od these great central
plains, now so rich in alluvial deposits, composed the bed of a sea
which extended from the Arctic region and the ancient Laurentian belt
as far as the Gulf of Mexico and made, in reality, of the continent, an
Atlantis--that mysterious island of the Greeks. The history of the
northwest is the history of Indians hunting the buffalo and fur-bearing
animals in a country for many years under the control of companies
holding royal charters of exclusive {14} trade and jealously guarding
their game preserves from the encroachments of settlement and attendant
civilisation. French Canadians were the first to travel over the wide
expanse of plain and reach the foothills of the Rockies a century and a
half ago, and we can still see in this country the Metis or half-breed
descendants of the French Canadian hunters and trappers who went there
in the days when trading companies were supreme, and married Indian
women. A cordon of villages, towns, and farms now stretches from the
city of Winnipeg, built on the site of the old headquarters of the
Hudson's Bay Company, as far as the Rocky Mountains. Fields of golden
grain brighten the prairies, where the tracks of herds of buffalo, once
so numerous but now extinct, still deeply indent the surface of the
rich soil, and lead to some creek or stream, on whose banks grows the
aspen or willow or poplar of a relatively treeless land, until we reach
the more picturesque and well-wooded and undulating country through
which the North Saskatchewan flows. As we travel over the wide expanse
of plain, only bounded by the deep blue of the distant horizon, we
become almost bewildered by the beauty and variety of the flora, which
flourish on the rich soil; crocuses, roses, bluebells, convolvuli,
anemones, asters, sunflowers, and other flowers too numerous to
mention, follow each other in rapid succession from May till September,
and mingle with

"The billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine."

[Illustration: Upper end of Fraser Canon, B.C.]

Ascending the foothills that rise from the plains {16} to the Rocky
Mountains we come to the Western region, known as British Columbia,
comprising within a width varying from four to six hundred miles at the
widest part, several ranges of great mountains which lie, roughly
speaking, parallel to each other, and give sublimity and variety to the
most remarkable scenery of North America. These mountains are an
extensio