Lonesome in Canada

Carlstadt Alta
Dec 28th 1910

Dear Seward.

As I have nothing else to do will write you once more. How
was your corn this year? Did you get any results from that phosphate yet?  The crops throughout Canada were pretty short this year. Hundreds of acres of grain up around Gle??, Strathmore, ?amaka, on the C.P.R. irrigated land that was never cut at all. Wheat they reported before threshing would go twenty bushel to the acre went eight and ten. There was nothing raised around here (Carlstadt) except a little green feed, and some potatoes. Some as nice spuds as you would ever want to see. I didn't raise anything but then it wasn't the ground's fault. But wait till next year I will try my luck at it.  I am getting a long fine this winter so far. A little lonesome sometimes, but is not bad living out here. People living all around here now. A family now living on the west half of four came since the last time I wrote you. Some snow here on the ground most all the time more snow here than over by town.
Quite a few antelope around here. I saw a band not long ago with 35 or 40 in the bunch. The redcoat was out after a man over west for killing one as he thought the other day, but he couldn't prove anything on him. A fifty dollar fine first offense hundred dollars the second offense and so on. A few jackrabbits around here but not many. Mrs. Stevenson who lives 4 miles southeast of here died last week of typhoid fever. Age forty years. Was buried at the place as Stevenson didn't have enough money to ship her to Ontario. A family over west here have Scarlet Fever the three small children. I heard yesterday they lost their little girl aged seven years was buried at the place. We have a post office over west at the store. They commenced carrying mail first of December once a week. You was asking once if there was much scrip located around here I only know of 5 scrips located here within a radius of ten miles. They had quite a scramble at the land office in ?? week before last. There was a piece of land thrown open eight mile west of the hat, two men camped on the steps for two day and nights, it was nearly zero weather in the mornings. They filed when the office opened. There was fifteen or twenty men there and all made a rush for the door and tore it from it's hinges, but one of the fellows who camped so long filed on it. They claim it was worth five thousand dollars, was quarter section but I don't think it worth that much. But how it was there came to be land so close to the hat for homesteading yet I do not know.
The people talk about land getting scarce I see only the other day where they have ten million acres ready for homesteading up in the Peace River district. I was talking with a man this summer who said he had pear and apple trees on his place bearing fruit. He said some valleys up in that country were fine to live in but most places the land was poor, lots of this kind they call Muskeg land without any bottom to it as one might say, and also plenty of mosquitoes in the summer. There was hardly a mosquito around here this last summer it being too dry for them.
I have my shack fixed up so it is warmer than a good many others are out on the prairie. I hauled in two tons and quarter of coal from the mine likely will get another load towards spring. Pretty fair coal this winter.  ??nite a soft coal $2.75 at mine. They sell lots of it all around the country. I have a good little heating stove set up and do not use the cook stove much. The railroad where I was working this fall was the ?egreville - Calgary line of the C.N.R. that goes from ?egrevaille via Camrose and Stettler to Calgary. The last one-hundred and twenty six miles from Stettler was graded this last summer. They are going to lay the steel this winter and have it ready for trains in the spring.
Railroad building is just getting a good start here in Alberta and it won't be long we will have as many roads as Saskatchewan. They have a school house built now in the township north of that one. The land over there was taken up a little sooner over there because right next to C.P.R. irrigation block. And the people thought they would have a railroad sooner then here. Maybe they will a little but if they have a road there it will probably build further.
I see my letter is getting long so will stop and take it over to ? or he is going down to Trays in the morning to get the mail there as it is nearer that the post office.

Clyde Arnold
Carlstadt
Alta Canada