SETTLEMENT INCREASING.

At present the population of the Peace River country is small, but rapidly increasing. In 1913 there were about forty settlers near Hudson Hope, and about thirty along the Peace River between there and Fort St. John, and about 400 in the Pouce Coupe Prairie, this number being likely to be quadrupled this summer. People from east and west are flocking in—land-seekers, parties looking for cattle localities, and coal operators. The bulk of the settlers are men who have brought in their families, stock and farm implements, prepared to make their homes. N. F. Murray, who made a report on the Dominion Block in 1913, says it is expected that, although there are locations for a large number of settlers, the block will be taken up inside two years, not later than three.

The Dominion land offices for filing in this section are located for the north of the Peace at Grouard, 300 miles away, and for the south at Grande Prairie, ninety miles from the nearest point, so that it is a season’s work to locate, file, and get started.

PEACE RIVER BLOCK.

What is known as the “Peace River Block” is a parcel of land seventy-eight miles square and comprising 3,500,000 acres in the Province of British Columbia. It was conveyed by the Provincial Government of British Columbia to the Dominion Government for the purpose of opening it for settlement. It therefore comes under the “ Dominion Homesteads Act” rather than under the British Columbia method of acquiring a homestead. The eastern boundary of the block is the boundary-line between the Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia; the southern boundary is approximately 55° 80’ of north latitude, and extends west for a distance of seventy- eight miles from the Alberta boundary; thence north for seventy-eight miles; thence east again to the boundary of Alberta for the same distance. The Peace River runs in an easterly direction through the centre of the block.

This section of the country is naturally divided by the Peace River. The northern part is a level plateau 900 feet above the river at Fort St. John, with average altitude of 2,000 feet above sea-level. The Peace River cuts the southern rim of the plateau and flows along the foot of a low range of hills extending easterly from the Rockies, separating the northern from the more low-lying and broken-up plateau of the south. These plateaux are gridironed and drained on the north by the North Pine and Half- way Rivers and Cache Red Roche and Lynx Creeks; on the south by the South Pine, Kiskapiskaw, Pouce Coupe, and Moberly Rivers. These side streams are mainly deep narrow gorges draining a country for the most part denuded of timber, and are subject to great and rapid extremes of volumes. The valleys in places widen into low-lying river-flats and benches.

The country, hills and all, seems to be universally covered with a rich black loam of varying degrees of thickness overlying a clay and, in some cases, a sand subsoil. The wild vegetation is rich and luxurious; rye-grass, red-top, wild timothy, buffalo-grass, blue-joint, and peayine grow everywhere to a great height.

NORTH OF PEACE RIVER.

Nearly the whole of the Peace River Block north of the Peace River has splendid soil for agricultural purposes, and it is about 25 per cent. prairie or lightly wooded. Most of the open prairie is along the Peace River and its tributaries. The climate is much the same as that west of Calgary, but there is much more rain and snow. Between Moberly Lake and Hudson Hope is some rolling country cut into ravines and heavily timbered. Moberly Lake has an elevation of 2,050 feet. There are hills near it richly grassed where horses can winter out. Near the South Pine River at the south-west corner of the block the land is hilly and broken, rising to a plateau with burnt timber and windfall 1,000 feet above the river. Table Mountain rises about twenty miles from the western boundary-line south of Pine River. The river, 200 to 300 feet wide, with a current of three to five miles an hour, has a valley about a mile wide, reaching to the plateau some 800 feet above on either side. The pasture and soil is generally good. Between the Pine and Kiskatinaw River is

39