THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Sept. 1, 1866. 
64 NATURAL CAPABILITIES OF 
level of the great backbone of the Continent. In this tract, the features 
of the coast district are repeated, though even on a grander scale — and, 
as a remark generally accurate, it may be stated that, with slight 
interruptions, the entire area is covered with a sea of towering pine-clad 
mountains, enclosing gloomy valleys — that it contains a smaller amount 
of agricultural land than any other district in the colony, and is wholly 
uninhabited by white men, except at the mining district of Cariboo, in 
its northern extremity. Yet, although thus outwardly unattractive, this 
region claims importance as the depository of vast mineral wealth, and 
the birthplace of the great streams that distribute their auriferous 
treasures throughout the whole western area. To these phenomena, 
however, it will be necessary to refer in a future paragraph. 
Of the rivers of British Columbia, the most important by far is the 
Fraser, which traverses the colony from north to south, and receives, on 
its passage, almost every other stream of importance. It takes its rise 
in the Leather Pass of the Kocky Mountains, and discharges by two 
principal mouths into the Gulf of Georgia, a few miles north of the 
international boundary ; and, together with its tributaries, draws an area 
that may be roughly estimated at 90,000 square miles. From its source, 
the Fraser flows an impetuous torrent, in a general north-westerly 
direction for 180 miles, reaching its extreme northern latitude at the 
parallel 54° 30". Issuing near this point from one of the great valleys 
of the Rocky Mountains, it takes a bold sweep to the southward, and 
entering a more open region, soon assumes the proportions of a broad, 
navigable stream. Its course, however, is not entirely free from 
obstructions. Dangerous rapids, some of them wholly incapable of 
improvement, occur here and there, though fortunately the intermediate 
stretches of unbroken water are of considerable length ; and it is at any 
rate interesting to know, in connection with the subject of a future route 
across the continent by the Leather Pass ; that no less than 200 miles of 
this upper portion of the Fraser can be made available for steam 
navigation at the seasons when the stream is free from ice — viz., from 
April to October inclusive. At Fort Alexander its average breadth is 
about 300 yards, the mean velocity of the current five miles an hour, and 
the extreme breadth of the valley, measured between the points where 
it breaks from the table -land on either side, is from three to four miles. 
And here, for the first time, is noticed the remarkable terraced formation 
of the river-banks, peculiar to nearly all the great water-courses of the 
central districts. This formation consists of a series of perfectly level 
terraces, or " benches," rising in steps one above another, to altitudes 
corresponding on either side of the streams, and is due, no doubt, to 
successive sudden degradations of the river-levels at remote periods, 
occasioned by the removal of large barriers of rock or other obstacles in 
the defiles further down the valleys. 
Twenty miles below^ Fort Alexander, the Fraser valley contracts in 
breadth, and the course of the stream, for 150 miles further south, lies 
