A Nobleman's View of the JS'orth-West. 545 



upon it, and this steamer lies up during the night. A new company 

 is, I am informed, now being organized, and there is no reason why, 

 if the new vessels are properly equipped and furnished with electric 

 lights, which may now be cheaply provided, they should not keep 

 up a night and day service, so that the settlers at Prince Albert, 

 Edmonton, and elsewhere may not have, during another season, to 

 suffer great privations incident to the wants of transportation which 

 has loaded the banks of Grand Rapids during the present year with 

 freight, awaiting steam transport. 



" The great cretaceous coal seams at the headwaters of the rivers 

 rising in the Rocky Mountains or in the neighbourhood of streams 

 flowing towards your doors should not be forgotten. Although you 

 have some coal in districts nearer to you, we should remember that 

 on the headwaters of these streams there is plenty of the same, 

 which can be floated down to you before you have a complete rail- 

 way system. Want of time as well as a wish to see the less vaunted 

 parts of the country took me south-westward from Battleford, over 

 land which in many of the maps is variously marked as consisting 

 of arid plains or as a continuation of the " American Desert." The 

 newer maps, especially those containing the explorations of Prof. 

 Macoun, have corrected this wholly erroneous idea. For the two 

 days' march — that is to say, for about sixty or seventy miles south 

 of Battleford — we passed over land whose excellence could not be 

 excelled for agricultural purposes. Thence to the neighbourhood of 

 the Red Deer Valley the soil is lighter, but still, in my opinion, in 

 most places good for grain — in any case most admirable for summer 

 pasturage, and it will certainly be good also for stock in winter as 

 soon as it shall pay to have some hay stored in the valleys. The 

 whole of it has been the favourite feeding ground of the Buffalo. 

 Their tracks from watering place to watering place, never too far 

 apart from each other, were everywhere to be seen, while in very 

 many tracks their dung lay so thickly that the appearance of the 

 ground was only comparable to that of an English farm yard. Let 

 us hope that the entreact will not be long before the disappearance 

 of the buffalo on these scenes is followed by the appearance of 

 domestic herds. 



55 



