IX THE NORTH WEST OF CANADA. 77 



country blue or yellow, or both. The grasses of the plateau are 

 for the real pasturage species, growing so high, that Prof Macoun* 

 had great difficulty in forcing his way through them. No better 

 summer pasture is to be found in all the wide North ^V'est. 



The valley of the White Mud River is fully 600 feet deep, and 

 its banks, more or less scarped, afford complete sections of all 

 formations found in the hills. Small beds of carbonaceous shale 

 occur throughout the section, often containing thin lignite seams. 

 At the lower part, there is nearly always a band of nearly pure 

 white clays and sands, bleached by the action of vegetable debris. 

 This band, 20 to 15 feet thick, forms a conspicuous object up and 

 down the valley, having the appearance of great snow-banks. 

 Workable seams of lignite exist nearly everywhere at the base of 

 the Laramie, but, as yet, no fossils of any kind, except silicified 

 wood, have been found in this formation in Canada. 



One of the most interesting of the Cretaceous coal-bearing 

 regions is found on the Kananaskis River, in the Cascade Coal 

 Basin of the Rocky Mountains. Its coal beds have been traced 

 continuously for sixty-five miles to the Red Deer River, and are 

 still found running to the North-westward, beyond that river to an 

 undetermined distance. The Cretaceous rocks here form a long, 

 narrow, synclinal fold, which, owing to the immense pressure from 

 the South-westward, have been bodily overturned in the opposite 

 direction, the mountain limestone being folded over them. This 

 enormous pressure has converted the coal in the contained coal- 

 beds into anthracite ; some of this is of excellent quality, but 

 much has been so crushed 'and pulverised as to be useless. 



At the Canadian Anthracite Coal Company's Shaft, there are 

 seven seams of coal in a total thickness of 155 feet of measures. 

 The lowest and most important seam is 4 feet 6 inches thick, and 

 •one hundred and thirty-five feet above this is a second, nearly 

 4 feet thick. This is a common feature of the Cretaceous coal 

 beds of the North AVest and the Rockies, viz., the number of coal 

 forests which must have grown and sunk whilst new forests grew 

 upon their remains. In some places as many as eight coal seams, 

 separated from one another by Carbonaceous shales and sandy 



* Manitoba and the Great Nortli-Wesl. 



