CHAPTER X.
NORTHERN ALBERTA.
Agriculture and Arable Land in the Eastern Section or
“Athabaska Country.”
A Section of the West Where Officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company Were Directed to Cultivate Gardens.—Some Points Where Wheat has been grown, Including the Sample which took First Prize at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.—Crude Indian Gardens at Cowpar lake.—Livestock Grazing out in December and January.
A glance at the latest “Railway Map of the Dominion of Canada,” published by the Department of the Interior, will show that the surveyed, and consequently fully-explored, part of the province of Alberta extends considerably farther north than do the lines which mark the northernmost limit of the surveyed territory in Saskatchewan.
The areas of arable land in Northern Alberta are admittedly so extensive and important, and there has been such a large accumulation of evidence as to the latent agricultural wealth of the actual agricultural experiments in this most promising region, that, with the object of enabling the reader the more readily to follow the text, and to assist him in locating the geographical points mentioned, it has been deemed advisable to divide the material referring to arable lands and agriculture in this territory into two separate chapters, corresponding with two divisions of the area immediately under review. The country readily lends itself to such a division; in fact, invites it.
The region west of the 114th meridian has long been known and designated as “Peace river country,” and possesses characteristics, and to some extent, a history quite its own. The remaining or eastern half of the territory, at least as far north as the lower reach of Peace river, is the main basin of the Athabaska and, as such, will be treated as a distinct area in the present chapter, the one immediately following to be devoted to the subject of the arable lands and agricultural possibilities of Peace river country.
Athabaska river, which is the most southerly of the three great tributaries of the Mackenzie, rises in Rocky mountains near Mount Brown, at an altitude of about five thousand seven hundred feet, and pursues a northeasterly and northerly course for nearly six hundred miles to Athabaska lake, falling in this distance some five thousand feet, and being interrupted by several series of rapids. In the first three hundred miles of its course it falls about four thousand feet, and receives in succession Baptiste river from the west, the Macleod and Pembina from the south, and the Lesser Slave, draining the large lake of that name, from the west. Below its confluence with the last named stream, the Athabaska turns southeastward for some fifty miles and then resumes its northerly course. In the course of the next one hundred and fifty miles it receives, in succession, La Biche river from the east; Quito or Calling river from the west; Big Mouth brook from the east; Pelican river from the west; and House river from the east. Just below the mouth of the last river the Athabaska strikes a range of low hills, and in forcing a passage through them is deflected eastward, and for a distance of about seventy-five miles contains many rapids, falling in this distance some four hundred feet. At the lower end of this stretch it receives the waters of Clearwater river, its principal tributary below Lesser Slave river. The Clearwater rises on the height of land between the Churchill and the Athabaska, and pursuing a nearly straight easterly course for some one hundred and fifty miles, mingles its limpid waters with the sediment-laden flood of the latter stream. In the lower part of its course the Clearwater occupies a deep valley and is very rapid. Thirty or forty miles above its mouth it is joined by the Pembina, a stream of about equal volume. Below the mouth of the Clearwater the Athabaska pursues a nearly direct course northward, receiving Red, Moose, and Bar rivers from the west, and enters Athabaska lake through a number of channels including alluvial islands.
Lake Athabaska was known to the pioneer fur-traders and explorers as “Lake of the Hills,” and it is so described by Mackenzie and others.
The country drained by the Athabaska is