Governor-General of Canada, who drew them in September while travelling with his suite through that extensive part of the Canadian Dominion... The province of Manitoba, or rather its capital, the city of Winnipeg, is at the confluence of the Assineboine with the Red River, near where they flow into Lake Winnipeg, about half way between the Atlantic and the Pacific sea-coasts of North America, and in the 50th degree of latitude...It is about six hundred miles west of Lake Superior, from which the Canadian Pacific Railway, now under construction, will soon be made to pass through Manitoba, and to traverse the entire breadth of the North-West Territory, above a thousand miles, then to cross the Rocky Mountains, and to descend some of the river valleys of British Columbia to the Pacific shore. Manitoba, as well by its convenient situation for traffic as by the extraordinary fertility of its soil, which is probably the best in all North America for agricultural purposes, cannot fail to become one of the richest countries in the West'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.