For the present, and pending railway development,
it was plain that the great and pressing requirement of the region
was a good waggon road by way of Wahpoo?›kow to Athabasca Landing,
a distance of three hundred miles, thus avoiding the dangerous
rapids of the Athabasca, or the long detour by way of Lesser Slave
Lake, and making communication easy in winter time.
From Mr. Erastus Lawrence, the head of the family, we got definite
information regarding the region and its prospects for agriculture.
We spent Sunday at his comfortable home, and examined his farm
carefully. In front of the house was a field of wheat, 110 acres
in extent, as fine a field as we had ever seen anywhere, and of
this they had not had a failure, he said, during all their farming
experience, the return never falling below fourteen bushels to the
acre, in the worst of years, twenty-five being about the average
yield. They sowed late in April, but reaped generally about the 15th
of August. They had never, he said, been seriously injured by frost
since 1884, and in fact no frost had occurred to injure wheat since
1887. There was abundance of hay, and 10,000 head of stock, he
believed, could be raised at that very point. Many hogs were raised,
with great profit, bacon and pork being, of course, high-priced. One
of the sons, Mr. E. H. Lawrence, said he had raised sixteen pigs,
which at eighteen months dressed 370 pounds apiece.
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