CLIMATE.

The climate does not vary much over this area. The winter is reported severe,
but the weather is generally bright and bracing. Very hot weather is seldom met
with in summer. An average of temperatures taken morning, noon, and night during
the months of June, July, and August was 56° Fahr., the highest recorded tempera-
ture being 92 degrees. The rainfall would be about 385 inches per annum. No
farming has been done as yet beyond a little vegetable-gardening at Fort Grahame
and McLeod, and this year at Finlay Junction. At Grahame good potatoes as well
as other vegetables and raspberries and gooseberries have been grown over a con-
siderable period of years. Potatoes were grown by a Chinaman on Germansen

‘Creek during 1913, and were retailed by him at Manson Creek for 20 cents a pound.

An entire absence of the dreaded summer frost untfl late in September is one very
favourable sign. This fact was specially noticed in two seasons, and all prospectors
met verified this as regards the large river-valleys of an average altitude of 2,200
feet. The fertility of the soil is vouched for by a luxuriant growth, especially notice-
able in the sub-irrigated cottonwood river-bottoms.

THE FINLAY VALLEY.

The Finlay River, flowing from its headwaters in the Fishing Lakes near the
Cassiar Mountains, at the north-west of the land division south-easterly for about
300 miles, meets the Parsnip, flowing north-westerly, in latitude 56° 0’ 45”, and the
two rivers unite there to form the Peace, draining to the Mackenzie and the Arctic.
The elevation at the junction, where the settlement of Finlay Junction is being
formed, is 2,000 feet. Two general stores were started here in 1918. The Finlay
River, which is about as large as the Parsnip, for the first four miles after leaving
Thutage Lake is in a canyon which ends in a fall with a sheer drop of 50 or 60
feet, with swift water above and below. Below the fall the river is from 75 to
100 feet wide and 6 to 8 feet deep, with average current of ten miles an hour. The
upper river flows through a generally rough country, with benches or ridges of
washed boulders and gravel, evidently the remains of an immense glacial talus which
once filled the valley of the Finlay, to be seen in places, reaching five or six miles
from the river. There is no agricultural land in the upper part of the Finlay Valley,
but much mineral, the gravel benches, according to prospectors, while searcely rich
enough to be worked by hand, providing distinct possibilities for dredging, or steam-
shovel work, when the district becomes more accessible.

FINLAY RIVER.

The Finlay River is navigable for light-draught steamers at medium stages of
water for ninety miles, and, if Deserters’ Canyon were cleaned out, for a further
distance. It averages about 250 yards in width and changes its channel, long sloughs,
once main channels, being found in places. The main tributaries are the Manson,
Omineca, and Ingenika Rivers from the west, and the Ospika on the east. While
the amount of agricultural land on these side streams js not large, there is on the
lower part of the Finlay Valley, south of Fort Grahame, a large amount of land
available for agriculture. Mr. Swannell estimates thesamount of farming land in
the valleys of the Parsnip and Finlay, between Nation River on the south and the
Ingenika on the north, at 500,000 acres.

Not much information is available regarding the general character of the upper
part of the Finlay River. Travellers say that the country, while possessing a lure
for the prospector, has little to offer to the agriculturist; but few reports are avail-
able. Part is rough and broken, with the river cutting between precipitous banks;
in other places the banks slope gently, but there is little soil in the hills, which are
composed mainly of boulders, with a small quantity of decomposed vegetable matter
and moss. Farther down, below Canyon Creek, there are stretches of bottom land
and meadows reclaimed by beaver. In places there are benches with small grass-
surrounded lakes, but there is a destitution of soil.

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