The Archdeacon leads off with this appetising fact: cranberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, and currants grow wild and abundant in the district. He reports that there are plenty of trees there, notably spruce and poplar, which are good for pulp-wood if not very important as timber. At Lac la Rouge he has seen good wheat raised for seven years in succession without any trouble being experienced from frost. Potatoes also grow there splendidly; indeed, as the reverend gentleman put it, the locality is “all right for raising anything that can be raised anywhere in Saskatchewan.” He explained that if the country were cleared of timber it would, in his opinion, be fair agricultural land. With regard to stock, he could merely say that he himself had kept, at the mission on the Churchill River, fifteen head of cattle and two horses.
Archdeacon McKay is also able to testify concerning the Ile à la Crosse country, which lies in much the same latitude as the area already alluded to, but some hundred and sixty miles farther west. This is his instructive summary: “Plenty of timber, and plenty of hay as a rule—some prairie hay and some swamp hay—and the soil is fairly good. It is better than at Lac la Rouge, and it gets better as you go west.” Questioned as to the wild grasses, he described them as “long,” and as “very much the same as the natural hay in Manitoba.”
Once more we hear of prairie fires; and it would seem that they have been particularly destructive in the rocky districts. Cross-examined with regard to timber possibilities, Archdeacon McKay recalled the interesting circumstance that he himself had erected a saw-mill, which was run by water-power, at Lac la Rouge. He added these significant details: “The logs average seventeen to the thousand feet, and are fourteen or fifteen feet long. The diameter would be about two feet across at the butt. They are large, clean logs, very much the same as those at Prince Albert. This good timber is scattered all over the country, sometimes for miles.” Pressed to give a more definite impression of the timber area, he said he believed it extended right away to the borders of the province. It appeared that he had travelled backwards and forwards a good deal, “visiting Indian camps and so on,” and he noted very much the same kind of trees everywhere. Of course there are muskeg in some places, and in others he saw “heavy timber.” Reindeer Lake was the most northerly point he had reached, and he saw plenty of trees up there.