232 LATEST EXPLORATIONS IN BRITISH N. AMERICA. [Jdne 25, 1860. 



isolated bills. That ridge extended to the soutli of Cote de Prairie, and its 

 southern side formed the well-known Council Bluffs at Mandau Fort. It was 

 really not a ridge, but the edge of an immense plateau of high country which 

 stretched to the west, and formed the watershed between the rivers that 

 flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and those that flowed into the Arctic Ocean by 

 Lake Winnipeg ; so that this transverse watershed of the continent was 

 hardly anything more than a group of soft, hardly consolidated strata, which 

 had been left uneroded during the time the immense valleys north and south 

 of it had been scooped out. The whole of the country composing this high 

 plateau was, from the nature of the strata, unfertile. The soil arising from 

 the decomposition of this was highly charged with sulphate of lime and 

 sulphate of soda, and most of the lakes were salt from the amount of saline 

 matter with which the soil was impregnated. 



With regard to the means of access, at present the Hudson Bay Company, 

 who were in possession, brought their heavy goods into the country by way of 

 Hudson Bay. It was a very difficult route, and he believed the Company 

 were thinking of giving it up, and instead bringing their goods overland through 

 the United States by way of Red River. This was a very practical method of 

 entering the country. With respect to another means of access, or that by 

 Avhich the exploring party was sent, very little could be said in favour of it at 

 present. It was a curious belt of country, and, geologically considered, was all 

 mountain range, very much interrupted by watercourses. It had been care- 

 fully examined by the Canadian Survey, and the result was found to involve 

 six changes in the mode of transit between Lake Superior and Red River. If 

 thought necessary, it would be possible to enter the country by that means, 

 and even to lay a railroad down, but the outlay would be enormous. 



The journey he made, to which Captain Palliser had referred, was a trip he 

 took in 1857, when he went almost up to the mountains with dogs. He 

 started from Edmoi\ton House, struck the head-waters of the Mackenzie River, 

 and followed it up to Jasper House. His provisions ran out, and he was 

 obliged to send his dogs back. He went on into the mountains, and got to 

 within thirty or forty miles of his track of the preceding summer in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Mount Murchison. He then returned through the woods by Lake 

 St. Ann to Edmonton. The first trip he made into the mountains he left 

 Captain Palliser at Slaughter Camp, and made his way up Bow River to Ver- 

 milion Pass. There were several passes reported, and he chose Vermilion 

 Pass because it looked the best. It should be remarked that all these passes — 

 the Vermilion Pass, the Kananaski Pass, and the Kutanie Pass — only carried 

 you through the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains Proper, the great 

 watershed of the continent, was really the eastern flank of an immense tract 

 of mountainous country. They were of no great altitude until you reached 

 the Cascade Range, which ran like a wall along the coast, broken by a few 

 nicks — the Eraser River nick and the Columbia River nick. Between the 

 Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, there was a mass of country still to 

 be examined, and when it was examined he believed the passes would be found 

 to continue on. The question had still to be determined whether there was a 

 horse-track. As far as had been ascertained at present, there was no horse- 

 track, owing to the quantity of snow which accumulated in the passes. 



])r. John Rae, m.d., f.r.g.s., was delighted to hear that Captain Palliser 

 and his associates had carried out their surveys with such success, and with so 

 little loss in a difficult country. He was glad on another account, because he 

 found, by reference to old charts of the passes used by the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany for a great many years past, and of which he knew there were charts put 

 into the hands of people some twenty-five or thirty years before, that the 

 observations made by the Company's agents were nearly correct. He believed 

 most of the passes had been traversed previously by Iludson Bay J)C!ople, but 



