[The Journey to the Polar Sea by John Franklin]@TWC D-Link bookThe Journey to the Polar Sea CHAPTER 4 37/80
The land is fertile and produces with little trouble ample returns of wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes.
The ground is prepared for the reception of these vegetables about the middle of April and when Dr.Richardson visited this place on May 10th the blade of wheat looked strong and healthy.
There were only five acres in cultivation at the period of my visit.
The prospect from the fort must be pretty in summer owing to the luxuriant verdure of this fertile soil; but in the uniform and cheerless garb of winter it has little to gratify the eye. Beyond the steep bank behind the house commences the vast plain whose boundaries are but imperfectly known; it extends along the south branch of the Saskatchewan and towards the sources of the Missouri and Asseenaboine Rivers, being scarcely interrupted through the whole of this great space by hills or even rising grounds.
The excellent pasturage furnishes food in abundance to a variety of grazing animals of which the buffalo, red-deer, and a species of antelope are the most important. Their presence naturally attracts great hordes of wolves which are of two kinds, the large, and the small.
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