The western boundary is made in part by a wall of mountains, the easterly range of the Rockies. Through southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, western North Da kota, and western South Dakota the boun dary is made by another climate line, the place where the summers are so often too dry for a good crop of wheat that the farmers rarely try to grow it there.
92. Free vast northern plain is the only remaining place in North America where settlers can still go and have good, productive land given to them for nothing.
In the last half of the nineteenth century land was being given away in the upper Mississippi and Mis souri Valleys. (Sec. 54.) Then the railroads were extended northward, and the rush to the new frontier carried settlers through Dakota and Minnesota into Manitoba. New railroads are now being built northward across the plains of Saskatchewan and Alberta, where empty land still awaits the coming of the settler.
93. The settler's life on the prairies.—When the new settler goes to live on the 160 acres of land given to him by the Cana dian government, he finds that in June his land is a level expanse of green grass, dotted with bright flowers. If the settler wants to save money and yet build a house quickly, he may make a house of sod and buy only the windows and doors. The plow turns over a strip of prairie sod three or four inches thick and a foot wide. It is not much work to chop the sod strip into lengths with a spade and then to build the house. Even the roof is sometimes made of sods, which are placed upon poles brought from the banks of a stream or lake, or hauled by wagon from the railroad station perhaps twenty miles away. The "soddie " (Fig. 96) of the new settler is the cheapest warm house of the plains.
The settler needs only a small barn to shelter his team, tools, and cow, because for a few years he will grow only wheat or flax seed. After the grain has been threshed, it can be covered up with straw for a few days or weeks, until it can be hauled to the grain elevator at the railroad station.
Frost comes early in September, and, in the northern part of the region, the ground freezes hard in October, so the winter is long and lonely. Every few days, for many weeks, the thermometer is from twenty to forty degrees below zero. The bitter cold bliz
zard winds sweep with fury across the treeless plain.
94. The chinook the settler lives near the foot of the Rockies, he has from time to time in the winter a queer warm wind, called the chinook. It blows down the east ern side of the mountains. In the evening the ground is covered with snow; in the morn ing the snow is melted and gone. Because of the chinook, the western part of the Cana dian plains has warm days in winter and less snow cover than has the eastern part 95. Grain and dairy farming.—Wheat is the chief crop, because it is the most valuable grain that will grow in the region; but oats, barley, and rye are also grown, for they do not have to be harvested at the same time as the wheat. On many of the wheat farms there is a herd of dairy cows. Cattle-keeping in this region differs from that in the southern part of the Prairie Corn and Small Grain Belt. The winter is shorter in the corn dis tricts, and there cattle can find their own living for a longer time than in the north. Since animals must be fed in barns from September to May, farmers in the Northern Wheat Region must have animals that give great returns. The cow with her milk yields more return than an animal which is kept and fed for two or three years and is then sold for meat only. The farmer has time to milk cows in the winter; so milk, butter, and cheese are more important to the people in the new country of the Northern Wheat Re gion than to those in the longer-settled re gions of Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.
96. The potato.—The short, cool, damp summers and the soft, mealy soil of this region exactly suit the potato plant. There is probably no place in the world where potatoes can be grown more easily. Before the World War they were grown in the Red River Valley at a cost of twenty-five cents a bushel. The potato, however, is so heavy and so easily spoiled by freezing that in cold countries it cannot be shipped for great distances. For these reasons the people of the eastern cities get their _ supply of potatoes from If — nearer home. North re ica could easily grow forty times as many potatoes as -=14 it does, but we do not need • -f• them yet. As a result, much ; potato land of the north andwest is unused.