This eBook was produced by David Widger
By Gilbert Parker
'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West andNorth, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be foundin 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a periodwhen civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of theprairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. TheLebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre,except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay Company's postat which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gatheredfor trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, andother things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as anoasis in the Sahara.
That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensatingbalance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virileas ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold wasbroken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed thestray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer,what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was aneverlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here andthere herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half-breeds, and white pioneer hunters.
The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of thattime; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, aretrue to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced andopened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving townswhere, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's postwith its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greetthe eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellowof the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou providefor the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science hasgiven to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephoneare as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the UnitedKingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things alwaysappear—a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in theworld where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash ofthe people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon andManitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon was Engli