Mr. Alfred von Hamerstein, who has lived in Athabaska district since 1897, trading and prospecting, was examined before the select committee of the Senate of Canada in 1907.
S. S. Grahame at McMurray.
The agricultural resources of the Athabaska district, as far as this witness could understand, were indicated by the farming that was then actually being conducted
With Fairly Good Success
at Athabaska. At Baptiste lake there was, when the witness first went there, no agriculture attempted. He was the first man to introduce farming there. He kept a trading store, and the natives insisted on having different kinds of seeds. Amongst others he got some flower seeds, and some lovely flowers were raised. The people raise some crops there now. It is a very good ranching country—first-class. Several people went up there with cattle. A man named Mailloux took one hundred and twenty head of cattle, and they were in good shape. The kind of grass there is a red top, a very big grass. The country has all been burnt over and the timber has fallen, so the grass cannot be cut with a mowing machine, but in some places they have cleared away the fallen timber and can use machinery now. Vetches and wild pea vines grow all over that country, but there is no bunch grass to be found; it is mostly red top. How far north it grows witness could not say. He had traced it up in very large quantities on Slave river. About a hundred or two hundred yards from the river there is a big slough, and this grass grows all along there very luxuriantly. There is no place along the northern shores of Lake Athabaska where grass can be grown. It is mostly rock and muskeg.
At McMurray, according to Mr. von Hamerstein, the land is good, and between the junction of the Clearwater and the Athabaska there is a flat of land about three miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to a mile and a half or two miles wide, which is very fine soil; but the rest of it is all hills covered by an inch and a half of moss, under the moss being the limestone rock. They raise good garden stuff at McMurray. A party there had good crops for three years.
Where there is soil to be found it is very good, mostly old river beds or where eddies have accumulated soil; but the rest is sand and muskeg. East of McMurray there are several lakes, the centre of what is described as fine hay country. The natives there have from sixty to eighty horses, and there are reported to be
Good Grazing Patches
round the lakes. It is probably a better ranching country than an agricultural one. To the northwest of this district are some muskeg lakes, where the natives have quite a few horses and cut considerable hay.