Mr. William Ogilvie, in a letter published in the Ottawa Journal, February 19, 1910, writing of the water power susceptible of development on Slave river, stated:—“When making my survey in 1888, I deduced the total fall in the river in this stretch by observing the angles of depression or elevation of each survey station from the preceding one, and with the distance from each station to station deducing the rise and fall; in this way I found the total fall to be two hundred and forty-seven feet. The instrument I had to use was not of a high order of precision for this purpose; nevertheless, I feel safe in saying the fall is between two hundred and thirty and two hundred and sixty feet. All the drainage basins of Peace and Athabaska rivers, and Lake Athabaska, are in one here, and with this fall in so short a distance the power possibilities, when required, will be tremendous.”
Mr. Ogilvie, upon another occasion, speaking of Athabaska river, said:—“The current averages well over four miles an hour, but the rate varies much with the height of water. At Grand rapids falls, the fall is about sixty feet in one quarter of a mile. They are a fine sight and will, when required, develop a lot of power; I would say in the average season fully as much as Chaudiere falls at Ottawa (say eighty thousand horse-power).”
As to the timber resources of the western or Peace river division of the section under review, Doctor G. M. Dawson, before the Senate committee of 1888, after describing the prairie country, showed that the remainder of the surface was generally occupied by second-growth forest, occasionally dense, but more often composed of aspen, birch and cottonwood, with a greater or less proportion of coniferous trees. Some patches of the original forest, he said, remained, however, particularly in the river valleys, and were composed of much larger trees, chiefly coniferous, among which the spruce was most abundant. Handsome groves of old and large cottonwoods were also to be found in some of the valleys. Where the soil became locally sandy and poor, and more particularly in some of the more elevated parts of the high ridges above described, a thick growth of scrub pine and spruce, in which the individual trees were small, was found, and in swamp regions the tamarack was not wanting, and grew generally intermixed with the spruce.