W. F. Bredin, M.L.A., (See p. 104) in his evidence before the committee, remarked that the southern shore of Great Slave lake seems to have good agricultural prospects. One notable place there is Hay river. There they raise barley and all the common vegetables. At the mouth of Great Slave river and at the mouths of all the rivers running in there, large quantities of hay grow. In fact there is a very rank growth of grass along all those streams as far north as one likes to go. Where the ground along the river is not covered with trees, grass grows. At Fort Providence, about forty miles down the Mackenzie from Great Slave lake, they raise barley and all the vegetables every year, and some years wheat and oats. One hundred and seventy miles below, north of Fort Providence, is Fort Simpson, where Liard river comes in. The Hudson’s Bay Company for many years have raised barley and vegetables at that point. In some years they might raise wheat, but not every year. At all those Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts they always raise vegetables. They do not pretend to raise any other grain regularly but barley, because THEY USE BARLEY FOR SOUPS. They pound the hull of it in a hollow piece of wood and use the grain for soups. At Fort Simpson he saw cauliflowers, cabbages and cucumbers growing under exactly the same conditions as they would grow them in northern Alberta. The cucumbers were simply planted in a hotbed, and allowed to remain there protected in the early spring from the frost, and then allowed to grow in the hotbeds, with the sashes off, in the summer time. One hundred and forty miles north of Fort Simpson is Fort Wrigley (north latitude 63°). That is where Mr. Bredin stated he once wintered. In the spring they put in a garden there. The Hudson’s Bay Company officials plant gardens every year at that point. The spring that Mr. Bredin was there they got their seed potatoes from Fort Good Hope, which is fourteen miles south of the Arctic circle. They went there for seed because they had none, having used up theirs during the winter. Mr. Bredin saw those potatoes. They were a played-out seed, a white-blue variety. They were not the improved potatoes but they were a fair size. They had the same class of potatoes at Hay river, but since that they got in new seed (the Early Rover) from outside, and they grow very much better crops. The season at Wrigley is quite long enough, because the sun shines there during all the growing season. That is the great secret of the growth in that country. There is not much fertile land at Wrigley. Down there Rocky mountains are on both sides of the river, and there is a great deal of muskeg. The garden at Fort Wrigley WAS ORIGINALLY MUSKEG