but in some seasons not without difficulty, owing to frosts. He had also tried a few grains of oats, which he procured accidentally, and obtained a return of astonishing abundance. About the date just referred to, the potato plants of Smoky river post (The Forks) were badly cut down by frost, the tubers being, however, quite ripe, fine and large.
View on Halfway river.
Doctor Dawson pointed out that Mr. Horetzky had been told that the plains were often nearly bare up to the month of December, though the winter usually sets in with the month of November. Sir Alexander Mackenzie remarked the same absence of snow in the early winter months of 1792. It was entirely gone on April 5, 1793, and gnats and mosquitoes were troublesome on April 20. Horses almost invariably wintered out well without requiring to be fed. Hay should be provided for cattle, to ensure perfect safety, for a period of three or four months, though in some seasons it was necessary to feed the animals for a few weeks only. The Indians of ‘Cree Settlement’ on Sturgeon lake wintered their horses without any difficulty round the borders of a neighbouring lake, the shores of which were partly open. From Hudson Hope, the horses were sent southward to Moberly lake to winter, and according to Mr. Selwyn, did well there. Lesser Slave lake, with its wonderful natural meadows, has long been known as an excellent place for wintering stock, and was referred to as such by Sir J. Richardson.
From such comparison as could be made, according to Doctor Dawson, it would be premature to allow that the climate of Peace river was inferior to that of the region about Edmonton on the Saskatchewan. It was true, he admitted, that in both Saskatchewan and Peace river districts the season was none too long for the cultivation of wheat, but if the crop could be counted on as a sure one—and experience even then seemed to indicate that it might—the occurrence of early and late frosts might be
Regarded With Comparative Indifference.
The season was at least equally short throughout the whole fertile belt from Peace river to Manitoba, though early and late frosts were not so common in the low valley of Red river.
The almost simultaneous advance of spring along the whole line of this fertile belt, Doctor Dawson pointed out, was indicated by the dates of the flowering of the various plants, a point referred to by him in some detail elsewhere. It was further unquestionable that the winter was less severe, and not subject to the same extremes in Peace river and upper Saskatchewan regions as in Manitoba.
Scientists, Doctor Dawson remarked, had already found reason to believe that the early and late frosts, and not the absence of a sufficient aggregate amount of heat, constituted the limiting condition of wheat culture in the Northwest, but that neither Saskatchewan nor Peace river countries lay upon the actual verge of the profitable cultivation of wheat appeared to be proved by the fact that oats succeeded on the Saskatchewan, and also—in so far as one or two seasons could be accepted as evidence—on Peace river; while it was well known that this cereal is less tolerant of summer frost than wheat.
This, Doctor Dawson remarked, is further proved by the fact that at Fort Vermilion and Athabaska lake, one hundred and eighty and three hundred miles, respectively, northeast of Dunvegan, Professor Macoun had found wheat and barley ripening well, but in this instance the fact was complicated by the circumstance of the decreasing altitude of the country, which introduced a new condition.