264 Dr James Hector on the Capabilities for Settlement 
The depth of the snow is never excessive, while in the 
richest tracts the natural pasture is so abundant, that horses 
and cattle may be left to obtain their own food during the 
greater part of the winter; and with proper care and manage- 
ment. there is no doubt that, as far as climate is concerned, 
sheep also might be reared, were it not for the immense packs 
of wolves which infest the country. | 
It is only during the month of March, when the snow ac- 
quires a tough glassy crust from the heat of the mid-day sun 
being each night followed by hard frost, that stock would 
require to be housed and fed. 
These remarks apply, however, more especially to what has 
been termed the ‘Fertile Belt,” and the nature of which I 
will endeavour to explain. 
The wonderfully fertile savannahs and valuable woodlands 
of the eastern United States are succeeded to the west by a 
more or less arid desert, which occupies a region on both sides 
of the Rocky Mountains, and presents a barrier to the con- — 
tinuous growth of settlements between the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi and the rich states of the Pacific coast, and at present 
only occupied by one spot of civilisation, the Mormon city at 
the Great Salt Lake. 
Under such disadvantageous physical conditions, it is not 
likely that any line of route for rapid or heavy transport across 
this desert will be remunerative, while its construction, in the 
present disturbed state of American politics, may be indefinitely 
delayed. Nevertheless, during the last seven years, our sharp- 
witted and prompt-acting cousins have been spending much 
money in having every possible route thoroughly explored and 
surveyed; and were their domestic troubles over, there is no 
doubt that they would revert to their attempts to bind ena: 
their eastern and western provinces. 
It is therefore highly satisfactory for us, as British subjects, 
to know that the arid region extends but a short way to the 
north of the 49th parallel of latitude, which is the position of 
the boundary line, and that even the small area of desert 
within our territories derives its character more from the 
nature of the soil than from the general climatic conditions. 
The British portion of the arid country is a triangular 
region, its apex reaching to the’ 52d parallel, while its base, 
