Page:LA2-NSRW-3-0157.jpg

MANILLA HEMP which it is joined by cable. A small river divides the city into two parts. Earthquakes, typhoons and violent thunderstorms are frequent. A hurricane in 1882 ruined half the city. The great industry is cigar-making. The main exports are sugar, hemp, cigars, tobacco and coffee. The population is about 219,928, mostly native Tagals, 25,000 Chinese, large numbers being descended from these two races, and 5,000 Spaniards. Here, on May 1, 1898, the Spanish fleet was destroyed in the bay by the American fleet under Commodore Dewey and the islands were ceded to the United States by treaty on Dec. 10, 1898.

 Manil′la Hemp. See.  Ma′nioc. See.  Manistee, a city of Michigan, is on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of Manistee River and 135 miles northwest of Lansing. It is the county-seat of Manistee County, and has the service of three railroads. It also is an important shipping point, and has passenger-boat service with Chicago and other cities. The region is underlaid with a bed of salt 30 feet thick, and this gives employment to a large number of people in 10 salt-works. Manistee is noted for manufacture of sawed and planed lumber and shingles, its production of the latter surpassing, as far as known, that of any other town in the world. It has good public schools, several churches and a library. Manistee has gasworks, three foundries and a public water-supply. The town was incorporated in 1867. Its name means Spirit of the Woods. Population 13,736.  Manitoba was called the prairie-province up to 1906, when Alberta and Saskatchewan, having received provincial autonomy, also shared the title. It lies near the center of North America and midway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The southern boundary is Minnesota and North Dakota. The 60th parallel is its northern boundary and it embraces a third of the western shore of Hudson's Bay.

Area. In size it is larger than Scotland, Ireland and Wales combined: it embraces 251,000 square miles of territory. Conceive the extent of its rich acres. Placing a family of five on every half section of land, there is room for 2,000,000 of a farm population.

History. The first white settlement (the Selkirk Colony) was made in 1812 on both sides of the Red River below Winnipeg, then called Fort Garry. The colonists were mostly from Scotland, and many of their descendants still reside on the old homesteads. The colony remained under Hudson Bay Company rule at Fort Garry until 1870, when the whole western country, excepting British Columbia, which already was an independent colony, passed under the control of the British government by purchase. The prairie was at that time known as Assiniboia. The price paid to the Hudson Bay Company to extinguish their title was $1,500,000, they retaining two one-mile-square sections of land in each township of 36 sections (six miles square) and small areas around their trading-posts, about one twentieth of the land all told. In 1870, when Manitoba was created a province and became a part of the Canadian federation, the boundaries were much smaller than the enlargements of 1880 and 1912 made them. Only 36 per cent. of the population is native to the province. In the early days the population was largely French and French half-breeds. When the agricultural possibilities of the country became known, there was a large immigration from the United States, Great Britain, central and northern Europe and eastern Canada.

Drainage. The fertile belts paralleling the shores of Lake Winnipeg at one time, it is thought, formed the bed of the lake. (Scientists call it Lake Agassiz.) When the lake disappeared, it left deposits of clay and silt which are now overlaid by two to four feet of black vegetable mould, constituting the most magnificent wheatlands in the known world. Through this valley Red River flows northward into Lake Winnipeg, which with Lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis on the west (in reality parts of one whole) finds its outlet in Hudson Bay, and thus the lakes and rivers of the province drain the whole country. All Manitoba belongs to the Hudson Bay drainage-system. For this drainage the great lakes of the province are the reservoirs. Winnipeg River is some 200 miles long. At its falls from Lake of the Woods is one of the greatest and most easily utilized water-powers in the world.

Climate. Unlike some of the other provinces, Manitoba possesses but little variety of climate. There is much sunlight the year through. This ensures rapid and successful growth of vegetation. The autumns are