IMPORTANCE OF CENTRAL BRITISH AMERICA. 42] 
Winter wheat has recently been tried at Red River Settlement 
with complete success, and all vegetables which will grow in Canada 
East succeed well at Red River. The mineral wealth of this vast 
central region is but partially known. Already the existence of ex- 
tensive beds of Lignite coal on the Upper Saskatchewan and its 
tributaries have been determined.* 
With the lignite coal are also found vast deposits of clay iron-stone. 
These extend much further east than the lignite layers, which have 
been removed by denudation, and form a very peculiar and important 
feature in the rocks west and south of the Assinniboine after it makes 
its north-westerly bend.*+ 
whole quantity of land fit for cultivation were occupied in the same proportion, the popula- 
tion of Canada would exceed eighteen millions. At the same ratio of inhabitants to. cul- 
tivable and grazing land, the Basin of Lake Winnipeg would sustain a population exceeding 
19,000,000, or leaving out of consideration the land suitable to grazing purposes, its capa- 
bilities would be adapted to support 12,000,000 people. If European countries such as 
France and Great Britain were taken as the standard of comparison, or even many of the 
States of the American Union, the number would be vastly greater. 
The arid region of the great American desert, which places an uncultivable and uninhabi- 
table wilderness between the present north-westerly settlements in Nebraska and the Rocky 
Moentains extends into British America only in the form of the apex of the cone shaped fig- 
ure it has on the map, with its base in the high lands of Texas and Mexico. 
* A large part of the region drained by the North and South branches of the Saskatche- 
wan is underlaid by a variety of Coal or Lignite. On the North Saskatehewan coal occurs 
below Edmonton in workable seams. 
A section of the river bank in that neighbourhood shows in a vertical space of sixty feet 
three seams of Lignite, the first one foot thick, the second two feet, and the third six feet 
thick. Dr. Hector, who made the section, states that the six foot seam is pure and compact.(a) 
Fifteen miles below the Brazeau River, a large tributary to the North Saskatchewan from 
the west, the lignite bearing strata again come into view, and from this point they were 
traced to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. On the Red Deer River the lignite formation 
was observed at various points. It forms beds of great thickness; one group of seams 
measured tweuty feet, “ of which twelve feet consisted of pure compact coal,” (Dr. Hector.) 
These coal beds were traced for ten miles on Red Deer River. A great Lignite formation of 
cretaceous age containing valuable beds of coal has a very extensive development on the upper 
waters of the North and South Saskatchewan, the Missouri, and far to the north in the val- 
ley of the Mackenzie. Col. Lefroy obseryed this Lignite on Peave River, and Dr. Hector 
recognized it on Smoking River, a tributary of Peace River, also ou the Athabaska, McLeod 
River and Pembina River, all to the north of the Saskatchewan, “thus proving the range of 
this formation over a slope rising from 500 to 2,300 feet above the sea, aud yet preserving on 
the whole the same characters, and showing no evidence of recent local disturbance beyoud 
the gentle uplift which has effected this inclination.”(5) 
+ The vast deposits of iron ore belonging to the cretaceous series of the Basin of Lake 
Winnipeg acquire especial importance in consequence of their being associated with equally 
widely distributed deposits of lignite, and are found not very remote from apparently inex- 
haustible stores of bitumen and petroleum (on Clear Water River,) which as a fuel adapted 
to raising elevated temperatures in a regenerating furnace has 10 equal. 
(a) Proceedings of the Geological Society, 1861, page 421. 
(6 Ibid, page 420. 
