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WARBURTON PIKE
WARBURTON PIKE
In many of the outlying districts of Canada an idea is prevalent, fostered by former travellers, that somewhere in London there exists a benevolent society whose object is to send men incapable of making any useful scientific observations to the uttermost parts of the earth, in order to indulge their taste for sport or travel. Several times before I had fairly started for the North, and again on my return, I was asked if I had been sent out under the auspices of this society, and, I am afraid, r
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
In the middle of June, 1889, I left Calgary for a drive of two hundred miles to Edmonton, the real starting-point for the great northern country controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, and, with the exception of their scattered trading-posts, and an occasional Protestant or Roman Catholic Mission, entirely given up to what it was evidently intended for, a hunting-ground for the Indian. My conveyance was a light buckboard, containing my whole outfit, which was as small as possible, consisting alm
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
After a stay of a few hours at the Fort, we started again in the Grahame on our voyage to the head of the rapids at Fort Smith, a distance of perhaps a hundred miles, and almost immediately passed into the main stream leaving the lake, and until the junction of the Peace bearing the name of the Rocky River. During the high water in summer part of the water of the Peace finds its way into the Athabasca Lake by a passage known as the Quatres Fourches, but as the floods subside a slight current set
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
We held a big council as to ways and means, and, after much discussion, finally came to the decision that our best chance was to leave the main body of women and children with sufficient men to attend to the nets for them, while the rest of us pushed on to the north with our two biggest canoes, in the hope of falling in with the caribou, and afterwards the musk-ox. We were to leave all the dogs at Fond du Lac, as we expected to send back before the setting in of winter; only two women, King's wi
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
In the various records of Arctic exploration, and especially in those dealing with the Barren Ground, there is frequent mention of deer, reindeer, and caribou, leaving the casual reader in doubt as to how many species of deer inhabit the rocky wilderness between the woods and the Arctic Sea. As a matter of fact, the Barren Ground caribou (which name I prefer, as distinguishing it from the woodland caribou, the only other member of the reindeer tribe existing on the American continent) is the sol
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
On the 17th of September we left our camp at the north end of Lake Camsell for a short expedition in search of musk-ox, which we expected to find within fifty miles of the edge of the woods. By this time we had all fattened up, and entirely recovered from the effects of the short rations we had had to put up with before we fell in with the caribou. My crew consisted at starting of King, Paul, François, Michel, and José; but as the two latter speedily showed signs of discontent I made no objectio
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The day after our arrival was Sunday, a fine, calm day with bright sunshine, of which we took advantage to wash our scanty stock of clothing and generally pull ourselves together. Cleanliness of the body is not looked upon with much favour by the half-breeds, but Sunday morning was always celebrated in the lodge by the washing of faces and a plentiful application of grease to the hair. After this operation was over we held a consultation as to the best way of carrying on our hunt of the musk-ox,
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
That night we made an open camp in a bunch of pines on the south side of Lake Mackay, at which point we intended to load wood for use in the Barren Ground. We were much better found in all respects than on the last occasion, and having dogs with us should not be obliged to carry anything ourselves. We used the ordinary travelling sleighs of the North; two smooth pieces of birch, some seven feet in length, with the front ends curled completely over and joined together with cross slats secured wit
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Early on the following morning we left camp with the light sleighs, and at sunrise were close to the place where the second band had been discovered. We were a long time in finding them, as the fog had settled down again, but at last made out a band of sixty on a high ridge between two small lakes in a very easy place to approach. Directly after we sighted them Paul's sleigh, which was ahead, capsized over a rock, and his rifle, which was lashed on the top of it, exploded with a loud report. The
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
At Fond du Lac I slept for the first time since we left the fort under a roof, but on account of the awful squalor of the house I should have much preferred the usual open camp in the snow. Daylight found us under way again, François and myself, with a small boy to run ahead of the dogs; as we were travelling light I expected to be able to ride the last half of the journey, but for the first two days the fish for dogs' food made our load too heavy to travel at a fast pace. I left all the musk-ox
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
About the middle of February, 1890, little François, an Indian living at the mouth of Buffalo River, arrived with the news that during a hunting-trip he had made to the southward he had seen the tracks of a band of wood buffalo and intended to go in pursuit of them after this visit to the fort. Mackinlay and myself both wanted an excuse to be in the woods again, and the next day saw us plodding across the bay on snow-shoes to the comfortable little shanty, under the high bluff, which forms the m
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
On the following day we made an easy day's travel to the east, and most of us succeeded in killing caribou while the women drove the dogs. From this time, all through the summer till we again reached the Great Slave Lake late in August, we had no difficulty about provisions; although there was many a time when we could not say where we might find our next meal, something always turned up, and we were never a single day without eating during the whole journey. I really believe it is a mistake to
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
On Thursday, July 17th, at two o'clock in the afternoon, we struck camp and started on a four-mile portage to the next lake down stream, as the river-bed was too full of large boulders to navigate the strong current with safety. It was hard work carrying the cargo and canoe through the mosquito-stricken ironstone country, and we did not camp till midnight. Here another bad omen was observed. Mackinlay and I had gone ahead, after carrying over a load, to try and kill something for supper; we foun
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
Late in the afternoon, with a great improvement in the weather, our canoe was afloat on Aylmer Lake (known to the Indians as the Lake of the Big Cliffs), over which she had been dragged on a dog-sleigh five weeks before. The following evening we passed into the short stretch of river that leaves its east end, and camped late on the south shore of Clinton Golden Lake, or, as the Yellow Knives call it, the Lake where the Caribou swim among the Ice. The vast body of water opened out before us into
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
By this time it was well on in September, and eight hundred miles had to be travelled to reach the Rocky Mountains and when these were sighted there were still two hundred miles to MacLeod's Lake, the farthest point I could reasonably hope to reach by open water. The first night we camped in the Quatre Fourches, the channel connecting the lake with the main stream of Peace River. The banks were thickly peopled with Indians and half-breeds, drying whitefish which were being taken in marvellous nu
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
On November 5th I camped at the head of the cañon with my crew, Murdo, John, Charlie, a half-breed from Quesnelle, and Pat, a full-blooded Siccanee from Fraser Lake ready to make a start up-stream the following morning with a long narrow canoe dug out of a cotton-wood log. But in the night the weather changed; snow fell heavily, a severe frost set in, and ice was forming rapidly along the banks. Baptiste, the Iroquois, who had come across the portage to see us off, had brought me a dozen pair of
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
Snow fell again in the night and increased our difficulties. For a day and a half we forced our way, sometimes on rough ice and sometimes through the thick willow bushes, with frequent rests as exhaustion overtook us, till we again saw the Siccanee coffin hung in the trees. Here we found the flour-sack that had been thrown away on our up-stream journey, and scraped off perhaps half a pound of flour which had stuck to the sack when wet. At the same time a mouse was caught in the snow, and, with n
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
It was towards the end of January, 1891, that I left Hudson's Hope for Edmonton, a distance of six hundred miles, giving up all further attempt to reach Macleod's Lake. A son of Mr. Brick, of Smoky River, turned up just before I started, and promised to go with Pat to my cache at the junction of the Findlay and Parsnip when the days grew long in spring. The rough ice would then be covered with deep snow, and with snow-shoes and hand-sleighs it would be easy to bring away the guns, journals, and
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APPENDIX I
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. If on reading the title of the paper which I had promised to contribute to the Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club, any one should have supposed it to be my intent
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APPENDIX II
APPENDIX II
I have to thank the authorities at Kew for the following list of a small collection of flowering plants that I found growing in the Barren Ground, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the head-waters of the Great Fish River. Alaska, 309 . Anticosti, 309 . Areas in the Dominion of Canada unexplored, 311 - 319 . Canada, 310 . Dunvegan, 306 . Exploration still possible and useful, 304 . Great Bear Lake, 309 . Great Slave Lake, 309 . Hudson's Bay, 309 . Hudson's Bay Company, 305 . Lewes, 309 . Macleod Fo
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THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER
THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Author of "Erewhon." Selections arranged and edited by Henry Festing Jones . New Edition, with an Introduction by Francis Hackett , and a portrait Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino. New edition with the author's revisions. Edited by R. A. Streatfeild . With 85 drawings chiefly by the author Life and Habit Unconscious Memory. A new edition with an Introduction by Prof. Marcus Hartog The Way of All Flesh. A novel. With an Introduction by Willia
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WORKS OF W. H. HUDSON
WORKS OF W. H. HUDSON
James M. Barrie says: "It is one of the choicest things of our latter day literature." Galsworthy says: "Hudson in that romantic piece of realism, 'The Purple Land,' has a supreme gift of disclosing not only the thing he sees, but the spirit of his vision. Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there. A very great writer, and—to my thinking—the most valuable our Age possesses." In "A Shepherd's
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BOOKS by BOYD CABLE
BOOKS by BOYD CABLE
The books by this young artillery officer have probably given the English speaking world a better understanding of the intimate details of the Great War than anything else that has been written. Cast for the most part in the form of fiction, and written for the most part within sound of the German guns, they have an atmosphere of reality that no mere work of the imagination can possess. BETWEEN THE LINES An attempt to convey the living humor or the glory that lies between the lines of the cold a
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A Student in Arms
A Student in Arms
Published originally in the columns of the London Spectator , these short articles, sketches, and essays, written by a man in the trenches, form a "war-book" of quite unusual kind, dealing with the deeper things of human life. The high spiritual idealism which actuates so many thousands in the ranks of the Allies finds a voice in it, and the mental attitude of the fighting-men towards religion, the Church, their officers and their comrades, is exhibited not only with sanity and sympathy, but wit
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The Coming Democracy
The Coming Democracy
An examination, searching and merciless, of Germany's mediæval dynastic and political system, by the author of "Because I Am a German," and a demand for reforms which all civilized countries of the world have enjoyed for decades. "The book is one of the most important which the war has produced."— The Spectator. "We recommend the book to every serious reader as one of the foremost books of universal and permanent value thus far inspired by the great war."— New York Tribune. "A most remarkable bo
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The Hill-Towns of France
The Hill-Towns of France
Not a guide-book in the technical sense, and not a history; but a charming series of descriptive and historical sketches of some of the most storied, romantic and beautiful places in Europe. This superbly illustrated volume deals with the following: Poitou : Poitiers , Chauvigny & Uzerche . Normandy : Falaise , Gaillard , Arcques-la-Bataille & Mont-Saint-Michel . Brittany : Saint-Jean-du-Doigt , La Faouët , Dinan & Josselin . Quercy : Cahors & Rocamadour . Langued
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