This tends to show that the frosts are not very severe, during the time potatoes are growing and ripening. When I passed, the onions, lettuce and other things planted in the gardens were pretty well advanced, the onion stalks being about as large as pencils. No cereals had been sown, but I think barley would succeed fairly well. I am not aware of any continuous record of temperature at Fort Good Hope, so I cannot say whether the climate at that place is suitable for the growth of plants during June, July, and August. While I was there the days were pleasant and warm and the nights not unpleasantly cool. Nor, if we omit July 2, when snow fell, did I anywhere note any temperature below freezing during July and August.
“It may be said that my observations extended over too great a range of latitude, to be of any value in indicating the temperature any period or any place, as while they were being taken we were constantly moving south. This is true, but it must be remembered that in moving south we were leaving the area of constant sunlight and getting to where night has a cooling effect, so that the objection has not the same weight it would otherwise have.
“The statement given below of the duration of sunlight in the months of May, June, July and August, serves to show that a difference in latitude has not the same effect in changing the summer temperatures of places in high latitudes as it has in more southerly localities. Unfortunately, the records at posts in the district are too few and meagre to either confirm or disprove this theory, and to use the records of such places as Fort Franklin, on Great Bear lake, and Fort Rae, on Great Slave lake, is hardly fair. These points are over three hundred miles apart in an air line, and the temperature at either or both may be influenced by the local conformation of the ground, or other unknown causes. However, taking the records at these places, we have the following comparison: —
| Mean temperature | Fort Franklin, | Fort Rae, | ||
| during | lat. 65° 12′ | lat. 62° 40′ | ||
| May, | 35.2° | Fahr. | 27.7° | Fahr. |
| June, | 51.4° | 51.4° | ||
| July, | 52° | 61.2° | ||
| August, | 50.6° | 56.5° | ||
“The Fort Franklin data are given in Professor Loomis’s Meteorology, published in 1875. He gives as his authority Dove’s tables in the report of the British Association for 1847. Who the observer was is not stated, but it was probably Franklin. The Fort Rae statistics were furnished by Mr. Carpmael to the Senate committee appointed to inquire into the resources of Mackenzie basin, and cover the same months as those given for Fort Franklin. These statistics, as far as they go, confirm the theory, for the extremes at Fort Franklin differ 16.8°, while at Fort Rae the difference is 33.5°, and the monthly differences at the former place are much less than the latter.[[18]]
“I have computed the following table which shows comprehensively the different durations of sunlight for the latitudes of Ottawa, Chipewyan, and Forts Simpson, Good Hope and McPherson.
| Ottawa. | Chipewyan. | Simpson. | Good Hope. | McPherson. | ||||||
| Latitude | 45° | 26′ | 58° | 43′ | 61° | 52′ | 66° | 16′ | 67° | 26′ |
| H. Sun. | H. | M. | H. | M. | H. | M. | H. | M. | H. | M. |
| May 1: | 14 | 08 | 15 | 34 | 16 | 05 | 17 | 06 | 17 | 30 |
| June 1: | 15 | 16 | 17 | 36 | 18 | 39 | 21 | 04 | 24 | 00 |
| June 21: | 15 | 30 | 18 | 44 | 19 | 14 | 22 | 48 | 24 | 00 |
| July 1: | 15 | 24 | 18 | 36 | 19 | 02 | 22 | 04 | 24 | 00 |
| Aug. 1: | 14 | 32 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 56 | 18 | 16 | 19 | 24 |
| Aug. 31: | 13 | 08 | 13 | 52 | 14 | 08 | 14 | 36 | 14 | 44 |
| H. Sun. | H. | H. | H. | H. | H. |
| May: | 456 | 514 | 538 | 592 | 706 |
| June: | 462 | 549 | 570 | 662 | 720 |
| July: | 464 | 530 | 558 | 625 | 684 |
| Aug.: | 423 | 467 | 481 | 519 | 527 |
| —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | |
| Totals. | 1805 | 2060 | 2147 | 2398 | 2637 |
“The number of hours of sunlight in each month has been obtained from the mean of the numbers at the beginning and ending of the month. This does not give a strictly correct result, as the sun’s declination, on which the length of the day depends, does not change uniformly, the daily change in June, when the sun has attained its greatest declination, being small as compared with that of September, when the sun is near the equator. Were the light of each day separately computed, the difference would be even more decidedly in favor of the north. In computing the above table, refraction has not been taken into account except in the case of Fort McPherson. Allowance for refraction would increase the duration of sunlight at all the other places, but much more in the north than in the south. As the table now stands it assigns to Fort McPherson eight hundred and thirty-two hours, or thirty-four and two-third days more sunlight than Ottawa, during a total period of two thousand five hundred and fifty-two hours. A better mode of comparison is to reduce the number of hours of sunlight at each place to days. It stands thus:—Ottawa, seventy-five days, five hours; Chipewyan, eighty-five days, twenty hours; Fort Simpson, eighty-nine days, eleven hours; Fort Good Hope, ninety-nine days, twenty-two hours; Fort McPherson, one hundred and nine days, twenty-one hours, and this out of a total of one hundred and twenty-three days.
Agriculture at Fort Norman.