Commander Wakeham in his summing up stated:

There can be no question we were favoured with an unusually open season, and once the strait became open on the 15th July we encountered much less ice than others have constantly met with.' He quoted Mr. Stupart, director of the Meteorological Service, in support of this view. That officer wrote: It is very obvious to me that you had this year a most favourable and open season, and that the winter weather set in later than usual. The most doubtful thing is the force of the wind. According to the records you had very few gales indeed.' The Commander continued:

'I now conclude this part of the report by saying that I absolutely agree with Captain Gordon in fixing the date for the opening of navigation in Hudson strait, for commercial purposes, by suitable vessels, at from 1st to 10th July. I do not consider that the strait can be successfully navigated in June. Such ships as the 'Diana' might force a passage through, but these vessels would be useless for commercial purposes. They have to be so braced and strengthened that they are impossible freight carriers.'

Mr. Beech, who has lived at Churchill for two years and who recently returned there at, ter a visit to Winnipeg, stated:

'There is a most erroneous feeling prevailing throughout Canada, with regard to the difficulty in navigating the straits at the mouth of the bay. It is my opinion, based on facts from any sources, that these straits never freeze over, and that the only danger

to navigation is when the ice-floes are running. in June and July. I know for a fact, that in 1905 the steamer left Fort Churchill on October 24 and made the trip to St. John's, Newfoundland, in eleven days. The straits were wide open until that time, and surely with such a short haul the greater part of the grain could be shipped before November 1. The bay is open all the year round, and was open when I left there on January 3rd last.'

The period of safe navigation for ordinary iron steamships through Hudson strait and across Hudson bay to the port of Churchill, may be taken to extend from the 20th of July to the 1st of November. This period may be increased without much risk by a week in the beginning of the season and by perhaps two weeks at the close.'

Walter Dickson, who was twenty years in the service of the company about the bay and strait, expressed the belief that they could be navigated for five months in each year, and made this statement:

'From what I have observed of the movement of ice in Hudson bay during the summers I passed there, I am perfectly assured that an ordinary screw steamer would never have any difficulty in getting through or round that which is usually met with in the bay and strait. The chief reason why the old sailing vessels of the Hudson Bay Company often met with detentions in the ice was and is that the season when floe ice is met with there is generally very little wind and sailing vessels are consequently as helpless amongst the ice as they would be in a dead calm in the centre of the Atlantic or elsewhere. The bay has always been found of easy access to a good and careful navigator. From what is known, and the experience already obtained on the subject, there is every reason to believe that, were the Hudson bay thoroughly surveyed, it would be found to be one of the safest of known seas. I have known a season when the harbours were accessible for seven months in the year.'

Captain Adams, who had thirty-five years' experience in northern waters, gave this opinion: Ships may enter the strait and bay from the 20th to 25th June almost yearly, and the strait remains open till the young ice forms about October 26. In round numbers the straits are open four months a year, but even when open, navigation at the entrance is sometimes difficult, because the current from Davis strait carries ice across the mouths of Frobisher, Cumberland and Hudson straits.'

Captain James Hackland was thirty-nine years in the service of the Hudson Bay Company. He first navigated the bay in 1846, and for years commanded a schooner that coasted from York to Churchill. He left Orkney on the 22nd June and passed through the strait in the middle of July. He saw no ice except at a distance to the southward. He wrote: The strait is open all the year round. The ice from Fox channel comes down in July. It never goes into the bay, but follows the current through the strait. The navigation of the western end of the strait is, therefore, most interrupted at that time.'

Captain Colin Sinclair, who was brought up at York Factory and who navigated these northern waters for six years, passed through the strait on a sealing voyage as early as April and saw no ice. He was confident that there

was 'no unusual danger or difficulty in the navigation of the bay and strait.'

Captain Silsby, a practical man, engaged for many summers in Hudson strait and bay, wrote in 1884 My experience tells me that navigation by steam is entirely practicable for four months in the year, viz., July, August, September and October, and in many years the most of November.' He saw no reason why steamships could not make excellent speed on that course to and from Europe for four months certainly in the year and in open winters for five months.

Captain Kennedy who commanded the 'Prince Albert,' chartered to search for the Franklin expedition, was previously in the service of the company for some eight years at Ungava bay. In the autumn of 1838 he traversed the coast from Chimo river (Kaneabascon river) to George river and coasted that shore line in a York boat every year of the eight years. He found no ice after July in the bay and only on one occasion found ice on the 1st November, and then only small pieces of field ice." He regarded as very regular the currents, which, he wrote, open up the channels of ingress and egress into Hudson bay and convert the bay and strait into a pathway for commerce.'

Mr. Low again expressed the opinion that from the latter end of July to the middle of November, from three and a half to four months, there was probably safe navigation, where ordinary iron tramp steamers could be used. He did not mean that it was absolutely free from ice, but sufficiently free to make it safe navigation. The ice would not sink your ship or anything like that. The ice that is met up there is rafted up, and sometimes rafted deep. In the midsummer months it gets warm and more easily broken. The cementing material is practically gone from it. You just run into it and it breaks to pieces, and you see four times as much as you did before.

The Hudson bay ships, as a rule come into the Hudson bay about the first of August, and the ship from Churchill comes back again about the end of the month. It goes to Fort Charmell in the Ungava river and generally lies there until September.

The strait is navigable from about the middle of July until the first day of November anyway, and a couple of weeks might be added at the end, because the ice in Hudson bay, the new ice, is of no consequence to a ship until it gets to be 15 or 18 inches thick, and not much ice forms before that date. The Arctic ice that comes down Baffin's bay is serious, because it is heavy ice and sometimes it is 40 feet thick. It comes down from the north, and the witness expected that at the end of November and December it is beginning to fill the eastern part of the straits. Part of it sweeps around Resolution island, and witness had seen heavy ice up as far as Digges island, about the middle of the straits, and it is quite a serious thing. That would not be the case every year. If there were high westerly winds it would drive that ice from the coast, and it would pass the straits without coming in.

In the report of his trip in the Neptune,' Mr. Low had spoken of that ship having got into the ice about July 22, and of having to ram her way through it. He explained to the committee that that was coming out of the bay from Fullerton. They got in the ice just off

Cape Wolstenholme. He thought they were too far south and met the ice, but to the north it looked as if they could have had open water if they had kept away from Cape Wolstenholm. Very heavy ice would not come very much earlier than November, because the Baffin bay ice would not break up sooner.

Altogether the witness considered the Hudson bay route, when it was clear, an even clearer one than via the St. Lawrence. There is at least two months when there is no trouble from ice at all, and when you do meet that loose ice in the summer time there is no trouble. There would have to be several lights established. There would have to be lights at Nottingham island, and probably at Cape Digges. Charlatan island would probably have to be lit at both ends, because it is practically in the middle of the channel, and then there would have to be lights at Cape Chigney and on Resolution island. Lights would also have to be placed at the mouth of Churchill harbour.

Asked by the Honourable Mr. Ferguson if the Hudson Bay Company placed the information very cheerfully at his disposal, witness replied that the Hudson Bay Company do not like to have fur trade interfered with.

Mr. Tyrrell left Churchill about November 25th or 29th. The bay was open then and there were no icebergs. A ship could not go out and in then. The harbour was closed. The witness arrived at Churchill one year from the north on October 16, in a canoe. He considered if he could travel down the shore of Hudson bay in a Peterborough canoe, and get to Churchill safely with it in two successive years, one year as late as October 16, and the other year as late as the 1st, that a steamer or a well protected boat ought to be able to get through a little better.

Dr. Bell, replying to a question by the Hon. Mr. Tessier, said it is hard to say how many months of the year steamers could pass through the strait. He did not see why they could not pass through at any time in the winter, though it would be inconvenient. Neither the bay nor the strait are frozen up any more than the Atlantic ocean. He could not conceive a bay 600 miles wide, in the same latitudes as the British islands, being frozen with the meteorological conditions being normal for their latitudes. He might be told that it is the influence of the gulf stream that keeps the navigation open in the same latitude on the coast of Europe, but his informant would not know himself how the gulf stream works. Here you have no Arctic current such as you have along the Labrador coast, nor have you the advantage of the gulf stream; you have just the normal conditions for their latitudes.

The mouth of the Churchill forms the most southern harbour on the west coast for ships drawing over twenty-four feet of water. The channel of approach is fairly deep and wide. The tide is pretty uniform, rising at its maximum, on an average, eleven or twelve feet. At all its stages the harbour can be reached. Mr. Thibaudeau, C.E., made extensive soundings last fall. He reports the depth at low water at the entrance of the harbour to be from eight to twelve fathoms. Half a mile within the minumum depth is seven fathoms. At the head of the harbour there are two shoals over which at low tide there is from two and a quarter to two and a half fathoms of water, and between and around

them the depth is from four to four and onehalf fathoms. With modern aids to navigation along the approach, and docks and elevators in the harbour, Churchill would afford all the port requirements necessary for conLecting the railway with the waterway afforded by the bay and straits.

A record kept for seventy years by the Hudson's Bay company officials at Churchill shows that the harbour was open on an average for five months-from June 19 to November 18. The longest open season was five Lonths and eighteen days. That was in 1846. The shortest-four months and eight days-was in 1838. The earliest date at which the harbour opened was June 5, 1863, and the latest July 2, 1866. The earliest on which it closed was November 1, 1837, and the latest December 4, 1861 and 1885.

The harbour can be kept open all the year by the employment of ice-breakers. Last year, 1906, the harbour closed between December 5th and 10th. The conditions in January, 1907, were as follows: In the bay at Fort Churchill the ice was eleven inches thick. It extended for a third of a mile from the shore into the bay. Ice was much thinner in the bay than in the harbour. There was some floating ice about a quarter of a mile from the edge of the bay ice. This is sent in by a northerly wind; should the prevailing winds blow from any other direction, there would be no floating ice.

Beyond this floating ice there was clear open water straight away into the bay and beyond.

There are plenty of harbours on both sides of the Hudson strait. One is on the north side and east of Digges island, but has not been properly examined yet. But there is no doubt there are a number of good harbours there. On the south side the witness examined the coast from Cape Wolstenholme to the south part of Ungava bay, and there are a number of very good harbours along that coast. Between the end of July and the end of September when he was there, the strait was not quite clear of ice, for some was floating in the strait.

The straits are practically never clear, but the ice that was in there after the middle of July until November almost would not harm an ordinary vessel. The great danger in the autumn in the navigation of Hudson strait

is the stream of Arctic ice that comes down from the Arctic ocean and from Baffin bay. Then from the end of September snow squalls are frequent. The navigator is in far more fear of snow squalls than fog. Late in September there is a heavy fog that rises from the water, brought on by the excessive cold. When the temperature gets below zero there is a continuous fog that rises from the water, sometimes 100 feet and sometimes 200 feet. could not overcome that by lighting nor with anything, except getting on the top of the mast and looking over it; it is a light fog.

You

The mouth of Churchill river is an exception to the general character of the Hudson bay shore. There is at the mouth of the Churchill river a rocky hill rising, or at least a mass of rock. The remarks about the shore descending to the bay do not apply exactly to the mouth of the Churchill river. That is the reason Churchill is a harbour. Churchill would be a harbour in low water;

it is one of the most magnificent harbours in the world, probably the finest harbour. It is a rocky hill rising about 100 feet high and bow-shaped. Projecting out into the bay is a rocky knuckle on one side, so that in entering the harbour ships have to take a slight curve, but they very, very quickly get away from the influence of the ocean waves. At the present time the harbour is about 30 to 40 feet deep. The tide is heavy and rising from nine to sixteen feet at low tide. The channel is the same width at low and high tide. The channel out into the bay from the harbour is a rock-bound channel, probably one hundred or two hundred feet deep, so that that channel is clear either at high or low water. It is wide enough for a couple of ships to pass, and incur no danger. There is one rock in the mouth just a short distance from the point of the projecting rock he had spoken of, and if that were removed it would widen the harbour and about double its width. The width of the harbour is now about 200 or 300 feet. The entrance is narrow. It is a beautiful harbour for the ships to enter from the ocean. The rock rises precipitately on both sides to one hundred feet. There is no possibility of a ship getting away from it. Where the rocks run as they do at this harbour, it makes a natural slip, about as safe a place to enter with a ship as one could very well imagine. The entrance is from a quarter to half a mile long. Outside of the harbour is the open ocean with its deep water.

Mr. Tyrrell was at Churchill in the fall two different years, approximately in the months of October and November. He reached there October 15 one year, and he was there part of November. In one of his reports he purchased a table giving the dates of the opening and closing of navigation; obtained from the records of the Hudson Bay company at Churchill.

Hon. Mr. FERGUSON-I wish to point out to the hon. gentleman from Saskatchewant that he has read from Mr. Gordon's report a statement that icebergs came down Fox's channel. In the following year, Mr. Gordon corrected that statement. In the later report he said he was mistaken with regard to that, and states that no icebergs came down there. They came from the

Atlantic.

Hon. Mr. DAVIS-I understood that they came in on the tide from the Atlantic. He gives the weather September 8 and 9 at Churchill as being very fine. On several occasions, when this matter was under discussion in the Senate, it has been held up as a bogey that there was such heavy and continuous fog in the straits that it was impossible to navigate, and that there were snowstorms, during which it was impossible to navigate. In order to explode that idea, I submit the following table: