EXPLORATION TO THE PEACE RIVER 107 



Pacific breezes carrying moisture, the alleged cause of the mild 

 climate and luxuriant vegetation of the Peace River Valley. 

 Later on I shall attempt to show the true cause of the mild climate 

 of the eastern base along the rocky mountains. 



The next day, Anderson and I climbed a limestone mountain, 

 3,000 feet high, on the other side of the river, and found the ascent 

 both toilsome and dangerous. We got little to repay us for our 

 trip. We did not see the slightest sign of an alpine plant and I 

 confess it with a feeling of disappointment. I looked about me 

 and found them not. We ate our lunch on the very verge of a 

 cliff, from which we could look down on a little mountain tarn 

 1 ,000 feet below, and our hearts yearned for water, but there was 

 none to be had. We reached camp at 6 p.m., exhausted but well 

 pleased with our trip. I had settled one point that, in this region, 

 Arctic vegetation is not to be found on a limestone mountain in 

 latitude 56°, at a height of 5,000 feet above the sea. 



At noon on the sixteenth, we reached the Rocky Mountain 

 Canyon and, from sheer exhaustion, I was scarcely able to ascend 

 the bank. Our tents were pitched and I commenced to change 

 my plants and dry my papers. This had been part of my daily 

 work for nearly three months so that a halt always found me busy. 

 The cause of my great weariness was more from pulling our un- 

 wieldy boat in making the wide crossings that we had to make 

 from side to side of the river to suit Dr. Selwyn's ideas about 

 camping, than from climbing. I quote the following from my 

 report: "On the afternoon of the 17th, Mclennan and I ascended 

 the Buffalo's Head, the view from which is so graphically des- 

 cribed in Butler's "Wild North Land." We, too, found the base 

 of the mountain lying "thick with brule and tangled forest," but, 

 worse thant his, was the mass of pea vine, vetch and various weeds 

 and grasses which covered the logs and made our progress both 

 slow and laborious. Before Butler, "there rose abruptly a mass 

 of yellow grass and blue anemones," and before us, the same steep; 

 but the grass waved green on the hill-side, and the herald of spring 

 {Anemone patens var. Nuttalliana) had already perfected its seeds 

 and disappeared under the wealth of grass that covered its grave. 

 We also stood on that hill-top and looked on the wondrous pano- 



