304 Our North Land. 



of the Pine River, is found entering the valley from the mountains 

 to the south-west. Here it is about twenty-five feet wide and six 

 inches deep in July, with a rapid current. Between it and Summit 

 Lake are a series of beaver swamps, where in wet seasons the water 

 runs both ways. Here on this summit, in latitude 55° 24' 17", the 

 height is but 2,440 feet above the sea, or, according to all authori- 

 ties, less than 2,500 feet. 



From this point we are to descend to the great agricultural 

 plains of the Pine and Athabaska Rivers, and the vast fertile 

 regions of the Peace River and its tributaries. We have hurriedly 

 sketched the distance from Port Simpson on the Pacific to this 

 Pass, in view of its fitness for the location of a railway line to 

 connect the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic, via Hudson's Bay. It 

 is almost needless to cite authorities in support of the Pine River 

 Pass as the most available railway route through the Rockies, but 

 some may not be acquainted with its great advantages. Dr. Sel- 

 wyn, Director of the\ Geological Survey of Canada, who has travelled 

 through the Pass, says : — "From what I have myself seen, and from 

 what I have been able to ascertain from others, respecting the 

 route by the Leather Pass, when compared with that — my know- 

 ledge of which is also partly from personal examination and partly 

 from the testimony of others — by the Athabasca and Smoky Rivers, 

 and thence by the Pine Pass to Giscome Portage and Fort George, 

 I have no hesitation in saying that the latter route is probably in 

 every respect the best in the interests of the railroad and of the 

 country at large. Taking Edmonton, on the Saskatchewan, and 

 Fort George, on the Fraser, as the initial points, it will, I believe, 

 be found that by Pine Pass the line could not only be carried 

 almost the whole distance through a magnificent agricultural and 

 pastoral country, but that it would be actually shorter than the 

 Leather Pass route, and that it would probably not present any 

 greater engineering difficulties." 



Professor G. M. Dawson, of the Geological Survey, speaking of 

 the most difficult section of a railway from the Pacific coast to the 

 prairie country, via the Pine River Pass, says : — " The total dis- 

 tance by the river valley, which a railway line would have to follow 



