Canadian Agriculture. 
223 
the Canadian cattle ranches have been established. This 
superb mountain axis consists really of a series of parallel 
ranges, their total breadth from east to west extending some 
hundreds of miles, and the loftier peaks being clad with per- 
petual snow thrown into bold relief when contrasted with the 
dark green hues of the pine trees which clothe the lower slopes. 
Professor Ramsay, of Glasgow University, writes : — 
" There are few grander sights than the circle of the Alps as seen from 
the Milan Cathedral, scarcely less fine is the vast wall of the Pj'renees as 
sighted from Toulouse, but neither the one nor the other presents so magnifi- 
cent a spectacle as that steep, straight line of snowy peaks, rising in one 
endless chain out of the flat to put bounds at length to the seemingly bound- 
less prairie." 
The Rockies constitute the water-parting* which separates 
the rivers that take their origin on the eastern water-shed from 
those which are fed by the drainage of the Pacific slopes. 
Almost coincident with the political boundary on the south of 
the Canadian prairie there stretches in a sinuous course from 
east to west a line of water-parting which separates the river 
basins of the Mississippi-Missouri system on the south, from 
those of the Saskatchewan, the Assiniboine, and the Red Rivers 
on the north, whose waters, passing through Lake Winnipeg, 
are ultimately discharged into Hudson's Bay. East of the Red 
River this water-parting attains an elevation of some 1400 feet ; 
farther west, in the State of Dakota, it rises to 2000 feet ; and 
as the mountains are approached it reaches a height of about 
4000 feet above the sea-level. 
Considerably to the north, in the region of the 54th parallel, 
another water-parting, trending generally east and west, separates 
the drainage areas of those rivers, such as the Athabasca and 
Peace Rivers, which flow directly into the Arctic Ocean, from 
those of the great Saskatchewan system ; but this line of water- 
parting attains a less lofty elevation than the more southern one. 
Roughly speaking, the Canadian portion of the three steppes 
or plateaux forming the prairie region, may be regarded as 
enclosed or embraced by the four natural boundaries whose 
position I have endeavoured to indicate, — the old Laurentian 
plateau on the east and north-east, the Rocky Mountains on 
the west, and the two lines of water-parting lying respectively 
north and south. Although, as has been stated, the vast plains 
extend to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, yet north of the 
North Saskatchewan River the essential prairie features are not 
* " To avoid all ambiguity it is perhaps best to set aside the original meaning of 
'watershed,' and employ the term to denote the slope aloug which the water 
flows, while the expression ' water-parting ' is employed for the summit of this 
slope." — Huxley, ' Physiography,' p. 18. 
