The Barren Ground of Northern Canada Part 10

I spent several days at the fort, being well treated as usual, and February was nearly finished when I started with Mr. Frank Hardistay on my last journey with dogs. The Lesser Slave Lake is about seventy miles in length, and covering this distance easily in two days we travelled down the Little Slave River which leaves the east end of the lake. A good deal of labour has been expended in blasting rocks out of the channel of this river, to enable the steamer from the Athabasca landing to reach the lake, and so avoid the expense of building boats and engaging crews to transport the Peace River cargo, but so far these efforts have proved unsuccessful.

I think we followed the course of this stream about twenty miles, then dived into the thick pine-forest on the east bank, and making a twelve-mile portage came out on the Athabasca River, seventy miles above the landing at the end of the waggon-road from Edmonton. The Athabasca has here the same monotonous look that one becomes so tired of in its lower reaches. When a point was rounded another point exactly similar showed three or four miles ahead, and this continued till we reached the landing, in clear cold weather, on March 3rd; three days later our dogs, bearing the smartest of dog-cloths and with sleigh-bells ringing merrily, rattled into Edmonton, and the wild free life of the last twenty months was over.

The excitement that the arrival of a stranger never fails to create at a lonely Northern fort is rather apt to give that stranger an exaggerated idea of his own importance; but when I reached Edmonton I at once realised that there are many people in the world who have ideas beyond musk-ox and caribou, dog-sleighs and snow-shoes. An election was at its height to decide who should have the honour of representing the territory of Alberta at Ottawa. Edmonton had been drinking, although it is supposed to keep strictly to the rules of the Prohibition Act, and before I had been an hour in the town I found myself in the midst of a free fight. I was unfortunate in not knowing the names of the candidates, or what policy they represented, and as I could give no clear account as to what I had done with my vote, I was roughly used by both sides and was glad to escape to the less boisterous hospitality of the Hudson's Bay Fort.

There were still two hundred miles of snow-covered prairie to be crossed to reach Calgary, but with horses to drag our sleigh, and a house to sleep in every night, there could be little hardship in the journey. At the crossing of the Red Deer we saw the iron rails that had already pushed far out towards Edmonton, but work had ceased for the winter and no trains were running. As we travelled south the snow became less every day, till we were forced to change our runners for wheels when still sixty miles from Calgary. Late in the evening of March 15th the whistle of a locomotive told me, more plainly than anything I had yet heard, that it was time to pull myself together and take up the common-place life of civilization; a few more miles of level country, down a steep pitch or two, across the frozen stream of the Elbow, and close ahead the lights of Calgary were blinking over the prairie.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Edmonton]

I am writing these concluding lines in a fashionable garret off St.

James's Street. Close at hand are all the luxuries that only ultra-civilization can give, and these luxuries are to be obtained by the simple method of handing over an adequate number of coins of the realm; there is no necessity to shoulder your gun and tramp many weary miles on snow-shoes before you get even a sight of your dinner in its raw state. But surely we carry this civilization too far, and are in danger of warping our natural instincts by too close observance of the rules that some mysterious force obliges us to follow when we herd together in big cities. Very emblematical of this warping process are the shiny black boots into which we squeeze our feet when we throw away the moccasin of freedom; as they gall and pinch the unaccustomed foot, so does the dread of our friends' opinion gall and pinch our minds till they become narrow, out of shape, and unable to discriminate between reality and semblance. A dweller in cities is too wrapped up in the works of man to have much respect left for the works of G.o.d, and to him the loneliness of forest and mountain, lake and river, must ever appear but a weary desolation. But there are many sportsmen who love to be alone with Nature and the animals far from their fellow-men, and as this book is intended solely for the sportsman, a few words of advice to anyone who is anxious to hunt the musk-ox may not be out of place.

I am not quite sure that Fort Resolution is the best point to start from. Fort Rae, on the north arm of the Great Slave Lake, lies nearer the Barren Ground, and the Dog-Ribs are said to be more amenable to reason than the Yellow Knives, while the distance to travel through a woodless country is shorter. Fort Good Hope, on the Lower Mackenzie, would be another good spot to make headquarters; but there is less certainty of finding the caribou in that neighbourhood, and without the caribou there is little chance of reaching the musk-ox. It is not the slightest use starting from a post with the theory that musk-ox can be killed in so many days, and that, by taking a load of provisions sufficient to last for the same length of time, a successful hunt will be made. The only plan is to work your way up slowly, to stay among the caribou in the autumn, and kill and _cache_ meat whenever an opportunity offers, ready for a rush on the first snow. Remember, too, when provisions get scarce, as they certainly will at some time or other, the country ahead is as big as the country behind, and the best chance lies in pushing on. To turn back may prove fatal, when another day's travel may put you in a land of plenty. It is possible to reach the hunting-ground and return to Fort Resolution with a canoe in the summer, but the robes are then worthless, and the whole sport savours too much of covert-shooting in July. Make quite sure before you start that you are determined to push on through everything, as even the Great Slave Lake is far to go on an unsuccessful errand. Here, in London, in front of a good fire at the club and under the influence of a good dinner, it is easy enough to kill musk-ox and make long night-marches on snow-shoes by the flashes of the Northern Lights; but the test of practice takes off some of the enjoyment.

A year has slipped away since our winter journey through the Peace River Pa.s.s. Young Brick kept his promise of getting the _cache_ right well, and a couple of months ago my journals arrived in England, so that I have been able to put together this rough record of my Northern travels.

On looking back one remembers only the good times, when meat was plentiful and a huge fire lit up the snow on the spruce trees; misery and starvation are forgotten as soon as they are over, and even now, in the midst of the luxury of civilization, at times I have a longing to pitch my lodge once more at the edge of the Barren Ground, to see the musk-ox standing on the snowdrift and the fat caribou falling to the crack of the rifle, to hear the ptarmigan crowing among the little pines as the sun goes down over a frozen lake and the glory of an Arctic night commences.

To the man who is not a lover of Nature in all her moods the Barren Ground must always be a howling, desolate wilderness; but for my part, I can understand the feeling that prompted Saltatha's answer to the worthy priest, who was explaining to him the beauties of Heaven. "My father, you have spoken well; you have told me that Heaven is very beautiful; tell me now one thing more. Is it more beautiful than the country of the musk-ox in summer, when sometimes the mist blows over the lakes, and sometimes the water is blue, and the loons cry very often? That is beautiful; and if Heaven is still more beautiful, my heart will be glad, and I shall be content to rest there till I am very old."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SKETCH MAP OF Mr. WARBURTON PIKE'S JOURNEYS TO THE BARREN GROUND OF NORTHERN CANADA]

APPENDIX I

I am much indebted to Professor Dawson, of the Dominion Geological Survey Department, for his kind permission to publish the following paper on the Unexplored Regions of Canada. It shows more plainly than any words of mine could tell how much yet remains to be done before this great portion of the British Empire is known as it ought to be.

ON SOME OF THE LARGER UNEXPLORED REGIONS OF CANADA.

(By G. M. DAWSON, D.S., a.s.soc. R.S.M., F.G.S., F.R.S.C.)

If on reading the t.i.tle of the paper which I had promised to contribute to the Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club, any one should have supposed it to be my intention to endeavour to describe or forecast the character of the unexplored areas mentioned, I must, in the first place, disclaim any such intention. The very existence of large regions of which little or nothing is known, is of course stimulating to a fertile imagination, ready to picture to itself undiscovered "golden cities a thousand leagues deep in Cathay," but such unscientific use of the imagination is far removed from the position of sober seriousness, in which I ask your attention to the facts which I have to present.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as we may happen to regard it, the tendency of our time is all in the direction of laying bare to inspection and open to exploitation all parts, however remote, of this comparatively small world in which we live, and though the explorer himself may be impelled by a certain romanticism in overcoming difficulties or even dangers met with in the execution of his task, his steps are surely and closely followed by the trader, the lumberer, or the agriculturalist, and not long after these comes the builder of railways with his iron road. It is, therefore, rather from the point of view of practical utility than from any other, that an appeal must be made to the public or to the Government for the further extension of explorations, and my main purpose in addressing you to-night is to make such an appeal, and to show cause, if possible, for the exploration of such considerable portions of Canada as still remain almost or altogether unmapped.

What I have to say, in fact, on this subject resolves itself chiefly into remarks on the map exhibited here, upon which the unexplored areas to which I am about to refer are clearly depicted in such a manner, I believe, as almost to speak for themselves.

It is very commonly supposed, even in Canada, but to a greater extent elsewhere, that all parts of the Dominion are now so well known that exploration, in the true sense of the term, may be considered as a thing of the past. This depends largely upon the fact that the maps of the country generally examined are upon a very small scale, and that upon such maps no vast areas yet remain upon which rivers, lakes, mountains, or other features are not depicted. If, however, we take the trouble to enquire more closely into this, and consult perhaps one of the geographers whose maps we have examined, asking such awkward questions as may occur to us on the sources of information for this region or that, we may probably by him be referred to another and older map, and so on till we find in the end that the whole topographical fabric of large parts of all these maps rests upon information of the vaguest kind.

Of most of the large areas marked upon the map here shown, this is absolutely true, and the interests of knowledge with respect to these would be better subserved if such areas were left entirely blank, or, at least, if all the geographical features drawn upon them appeared in broken lines, in such a way as to show that none of them are certain. In other regions, the main geographical outlines, such as the courses of the larger rivers, are indicated approximately, with such accuracy as may be possible from accounts or itineraries derived from travellers or from officers of the Hudson's Bay Company; or from the descriptions or rough sketches of Indians or other persons by whom the region has been traversed, but who have been unprovided with instruments of any kind and whose knowledge of the country has been incidentally obtained.

There is, in the case of such partially explored regions, more excuse for the delineation of the main features on our maps, as these may be useful in imparting general information of a more or less inexact kind.

We can scarcely, however, admit that such regions have been explored in any true sense of that term, while they are certainly unsurveyed, and very little confidence can be placed in maps of this kind as guides in travel. When, ten years ago, I struck across from Fort Macleod, on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, with the purpose of reaching Fort Dunvegan on the Peace, through a country densely forested and without trails or tracks of any kind, I had so much confidence in the existing maps of that region as to a.s.sume that Dunvegan was at least approximately correct in position on them. As often as possible I took observations for lat.i.tude, and each night worked out our position by lat.i.tude and departure, till at a certain point I was about to turn off to the north of the line previously followed with the confident antic.i.p.ation of finding Dunvegan. Just here, very fortunately, we fell in with some Indians, and though our means of communicating with them were very imperfect, we gathered enough to lead us to accept the guidance of one of them, who promised to lead us to the fort, but took an entirely different direction from that I had proposed taking. He was right, but Dunvegan proved to be, as shown on the maps, nearly forty miles west of its real position. Fortunately no very great importance attached to our reaching Dunvegan on a given day, but none the less, this practical experience proved to me very conclusively the desirability of showing features in broken lines, or otherwise indicating their uncertainty when they have not been properly fixed.

It must be confessed, however, that most of the travellers ordinarily to be found in these unexplored regions, being Indians or hunters, traders and others travelling under the guidance of Indians, do not depend on the lat.i.tudes and longitudes of places, or on the respective bearings of one place from another. The Indians follow routes with which they have been familiar since childhood, or, when beyond the boundaries of their own particular region of country, go by landmarks, such as mountains, lakes, and rivers, which have been described to them by their neighbours. Their memory in this respect is remarkable; but it must be remembered that among their princ.i.p.al subjects of conversation when sitting about the camp-fire are the distances in day's journeys from place to place, the routes which they have followed or have known others to follow, the difficulties to be encountered on these, the points at which food of different kinds may be obtained, and the features which strike them as being remarkable in the country traversed. Returning, however, from this digression, which began with the statement that accurate maps of such regions as are at present merely traversed by traders and Indians, are not imperative from the point of view of such travellers, it may with confidence be affirmed that such maps and explorations upon which they are based are absolutely essential to civilized society, to show in the first place what the natural resources of these regions are and how they may be utilized, in the second by what highways such regions may be most easily reached.

A glance at the map will show, that while many of the larger unexplored areas may be affirmed to lie to the north of the limit of profitable agriculture, considerable regions situated to the south of this limit still await examination. Large districts, again, in which no farmer will ever voluntarily settle, may afford timber which the world will be glad to get when the white pine of our nearer forests shall become more nearly exhausted, while, with respect to mineral resources, it is probable that in the grand aggregate the value of those which exist in the unexplored regions will be found, area for area, to be equal to those of the known regions, comparing each particular geological formation with its nearest representative. On the grounds alone, therefore, of geographical knowledge, and of the discovery and definition of the reserves of the country in timber and minerals, the exploration of all these unknown or little-known regions may be amply justified.

Taking a line drawn north and south in the longitude of the Red River Valley, which is, as nearly as may be, the centre of Canada from east to west, it may confidently be stated that by far the larger part of the country in which agricultural settlement is possible lies to the west, while the great bulk of the actual population lies to the east of this line. Looking to this grand fundamental fact, I believe it may safely be affirmed that some members of this audience will live to see the day when these conditions with respect to population will be boldly reversed, and in which the greater number of our representatives in Parliament gathering here will come from this great western region.

This disposition of the cultivable land depends partly upon the physical characteristics of the country, and in part on its climatic conditions.

Beyond Winnipeg, and stretching therefrom to the west and north-west, is the great area of prairie, plain, and plateau, which, wider near the forty-ninth parallel than elsewhere on the continent, runs on in one form or other, though with diminishing width, to the Arctic Ocean. This is, generally speaking, an alluvial region, and one of fertile soils.

Very fortunately, and as though by a beneficent provision of nature, the climatic features favour the utilization of this belt. The summer isothermals, which carry with them the possibility of ripening crops, trend far to the north.

Let us trace, for example, and as a rough and ready index of the northern limit of practicable agriculture of any kind, that isothermal line which represents a mean temperature of 60 Fahrenheit in the month of July. Pa.s.sing through the southern part of Newfoundland and touching the island of Anticosti, this line runs to the north end of Mista.s.sini Lake, and thence crosses Hudson's Bay, striking the west sh.o.r.e a short distance north of York Factory. Thence it runs westward, skirting the north end of Reindeer Lake, and then bending to the north-west, crosses Great Slave Lake, and touches the southern extremity of Great Bear Lake.

From this point it resumes a westward course and crosses the Yukon River a considerable distance to the north of the confluence of the Pelly and the Lewes, turning south again almost on the east line of Alaska. We need not, however, further follow its course, as owing to peculiar climatic conditions on the West Coast, it ceases there to be any criterion as to the conditions of agriculture.

The character of much of the western interior country is such that its exploration and survey is comparatively easy, and it will be observed that here the larger unknown regions are to be found only far to the northward, leaving in the more rugged and inhospitable eastern region vast islands of unexplored country in much more southern lat.i.tudes.

It may be said, in fact, that comparatively little of the region capable, so far as climate goes, of producing wheat is now altogether unknown; but it may be added, that increasing as the world now is in population, its people cannot much longer expect to find wheat-growing lands unoccupied in large blocks. The time is within measurable distance when lands with a fertile soil though more or less rigorous climate, in which only barley, oats, hemp, flax, and other hardy crops can be matured, will be in demand, and we are far from having acquired even a good general knowledge of these lands in Canada.

For many of the unexplored regions marked upon this map, however, we can in reason appeal only to their possible or presumable mineral wealth as an incentive to their exploration, and if some of them should prove wholly or in great part barren when such exploration shall have been carried out, it will not be without utility to acquire even this negative information, and write upon them in characters as large as need be, "No thoroughfare."

I will now ask your further attention for a few moments while I run over and make some remarks in detail on the various unexplored areas as indicated on the map. It must first, however, be explained in what manner the unexplored areas referred to have been outlined. All lines, such as those of rivers, chains of lakes, or other travelled routes, along which reasonably satisfactory explorations have been made and of which fairly accurate route-maps are in existence, are given an approximate average width of about fifty miles, or twenty-five miles on each side of the explorer's or surveyor's track. The known lines are thus arbitrarily a.s.sumed to be wide belts of explored country, and that which is referred to as unexplored comprises merely the intervening tracts. By this mode of definition the unexplored regions are reduced to minimum dimensions. Neither are any comparatively small tracts of country lying between explored routes included in my enumeration, in which the least area mentioned is one of 7500 square miles; nor are the Arctic islands, lying to the north of the continent, referred to.

Because of the empirical mode in which the unexplored areas have thus been delineated, it has not been attempted to estimate with more than approximate accuracy the number of square miles contained in each, my purpose being merely to render apparent the great dimensions of these areas.

In enumerating these areas, I shall not refer to the various explorations and lines of survey by which they are defined and separated one from another, as this would involve mention of nearly all the explorers who have traversed the northern part of the continent. I shall, however, note such excursions as have been made into or across the regions which are characterized as unexplored.

Beginning, then, in the extreme north-west of the Dominion, we find these areas to be as follows:--

1. Area between the eastern boundary of Alaska, the Porcupine River and the Arctic Coast, 9500 square miles, or somewhat smaller than Belgium. This area lies entirely within the Arctic Circle.

2. Area west of the Lewes and Yukon Rivers and extending to the boundary of Alaska, 32,000 square miles, or somewhat larger than Ireland. This country includes the head-waters of the White and probably of the Tanana Rivers, and, being comparatively low and sheltered from the sea by one of the highest mountain-ranges on the continent, the St. Elias Alps, doubtless possesses some remarkable peculiarities of climate.

3. Area between the Lewes, Pelly, and Stikine Rivers and to the east of the Coast Ranges, 27,000 square miles, or nearly as large as Scotland. This has been penetrated only by a few "prospectors," from whom, and from Indians, the courses of rivers shown on my maps published in connection with the Yukon Expedition Report are derived. It lies on the direct line of the metalliferous belt of the Cordillera, and its low lands are capable of producing hardy crops.

4. Area between the Pelly and Mackenzie Rivers, 100,000 square miles, or about twice the size of England. This belongs partly to the Yukon Basin and partly to that of the Mackenzie, and includes nearly 600 miles in length of the main Rocky Mountain Range. Many years ago, Mr. A. K. Isbister penetrated the northern part of this area for some distance on the line of the Peel River,[1] but owing to the manner in which he had to travel, but little accuracy can be attributed to his sketch of that river. Abbe Pet.i.tot also made a short journey into its northern part from the Mackenzie River side, but, with these exceptions, no published information exists respecting it.

5. Area between Great Bear Lake and the Arctic Coast, 50,000 square miles, or about equal to England in size. Nearly all to the north of the Arctic Circle.

6. Area between Great Bear Lake, the Mackenzie, and the western part of Great Slave Lake, 35,000 square miles, or larger than Portugal. With respect to this region and that last mentioned, it must be explained that I have felt some doubt whether they should be characterised as unexplored on the basis previously explained as that which is generally applied. Between 1857 and 1865, Mr. R. Macfarlane, of the Hudson's Bay Company, carried out an intelligent and valuable examination of part of the region north of Great Bear Lake, some results of which have lately been published,[2] and in both of these areas, between 1864 and 1871, the indefatigable missionary, Abbe Pet.i.tot, made numerous journeys, of which he subsequently published an account.[3] As Pet.i.tot's instruments consisted merely of a compa.s.s, and a watch which he rated by the meridian pa.s.sage of the sun, it must be a.s.sumed that his mapping of the country does not possess any great accuracy. His work, however, considering the difficulties under which it was performed, is deserving of all praise, and his several descriptions of the character of the country traversed are most valuable. It does not appear from his account of these regions that they are likely to prove of great utility to civilized man, except as fur-preserves, or possibly from the minerals which they may contain. He writes: "Ce pays est compose de contrees silencieuses comme le tombeau, des plaines vastes comme des departements, des steppes glaces plus affreux que ceux de la Siberie, de forets chetives, rabougries comme on n'en voit que dans le voisinage des glaciers du Nord."

7. Area between Stikine and Liard Rivers to the north and Skeena and Peace Rivers to the south, 81,000 square miles, or more than twice as large as Newfoundland. This includes a portion of the western Cordillera, and, between the Liard and Peace Rivers, a large tract of the interior plateau region of the continent, parts of which, there is reason to believe, consist of good agricultural land. Its western extremity was crossed in 1866 and 1867 by the exploratory survey of the Western Union or Collins'

Telegraph Company, then engaged in an attempt to connect the North American and European telegraph systems through Asia. No details of this part of their exploration have, however, been published, and if we may judge from other parts of their line, since checked, the survey made was of too rough a character to possess much geographical value.

8. Area between Peace, Athabasca, and Loon Rivers, 7500 square miles, or about half as large as Switzerland.

9. Area south-east of Athabasca Lake, 35,000 square miles. This may be compared in extent to Portugal.

10. Area east of the Coppermine River and west of Bathurst Inlet, 7,500 square miles. This again may be compared to half the area of Switzerland.

11. Area between the Arctic Coast and Back's River, 31,000 square miles, or about equal to Ireland.