West of Smoky river, both to the south and north of Peace river, there are extensive areas of prairie country, either entirely open, and covered with a more or less luxuriant growth of grass, or dotted with patches of coppice and groves of trees. The northern banks of Peace river valley are also very generally open and grassed, and parts of the valley of the Smoky and other rivers have a similar character. The total area of prairie land west of the Smoky may be about three thousand square miles. Though the prairies are most immediately available, from an agricultural point of view, the regions now covered with second growth and forest, where the soil itself is not inferior, will eventually be equally valuable. The largest tract of poor land is that bordering the valley of the Athabaska on the north. This rises to an elevation considerably greater than most of the region to the north and west, and appears, during the submergence to which the superficial deposits are due, to have been exposed to stronger currents which have prevented the deposition of fine silt, causing it to be replaced by a coarser silt which passes in places into actual sand, and alternates with ridges of boulder clay. This region is often swampy, and, for a width of twenty to twenty-five miles on the trail from Sturgeon lake to Athabaska, is quite unsuited for agriculture, though still in many places capable of yielding good summer grazing when the forest has been completely removed by fire. To the northward, more particularly to the east of Smoky river, peaty and mossy swamps occupy part of the surface, and these may be regarded as permanently unsuited to agriculture. There is also a sandy tract, though of small width, along the lower part of Wapiti river near its junction with the Smoky. Deducting as far as possible all the areas known to be inferior or useless, with about twenty per cent. for the portions of the region under consideration of which less is known, the total area of land, with soil suited to agriculture, may be estimated as AT LEAST TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED SQUARE MILES. In the absence of complete maps, such an estimate cannot be otherwise than very rough, but may serve to give some idea of the fact. Doctor Dawson expressed the opinion that “the truly wonderful luxuriance of the natural vegetation in Peace valley prairies indicated, not alone the fertility of the soil, but the occurrences of a sufficient rainfall.”