The Report of the Commissioners sent by the Canadian Government
to examine into the resources and capacities of the Great Mackenzie Basin—the region stretching from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic. shores, and from Hudson's Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and containing over a million square miles, i.e., half Australia—is a very interesting document. There are 5,000 miles of coast, and about 6,500 miles of con- tinuous lake and river navigation. Of the whole area, 656,000 square miles are suitable for the growth of potatoes, 407,000 for barley, 316,000 for wheat; while the pastoral country is set down at 860,000 square miles. Of the mines nothing very definite is yet known; but there seems little doubt that the Great Mackenzie Basin is, in parts at any rate, very rich in mineral deposits of all sorts, including the auriferous strata and the coal formations. More important than all, it is said that a petroleum area of vast extent has been found, and that Canada will thus be able to supply the world with the fuel of the future. No doubt the Report may be somewhat highly coloured. Still, with every deduction for the Transatlantic desire to "boom," it is impossible not to marvel at a country which, like Canada, can contentedly and silently contain the Great Mackenzie Basin as a mere unconsidered trifle which it has not thought worth discovering till the year 1888. But if such things can be in a continent the interior of which has been open for three hundred years, what may not lurk undis- covered in the unvisited table-lands and river-basins of Africa P
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