wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, most of the hardier fruits, and every variety of berries and vegetables grow most abundantly: a deep, rich soil, millions of acres of which are ready for the plow; forests of beauty and value, wide grazing ranges, rivers, lakes, and mines rich in gold, silver, copper, coal, and other minerals, almost entirely unoccupied. Here new communities and new States must be built; here is room enough for fifty million people. Who can contemplate the future greatness of the new States of this region, and the national importance of its hidden treasures being brought close to our crowded centres by the tireless iron horse, whose ambition sets at defiance the rocks, ridges, and forests of the Rocky mountains!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Geography-History-Hudson Bay Company-Area-IslandsForests-Climate-Agriculture

Mountains- Rivers-Lakes

Valleys-Seasons-Rain-Bays-Harbors-Inlets-Natural re

sources-Gold and other minerals-Cities-Customs-Population -Natives-Commerce-Canadian railway.

BRITISH COLUMBIA is that portion of the Dominion of Canada lying west of the Rocky mountains, and washed on the west by the Pacific ocean. This is the only portion of the whole possessions of Great Britain on the Pacific, and embraces, besides the mainland of British Columbia, a number of islands in the Pacific, embracing Vancouver, in itself three hundred miles in length and sixty miles wide, Queen Charlotte, and numerous other islands, many of them of great size, and possessing valuable forests, a genial climate, abundance of fish in their waters, and game, and mines of gold, silver, copper, coal, and other minerals within their area.

The colony of British Columbia was formerly a portion of that vast region known as the Hudson Bay Company's territory, which extended from Lake Superior west and north to the Pacific and the Arctic oceans, and included at one time Oregon and Washington Territory, over all of which region the dominion of this once mighty company was absolute in commercial and military affairs, and in a portion of which the Hudson Bay Company still conducts their fur trade to considerable extent.

The present limits of British Columbia are west by the Pacific ocean and a portion of Alaska, north by the Arctic ocean, east by the Rocky mountains, and south by Washington Territory, in the forty-ninth degree of north latitude. From this point toward the northwest, the colony of British Columbia has a direct frontage of six hundred miles on the Pacific; here a long tongue of Alaska, of six hundred miles in length and a hundred miles wide, extends along the coast toward the southeast, and cutting off six hundred additional miles of coast line from the colony. The total area of British Columbia, which now includes Vancouver island (lately a separate colony) and a multitude of other islands, is estimated at three hundred thousand square miles.

British Columbia is a succession of mountain chains, rugged peaks, plains, fertile valleys, dense forests, lakes, creeks, and dashing rivers, all making a varied, wild, and picturesque country, and, although still almost in its primitive condition, very desirable in many sections, affording rich agricultural fields and wide pastureranges, where cattle, horses, and sheep graze at large throughout the entire year. In the interior, and toward the eastern line of the colony, the mountains are high, and many peaks are perpetually clad in snow; but toward the Pacific side but little snow falls, and on the immediate coast line and the islands the climate is mild -milder than in any portion of the States of Virginia, Maryland, or Tennessee; and the same warm winds and ocean currents from the Pacific, which temper the whole seaboard of California, Oregon, and Washington Territory, keep the climate of the coast range of this section most inviting—so mild in winter that vegetables grow throughout the whole year, and so cool, yet so