388 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE BY LAND, 



from wMcli it has taken its name, it fixes but a 

 slight hold upon the light, powdery soil with its 

 slender roots. Horses and cattle pull much of it up 

 in grazing, and sheep, which thrive equally upon it, 

 crop the delicate plant so closely that it frequently 

 does not recover. In this way the Lilloet flats, which 

 were once celebrated as rich feeding grounds, have 

 now become bare, dusty plains, on which a few scat- 

 tered plants of wild sage and absinthe still remain, 

 where the bunch-grass has been destroyed. The 

 facts, too, that the bunch-grass requires three years 

 to come to perfection, and fully recover after being 

 eaten down, and that, from its mode of growth in 

 distinct tufts, the ground is really but scantily 

 covered with herbage, confirm the belief that, for a 

 stock farm to be successfal, its range of pasturage 

 must be very extensive. But there is room enough 

 now, and any who may devote themselves to the 

 raising of sheep and cattle will certainly reap a rich 

 harvest of profit. Strange to say, from some cause 

 — either want of capital, or the prospect of more 

 rapid profit from other pursuits — ^it has been little 

 followed hitherto, and the land lies open to the first- 

 comer. 



The extent of agricultural land in British Columbia 

 is very limited indeed. With the exception of a 

 small district between the south end of the Okanagan 

 Lake and the Grand Prairie, on the road from thence to 

 the Thompson Eiver; a few other patches of good land 

 in the interior ; and the delta of the Fraser, which is 

 covered almost entirely with dense forest, and exposed 



