COLONEL A, D. DAVIDSON, ORIGINATOR OF THE "AMERICAN INVASION" OF CANADA. without any great elevation, and very little vegetation of any kind. South of the tree line there is a belt of sparsely wooded country from one to two hundred miles wide. It is not a forest country, but it is wooded along the streams, and in the more protected places. South of that, again, there is a belt of forest, two hundred miles wide, that is essentially suited for agricultural purposes. It starts on the east between Lake Winnipeg and Split lake, and extends westward along the Churchill river to the Athabasca river; the eastern side of the tract being the Nelson river. The belt of forest is, for the most part, excellent agricultural land. Although a little harder to settle up, and not so productive to settlers who are going in and looking for farms cleared for them and ready to put the wheat in, it will be as fine an agricultural tract of land as there is in the West. Everywhere, in travelling through it, the evidence of rich vegetation is abundant, and wherever any kind of agriculture or horticulture has been attempted, it has been eminently successful. This tract is a continuation northward of the Saskatchewan country, and will grow any thing grown in Ontario-potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, cauliflowers and all the ordinary garden produce, excellent potatoes being grown in the district around Nelson House. The summer is warm and there is a good rainfall. Mr. Stupart, superintendent of the Dominion meteorological service, reports that the temperature conditions of the district between Lake Winnipeg and Split lake, from May to September, compared with Europe, are as follows: May, with north of Scotland and southern Norway; June, with Scotland; July, with south of England; August, with Scotland; September, with northern Norway and Sweden. The Indians, in hunting, constantly plant little patches of potatoes here and there in the spring, leave them all summer, and go back in the fall and dig them up when they return to their hunting grounds, and use them for their winter supply. They are not hoed or cultivated in any way, and are not looked after from the time they are planted in the spring, until they are dug in the fall. They grow sufficiently to keep down the weeds and are usually planted on islands as a protection against wild animals. Mr. Tyrrell has frequently dug splendid potatoes from these unattended Indian gardens. North of Lake Winnipeg, there are from five to ten thousand square miles of an extension of the Manitoba claylands, that make as fine country as there is in Manitoba, or anywhere else. Throughout this section, there is a variety of timber, including banksian pine, spruce, larch, poplar and hemlock, which would serve for pulpwood. The lakes and streams are stocked with enormous quantities of fish-as full in fact, as the water can supply food for them— trout, whitefish and salmon. In some of the small, shallower lakes Mr. Tyrrell has seen the fins of thousands of white fish sticking up out of the water, while paddling along in a canoe. The whole territory is capable of supporting a thick population. There has been practically no exploration of the Huronian and Keewatin rocks northeastward towards the Nelson river, and no prospecting, so that no one can say whether they are to be a barren or rich portion of those rocks, which are rich elsewhere. They have large possibilities. From that point there is an area of sandstone in the vicinity of Cree lake which may contain copper, but we know nothing of it yet. In age it approximates that of the rocks. that are rich in copper around Lake Superior. Mr. Tyrrel! has heard that coal has been found out near Lac La Ronge, but most of the country north of the Saskatchewan river has not been explored for coal. He is confident that the same seams that outcrop on the Saskatchewan will, in the west, at all events, be traced much further north. There is then, besides the thousand miles of wheat-growing plains, a country through which the Canadian Northern Railway to Hudson Bay will pass, that will support, by its agriculture, fish and pulpwood products, a railway of its own; and the two hundred miles of track through the comparatively barren. land this side of Fort Churchill will be a mere nothing of unproductiveness, compared with the desert crossed by some of the United States railways to the Pacific coast. What about the trip across the bay and through the strait? For over two hundred years, the Hudson Bay Company sent two, and sometimes three, ships a year to their forts around the bay; and there have been many whalers in that region. The Hudson Bay Company's ships were of small tonnage, and at the mercy of the winds, until comparatively recent years, when steamers have been employed. But only two vessels were lost in all that time. The bay itself is not frozen over in winter, so the strait, which constitutes the real obstacle to a prolonged navigation season, is never frozen. The ice which blocks the strait at times in the early summer, comes down by way of Fox channel, from the impenetrable fastnesses of the real North. Several expeditions have been sent to test the navigability of the trait, but they have been regarded with distrust by some who felt that the interests of eastern Canada were so much against the opening of the new route that the pessimist always conquered the optimist when the reports were being at that time of the year. But there are snowstorms around Halifax, and other places where navigation continues all winter. Mr. A. P. Low, the present director of the Geological Survey of Canada, whose experience of the strait and bay extends back to 1896 and 1897, was in command of an expedition by the Neptune, in 1903 and 1904. He says: "The strait is navigable from about the middle of July until the first day of November anyway, and a couple of weeks might be added at the end, because the new ice in Hudson Bay is of no consequence to a ship until it gets to be fifteen or eighteen inches thick. For from three and a half to four months, then, the ordinary tramp steamers could be used. The ice is rafted, and in the midsummer months is easily broken. You just run into it and it breaks to pieces, and you see four times as much as you did before." Mr. Low says specially prepared steamers could navigate Hudson Bay and strait longer than the period he mentioned. You could navigate the strait all winter, if you had a specially prepared vessel. pared vessel. Altogether, Mr. Low considers that the Hudson Bay route, when it is open, is an even clearer one than the St. Lawrence. written. There are men accustomed to northern conditions, who are confident that Hudson strait can be navigated for eight months in the year. Commander Wakeman was sent, in 1897, by the Dominion Government, to investigate conditions in the strait. He says that he went into a pack of ice, against his better judgment, and did not reach the bay until July 12, having been jammed in from June 23 to July 10. If he had kept outside the drift ice he would have been in the bay several days earlier. He travelled back and forth, and made his last attempt to get into the bay on October 29, when there were heavy winds and snowstorms. There was no ice, and the fact that the coast was not charted proved a great difficulty. He has no doubt that, when the strait is perfectly in navigation it will be safe until the end of October. It is not ice, but snow that makes sailing dangerous To sum up: Even if Hudson strait is open only three months and a half, there will be quite time to get enormous quantities of wheat and cattle, from western Canada to Europe, by the cold-storage route; and unless what has happened elsewhere fails in this part of the worldand it cannot well be believed that it will -the achievement will be much greater than the promise. For the formidable becomes the familiar, and the apparently appalling obstacle of Nature is made the humble servant of scientific com merce. LEVEL DECKS IN OCEAN STORMS By WILLIAM T. WALSH UST below Newcastleon-Tyne, on the east coast of England, a little craft was bowling away at the lively clip of ten knots an hour. It was a mere bit of a boat, apparently not much over one hundred feet in length by about one-tenth that in breadth. With a glass the name See-bar, painted on the sides, could be made out. As she emerged from the mouth of the Tyne into the waters of the North Sea, the miniature craft encountered a stiff head of wind. Her pilot brought her part way about, to all appearances steering her into the trough of the sea and held her to that course. The See-bar began to roll, describing an immense arc. Now as the waves dashed over her, unquestionably she was shipping much water. Then a curious thing happened. Though the course of the boat had not been changed, the rolling motion began to grow less and less, till finally, it practically ceased, and the vessel merely rose and fell with the chopping of the seas; otherwise, her decks were as level as if she were in some secure anchorage. What is a marvel to the stranger no longer is such, however, to the residents of Newcastle-on-Tyne. To them the See-bar, with its gyroscope wheel, the key to the mystery, is now merely a nine |