round the lakes. It is probably a better ranching country than an agricultural one. To the northwest of this district are some muskeg lakes, where the natives have quite a few horses and cut considerable hay.
From Fort Smith, going in a southerly direction to a place called Salt river they have a very fine large prairie, and it extends right through to Peace point. The people there are not given to farming. It is against their interests, because they could make a living much more easily by hunting. People often ask why they do not farm, but it must be remembered that in order to raise a crop of potatoes they would have to stay by it the whole season; and there is more variety in hunting. But some of them do farm and raise a few cattle. The country is difficult of access; they do not get any new stock, and it has become badly inbred. As a result he had seen cattle there having the head of a bull and the body of a calf. There are not very many cattle in there; only certain natives have them, and a man with four or five head of cattle is a very rich man. Some patches of land are very good.
Mr. Elihu Stewart, who had travelled over the northwest while Superintendent of Forestry, stated before the Senate committee of 1907 that along the Athabaska the country is composed of a succession of rolling hills, and there is a good deal of light soil. The valleys are very good, and Mr. Stewart understood that the country through by Lake Waubascow, all the way to Lesser Slave lake, is through a good district of country. Through this district there is good land—perhaps not all the way through. Along the Athabaska the country is light, second-class land, but Mr. Stewart found at Calling river, some sixty miles below Athabaska, a man
He says he raises as good wheat as can be grown, but Mr. Stewart would not consider from the appearance along the banks that there were the same alluvial deposits that are found farther north.
Mr. H. A. Conroy of the Indian Department informed the Senate committee in 1907 that the Indians and half-breeds told him that the country between Great Slave river and Hay river is covered with buffalo grass, excepting a little timber that grows in a fringe around Great Slave lake. He had information from Indians living in that country that it is an open country covered with prairie grass.