The trail led for many miles up a long, easy ascent, through a timber country, to an upper plateau, with, after passing the Heart River, occasional small patches of prairie on the wayside.

The plateau itself is the anticlinal down which the North Heart flows to Peace River, which it joins at the crossing.
The trail so far had been good, but after crossing Slippery Creek it proved to be almost a continuous mud-hole, due to its extreme narrowness and the wet weather, closely bordered, as much of it was, by dense forests.

It revealed a good farming country, however, free from stones, and the soil a rich, loamy clay throughout.

It was well timbered, in some places, with the finest white poplar I had yet seen.

The grass was luxuriant, and the region teemed with tiger-lilies, yarrow, and the wild rose.
The Little Prairie, as it is called, is really a lovely region, in appearance resembling the Saskatchewan country.