Mr. H. A. Conroy informed the Senate committee of 1907 that he had travelled through Athabaska-Peace river country once when for twenty-one days in January he did not need his coat in the middle of the day. The cattle were all out in the pasture fields. He had been going in there every year for eight years, and had been there for five winters. Mr. Conroy stated that he never saw a very deep snowfall in that country. He felt pretty sure that the ‘Chinook’ winds go through to Athabaska lake. He remarked that in that country in the winter he did not suffer as much from cold as he had suffered in Ottawa, and he slept out every night, sometimes under a tent and sometimes in the open. He travelled once with a dog train and afterwards with ponies, and got along very well with them. [Illustration: THE PEACE RIVER COUNTRY] CHAPTER XI. NORTHERN ALBERTA. Agriculture and Arable Land in the Western Section or “Peace River Region.” Where Wheat Has Been Grown with Remarkable Success for Many Years. —Scientific Explorers Early Recognized this as a Wheat Growing Country.—A Head of Cabbage Fifty-three and a half inches in Circumference.—Livestock Lives Out of Doors in Winter.— According to a Church of England Missionary, Peace river Enjoys the Finest Climate in the World. The more westerly (or Peace river) section of northern Alberta is attracting much attention on account of its remarkable agricultural possibilities; and the numerous settlements which have, during the past few years, been established, have practically demonstrated that the glowing accounts which have from time to time reached the outside world as to the fertility of Peace river country, have not been exaggerated. Peace river, which has lent its name to the country along its banks, whether in British Columbia or in northern Alberta, is formed by the junction of Finlay and Parsnip rivers, two transmontane streams, and is the largest and longest of the tributaries of the Mackenzie. It rises in and drains a large district west of Rocky mountains, and then continuing eastwards, intersects the axis of that range and drains the country lying along its eastern slopes, through four degrees of latitude. Its length, from the confluence of Finlay and Parnsip rivers, to the point at which it unites with the waters flowing from Lake Athabaska to form Slave river, is seven hundred and fifty-seven miles, but measuring from Summit lake, the source of its principal branch, it is approximately nine hundred and five miles. From the confluence of the Finlay and the Parsnip, the Peace flows in a general easterly direction for some three hundred miles to its junction with the Smoky, falling in this distance a little less than eight hundred feet. The country through which it flows may be considered as a plateau in which it has excavated A RATHER DEEP VALLEY.