with fish, will with better access prove a great pleasure
resort.

On Stuart Lake ancient Indian rock paintings and Indian
villages, notably Pinchi and Tachie, offer interest, and the
lover of romance will find much of interest in the old
forts of the fur-traders at Fort St. James, Fort Babine,
etc., which have interesting histories. There are also
scenes of historic interest connected with the Omineca
gold-rush, including old villages of log huts at Manson
Creek and elsewhere used by early miners. Indians are
notable for skill in making beaded moccasins and gloves
from moosehide. Indians are Carriers. Many, particu-
larly on Babine Lake, peregrinate much by water, and
Fort Babine is an assembly-point for celebrations, notably
when the Indians foregather there in midsummer to take
and prepare salmon for winter use.

GENERAL TOPOGRAPHY.

This region, roughly, forms the north-west corner of the
Northern Interior Plateau, but much of the area is neither
true plateau nor mountain country, marking transition
between the two types, with areas of lightly timbered
plateau crossed by ridges 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the
general surface; valleys with ridges between 2,700 and
2,900 feet above them.

Governing features are four depressions—Bulkley Valley
to south; ‘separated by Babine Range from Babine Lake;
the Stuart-Trembleur-Takla Lake system; a lesser inter-
vening lake and river system, with Natowite and Tochcha
Lakes as chief waters, separated by mountain ranges from
the Babine and Stuart systems. Features of these, like
other ranges, are very pronounced at northern end, but
break up and merge into hill country and plateau toward
the south. These valleys parallel, bearing roughly N. 30°
W., the general direction of many main physical features
of the Province. Transverse valleys occur in several
places, notably that used by the Stuart-Babine Lake Port-
age Road, and between Wright Bay, Babine Lake, and
Trembleur Lake, through which a road was made and
used in early days of Omineca rush, but not since. North
of the Trembleur Lake Pass the Middle River Range has
some snow-capped peaks, and, generally speaking, country
north of 55th parallel, along Takla Lake, is mountainous,
while that to south is lower and fairly flat in places. The
Pacific-Arctic Divide, which is a little to north of 55th
parallel, runs approximately east and west to within a few
miles of Middle River, where it swings north-west, roughly
Paralleling Takla Lake and Driftwood River flowing to it
from the north. South and west of this divide are the
lake-basins, with their long connective lake and river
systems affording continuous navigation possibilities.

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