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of the soil. The prairies offer natural pasturage as favorable for the maintenance of numerous herds as if they had been artificially created. The construction of houses for habitation and for pioneer development would involve but little expense, because in many parts of the country, independent of wood, one would find fitting stones for building purposes, and it is easy to find clay for bricks.... The vetches found here are as fitting for nourishment of cattle as the clover of European pasturage. The abundance of buffaloes, and the facility with which herds of horses and oxen increase, demonstrate that it would be enough to shelter animals in winter, and to feed them in the shelters with hay.... In the gardens of the Hudson Bay Company's posts, beans, peas, and French beans have been successfully cultivated; also cabbages, turnips, carrots, rhubarb, and currants" (p. 250).

      The winters of the Northwest are wholly unlike those of the Eastern and Middle States. The meteorologist of Palliser's Expedition says: "Along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains there is a narrow strip of country in which there is never more than a few inches of snow on the ground. About forty miles to the eastward, however, the fall begins to be much greater, but during the winter rarely exceeds two feet. On the prairies the snow evaporates rapidly, and, except in hollows where it is drifted, never accumulates; but in the woods it is protected, and in spring is often from three to four feet deep" (p. 268).

      Captain Palliser and party travelled from post to post during the winter without difficulty. In February, 1859, he travelled from Edmonton to Lake St. Ann's. On two nights the mercury was frozen in the bulb, — as it is not unfrequently at Franconia, New Hampshire. Exclusive of those two cold nights, the mean of the temperature was seventeen. He says: "This was a trip made during the coldest weather experienced in the country. If proper precautions are taken, there is nothing merely in extreme cold to stop travelling in the wooded country, but the danger of freezing from exposure upon the open plains is so great that they cannot be ventured on with safety during any part of the winter" (p. 268).

      The Wesleyan Missionary Society of England has a mission at Edmonton, under the care of Rev. Thomas Woolsey. The following extracts from his journal will show the progress of the winter and spring season in 1855: —

"Nov.	1.	A little snow has fallen for the first time.
"	12.	Swamps frozen over.
"	13.	A little more snow.
"	17.	Crossed river on the ice.
Dec.	2.	The past week has been remarkably mild.
"	9.	More snow.
1856.		Jan. 8 to 11. More like spring than winter.
Jan.	13.	Fine open weather.
"	17.	Somewhat colder.
Feb.	14.	Weather open.
"	16.	Snow rapidly disappearing.
Mar.	11.	More snow.
"	17.	Firing pasture-grounds to-day.
"	18.	Thunder-storm.
"	21.	Ducks and geese returning.
"	30.	More snow, but it is rapidly disappearing.
"	31.	Snow quite gone.
April	7.	Ploughing commenced.
"	28.	First wheat sown."

      The succeeding winter was more severe, and three feet of snow fell during the season, but the spring opened quite as early as in 1856. The comparative mildness of the winter climate of all this vast area of the West and Northwest, at the head-waters of the Missouri, and in the British dominions, as far north as latitude 70°, is in a great measure due to the warm winds of the Pacific.

      In the autumn of 1868 I crossed the Pacific, from Japan to San Francisco, in the Pacific mail-steamer Colorado. Soon after leaving the Bay of Yokohama we entered the Kuro-Siwo, or the Black Ocean River of the Asiatic coast. This ocean current bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Along the eastern shore of Japan the water, like that along Virginia and the Carolinas, is very cold, but we suddenly pass into the heated river, which, starting from the vicinity of the Philippine Islands, laves the eastern shore of Formosa, and rushes past the Bay of Yeddo at the rate of eighty miles per day. This heated river strikes across the Northern Pacific to British Columbia and Puget Sound, giving a genial climate nearly up to the Arctic Circle. No icebergs are ever encountered in the North Pacific. The influence of the Kuro-Siwo upon the Northwest is very much like that which the Gulf Stream has upon England and Norway. It gives to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island winters so mild that the people cannot lay in a supply of ice for the summer. Roses bloom in the gardens throughout the year. So the water heated beneath the tropics, off the eastern coast of Siam and north of Borneo, flows along the shore of Japan up to the Aleutian Isles, imparting its heat to the air, which, under the universal law, ascends when heated, and sweeps over the Rocky Mountains, and tempers the climate east of them almost to Hudson Bay.

      So wonderfully arranged is this mighty machinery of nature, that millions of the human race in coming years will rear their habitations and enjoy the blessings of civilization in regions that otherwise would be pathless solitudes.

      In the meteorological register kept at Carlton House, in lat. 52° 51', on the eastern limit of the Saskatchawan Plain, eleven hundred feet above the sea, we find this entry: "At this place westerly winds bring mild weather, and the easterly ones are attended by fog and snow."

      By the following tabular statement we see at a glance the snow-fall at various places in the United States. We give average depths for the winter as set down in Blodget's climatology.

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Oxford County, Maine	90	inches.
Dover, New Hampshire	68	"
Montreal, Canada	66	"
Burlington, Vermont	85	"
Worcester, Massachusetts	55	"
Cincinnati, Ohio	19	"
Burlington, Iowa	15	"
Beloit, Wisconsin	25	"
Fort Abercrombie, Dakota	12	"