410 Canada. 



The central interior region, dotted with lakes and 

 intricate river systems, is a continuation of the forest- 

 less arid and subarid, plains and prairies of the country 

 West of the Mississippi River, toward the north 

 changing by steps into lowlands studded with open 

 treegrowth, and barren tundra frozen all the year, a 

 million square miles answering to this last descrip- 

 tion. The Pacific Slope is a rough and lofty mountain 

 country, the extension of the Rockies and Coast 

 Ranges, with a variable, in part humid and temperate, 

 in part dry and rigorous climate, more or less heavily 

 wooded, about 600,000 square miles, with the Fraser 

 River in the South forming the most important 

 drainage basin. 



The Atlantic portion, south of the plateau-liko, 

 bare, or scantily wooded Hudson Bay and Labrador 

 country, with a climate, somewhat similar to North 

 Eastern Germany, is formed by the slopes of the water- 

 sheds of the Great Lakes and of their mighty outlet, 

 the St. Lawrence River and its Gulf; the slopes rising 

 gradually northward to the low range of the Height ef 

 Land, a plateau with low hills, not over 1500 feet 

 elevation, which cuts it off from the northern country 

 and forms the limit of commercial forest. This 

 region, the bulk of the provinces of Ontario and Que- 

 bec a belt of not exceeding 300 miles in width and 

 about 1500 miles in length, altogether 300,000 square 

 miles with 93,000 square miles in the maritime 

 provinces, around 250 million acres in all, represents, 

 outside of British Columbia, the true forest region of 

 Canada, and at the same time the centre of Canadian 

 civilization. 



