1 82 APPENDIX. 



rivers as safely as in the latitude of St. Paul's. It is 

 said that all the grains of the cool, temperate latitudes 

 can be produced abundantly. It is the great resort 

 of the buffalo herds, the presence of which in vast 

 numbers sufficiently attest the plentiful supply of grass 

 on the plains at all seasons.. Those who take perhaps 

 a sanguine view of the subject, assert that there is 

 here a country four times the size of the British 

 Islands, with a fertile soil, navigable rivers, and 

 abundance of coal, now almost wholly unoccupied, which 

 is perfectly adapted to settlement. They compare the 

 state of this unnoticed territory to that of Europe at 

 the period of the earliest Roman expansion, when 

 Gaul, Scandinavia, and Britain were regarded as in- 

 hospitable regions fit only for barbarians, and antici- 

 pate an early rush of colonists from the old country to 

 seize upon its natural advantages. 



" The evidence is sufficiently strong to show that 

 this vast region ought no longer to be left unknown 

 and unexamined. An exploring party is said to have 

 already visited the sources of the South Saskatchewan, 

 and there must be abundance of information regarding 

 the whole territory in the possession of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company. The descendants of the first colony 

 planted by Lord Selkirk in 1812 still maintain their 

 ground on the Red River, though they have ex- 

 perienced many vicissitudes, chiefly by plagues of 



