LLM11725774
Silver Heights, Winnipeg. Winnipeg, the capital of the Canadian prairie Province of Manitoba, is situated at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, which fertilize the once great hunting grounds lorded over by the Hudson Bay and North-west Fur Companies. Its site is that of the original Fort Garry, of the Red River Settlement era, and the portal to the illimitable stretches over which the Canadian Pacific Railway now conducts the tourist to British Columbia and the Pacific. The region is now the great granary of the Canadian North-west, the soil of Manitoba having originally been the bed of a lake, therefore possessing in its rich black alluvium extraordinary fertility. For farming and grazing purposes perhaps no land in the world is more suitable; Its amazing productiveness cannot well be exaggerated. Silver Heights, in the vicinity of the capital, are pretty groups of low hills, composed chiefly of sand and gravel, upon which, before the era of the intriding settler, countless herds of buffalo used to graze. It is one of the phenomena in connection with natural history that the buffalo or bison should within so short a time have become an almost extinct species. There is still considerable sport to be had in the shape of elk, moose, caribou, antelope, wild geese, and duck in the less settled sections of the Province. Lake Winnipeg, adjacent to the capital, drains a basin estimated at 400.000 square miles. Its elevation is 700 feet above the sea level, but it is comparatively shallow, being nowhere more than 70 feet deep. Its chief tributaries are the Winnipeg, the Saskatchewan, and the Red Rivers. Illustration for Our Kin Across the Sea (Greig, 1898).By American Photographer (19th Century)
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