heavily timbered country, with large poplar, spruce, balsam, and birch, generally
rolling, with good soil. Near the Kiskatinaw River is prairie and bluff country,
and the south-west section between the river and the southern and eastern boun-
daries, and extending far beyond the block, is the Pouce Coupe Prairie, a great
stretch of almost level, lightly wooded land, with excellent black loam soil.

The valley proper of the Peace in the block is from one and a half to three
miles wide, the river running from 700 to 1,000 feet in width. North and east of
Fort St. John is a level plateau with rich loam soil, covered with luxuriant grasses
and peavine, with bluffs of small poplar and spruce. Near Charlie Lake, north-west
of Fort St. John, and between it and the Peace River Valley, is a flat 800 feet above
the river. Near the north boundary there is rolling country, heavily rolling in
places, generally well wooded with jack-pine, spruce, birch, willow, and alder. The
soil is black loam and sandy loam on clay, with occasional spruce and tamarack
muskegs.

WATERCOURSES OF THE BLOCK.

There are an abundance of fine watercourses in the Peace River Block. Flowing
from the south and emptying in the Peace River, there is Moberly River, which
drains Moberly Lake, in the neighbourhood of which, the Indians say, there are
hot springs; the South Pine River and its several branches; the Mud River and the
Pouce Coupe River. From the north-west the North Pine empties into the Peace.
Then there is the great Peace River itself, which flows through the centre of the
block. ‘This river varies in width from a quarter of a mile to a mile. It has been
rightly named “Peace”; for silent, majestic grandeur we haye seen nothing that
can equal it. The name has a fascination for the outsider; to those who have seen
it and traversed its placid waters there is ever an insistent call to return to her. In
summer and fall the Peace and the Pine Rivers are beautiful, clear-water rivers.
Many of the rivers farther south—most of them, in fact—are muddy throughout
the year.

There are a number of blocks of good bottom land on the Moberly and South
Pine, and scattered patches of fine ranch land on the Fish Lakes and Graveyard
plateaux and along the South Pine and Kiskatinaw, also fine prairie of five town-
ships on the middle branch of the South Pine.

HUDSON HOPE TO MOBERLY LAKE.

The trail from the Peace River opposite Hudson Hope to Moberly Lake, about
twenty miles, follows up a small creek for some distance, the waters of which, as
well as the banks, are saturated with iron rust, apparently seeping out of the banks
of clay. Following up this creek for three or four miles, the level of the general
plateau is reached, from 800 to 1,000 feet above the Peace River. This plateau is
generally rolling, covered with luxuriant grass, although in many places overgrown
with willows and poplar bushes, while along the route of the trail there is a series
of ‘small lakes or ponds. The soil is excellent, the snowfall reported to be light,
but the winds strong in winter, although frequent ‘‘ Chinooks” blow through the
Pine River Pass. This section and the mountains to the westward are favourite
hunting-places for the Indians and half-breeds of Alberta, and here they turn their
horses out loose without shelter or any provision for feeding them, further than
nature provides, and they say that-in the spring they find them in good condition.

MOBERLY LAKE.

Moberly Lake is about fifteen miles long, in a general east-and-west direction,
but about two miles wide. It receives from the west a stream which rises toward
the headwaters of the Pine River in the Rocky Mountains, and empties to the north-
east by Moberly River into the Peace River some five miles above Fort St. John.
The lake lies at the base of the foot-hills of the main range, and on the western
edge of the plateau area, which here begins to be hilly rather than rolling.

To the west of Moberly Lake, up the valley of the inflowing stream, there is a
considerable area of fine farming land protected from the northern winds, but open
to the warm “ Chinooks” from the Pine River Pass. A number of lots adjacent to

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