The importance of these extracts from Mr. Preble’s report lies in the fact that this is an official report of a trained, scientific explorer who has lived in the north country for months, who has travelled extensively, and whose sole object as a responsible salaried official of a foreign country is to provide indisputable data for scientific study. AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER’S TESTIMONY. [Illustration: Eskimos in Kyaks on Arctic Red river.] Mr. Alfred H. Harrison, the English traveller and explorer (See p. 22), in his volume “In Search of a Polar Continent” relates that just as he was leaving Fort Simpson in 1905 for the descent of the lower Mackenzie “Père Vacher appeared with a sack of potatoes which he had grown in his own garden, and which were as good as any we can get at home.” When Mr. Harrison reached the post at the mouth of Arctic Red river on October 4, he found that that tributary had been frozen fast for three weeks, and it was reported that a few miles lower down the Mackenzie itself was ice-locked. In his account of his return trip up the Mackenzie in 1907, Mr. Harrison writes (p. 268):—“On July 25 we arrived at Fort Good Hope, where I was glad once more, to meet Mr. Gaudet, who, it will be remembered, was in charge of this post. I was particularly impressed here by the gardens which I visited. They produced fine crops of nearly every kind of vegetable that we grow at home. I did not, indeed, see either pease or beans, but I noted how very fine the potatoes and cabbages were, as also the onions, beet root, lettuces, and turnips. We took some of these vegetables on board, and they tasted every whit as good as they looked”. Mr. Harrison devotes several pages of his book to what he describes as the commercial geography of the country extending from Athabaska to the delta of the Mackenzie. He writes:— AS TO ILLINOIS, IOWA AND MISSOURI. “The natural resources of this country are very great. I remember once hearing my father say that the states of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri were commonly believed, when he was a young man, to be barren wastes, where agriculture was impossible, and where no white men could live, but that by the few who knew of the capabilities of that region great hopes were entertained of its future. To-day these very states are the most productive in the Union. In like manner one might be tempted to hazard a prophecy as to the importance and prosperity of that country, so vast, but so little known, which lies to the north of the new province of Alberta; and, accordingly, I will venture briefly to submit an estimate of the commercial prospects of what may well be a career of immense industrial expansion which seems to await the great region now known as Mackenzie river basin.