pease, Windsor beans and potatoes being far advanced; cucumbers started and raised in the open air, a very large crop, and a number of them were ripe on August 14.
“At Chipewyan mission, two miles from the fort, there were wheat, oats and barley, a good crop as regards grain. Windsor beans were ripe and pulled up on August 17. Wheat and barley were in stock August 26, and specimens of these, which I brought to Ottawa, are here on the table.
“At Red river fort a Frenchman named St. Cyr had a garden, and he told me he had a particular thing growing in the garden that he did not know anything about. I went out to look at it, and there was a splendid patch of cucumbers, many of them ripe. That was in August. I said: ‘These are cucumbers; how did you start them?’ He said: ‘I got the seed from England and put it in the ground, and that is what has come from it.’
“I passed down the Athabaska (from Chipewyan) to the Mission, and I found growing on soil that would be of no value here whatever, sand and muck, an old swamp where they had planted wheat on May 5, and I found it in the stook on August 26, and brought away from it the grain that was awarded the bronze medal at Philadelphia in 1876. It was forwarded to me, but I said that it did not belong to me, but to the missionaries at Athabaska. I exhibited this very lot of grain in Manitoba before Consul Taylor and many other gentlemen, and the matter of the number of grains in the fascicle was then discussed and made public. They took a quantity of the wheat from me and shelled it, and Mr. Gouin, Inspector of Inland Revenue, weighed it, and it showed a weight of sixty-eight pounds to the bushel.[15]
“The wild pea or vetch grows all through Peace river valley, but was particularly noticed on the plateau above Fort St. John (in British Columbia) in latitude 56°. Here it was actually measured by myself and was found to attain a height of eight feet, while the weeds, such as the purple fire weed of the east (_Epilobium angustifolium_) attained a height of seven feet. These are given in illustration of the wonderful luxuriance of the commoner plants on that high plateau. The vegetation throughout the whole Peace river valley is of the most luxuriant character, and it seems