CHAPTER XXVII.

The Look-out Mountain.--A gigantic tree.--The Untiring retires before superior numbers.--Fort St. James.--A strange sight in the forest.--Lake Noola.--Quesnelle.--Cerf-vola in civilized life.--Old dog, good-bye.

We marched that day over thirty miles, and halted in a valley of cotton-wood trees, amid green leaves again. We were yet distant about forty-five miles from the Fort St. James, but my friend Rufus declared that a rapid march on the morrow would take us to the half-way house by sun-down. Rapid marches had long since become familiar, and one more or less did not matter much.

Daybreak found us in motion; it was a fast walk, it was a faster walk, it was a run, and ere the mid-day sun hung over the rich undulating forest-land, we were thirty miles from our camp in the cotton-wood. Before noon, a lofty ridge rose before us; the trail wound up its long ascent, Rufus called it “the Look-out Mountain.” The top was bare of forest, the day was bright with sunshine; not a cloud lay over the vast plateau of Middle New Caledonia.

Five hundred snowy peaks rose up along the horizon: the Nation Lake Mountains, the further ranges of the Ominica, the ridges which lie between the many tributaries of the Peace and the countless lakes of the North Frazer. Babine, Tatla, Pinkley, Stuart’s, and far off to the west the old monarchs of the Rocky Mountains rose up to look a last farewell to the wanderer, who now carried away to distant lands a hundred memories of their lonely beauty. On the south slope of the Look-out Mountain, a gigantic pine-tree first attracts the traveller’s eye; its seamed trunk is dusky red, its dark and sombre head is lifted high above all other trees, and the music which the winds make through its branches seems to come from a great distance. It is the Douglas Pine of the Pacific coast, the monarch of Columbian forests, a tree which Turner must have seen in his dreams.

A few miles south of the mountain, the country opened out into pleasant prairies fringed with groves of cotton-wood; the grass was growing thick and green, the meadows were bright with flowers. Three fat horses were feeding upon one of these meadows; they were the property of Rufus. We caught them with some little difficulty, and turned our two poor thin animals adrift in peace and plenty; then mounting the fresh steeds, Rufus and I hurried on to Fort St. James.

The saddle was a pleasant change after the hard marching of the last few days. Mud and dust and stones, alternating with the snow of the mountains, had told heavily against our moccassined feet; but the worst was now over, and henceforth we would have horses to Quesnelle.

It was yet some time before sun-down when we cantered down the sloping trail which leads to the Fort St. James. Of course the Untiring was at his usual post--well to the front. Be it dog-train, or march on foot, or march with horses, the Untiring led the van, his tail like the plume of Henry of Navarre at Ivry, ever waving his followers to renewed exertions. It would be no easy matter for me to enumerate all the Hudson’s Bay forts which the Untiring had entered at the head of his train. Long and varied experience had made him familiar with every description of post, from the imposing array of wooden buildings which marked the residence of a chief factor, down to the little isolated hut wherein some half-breed servant carries on his winter traffic on the shore of a nameless lake.

Cerf-vola knew them all. Freed from his harness in the square of a fort--an event which he usually accelerated by dragging his sled and three other dogs to the doorway of the principal house--he at once made himself master of the situation, paying particular attention to two objective points. First, the intimidation of resident dogs; second, the topography of the provision store. Ten minutes after his entry into a previously unexplored fort, he knew to a nicety where the white fish were kept, and where the dry meat and pemmican lay. But on this occasion at Fort St. James a woful disaster awaited him.

With the memory of many triumphal entries full upon him, he now led the way into the square of the fort, totally forgetting that he was no longer a hauling-dog, but a free lance or a rover on his own account. In an instant four huge haulers espied him, and charging from every side ere I could force in upon the conflict to balance sides a little, they completely prostrated the hitherto invincible Esquimaux, and at his last Hudson Bay post, near the close of his 2500 mile march, he experienced his first defeat. We rescued him from his enemies before he had suffered much bodily hurt, but he looked considerably tail-fallen at this unlooked-for reception, and passed the remainder of the day in strict seclusion underneath my bed.

Stuart’s Lake is a very beautiful sheet of water. Tall mountains rise along its western and northern shores, and forest promontories stretch far into its deep blue waters. It is the favourite home of the salmon, when late in summer he has worked his long, toilsome way up the innumerable rapids of the Frazer, 500 miles from the Pacific.

Colossal sturgeon are also found in its waters, sometimes weighing as much as 800 pounds. With the exception of rabbits, game is scarce, along the shores, but at certain times rabbits are found in incredible numbers; the Indian women snare them by sacksful, and every one lives on rabbit, for when rabbits are numerous, salmon are scarce.

The daily rations of a man in the wide domain of the Hudson’s Bay Company are singularly varied.

On the south shores of Hudson’s Bay a _voyageur_ receives every day one wild goose; in the Saskatchewan he gets ten pounds of buffalo-meat; in Athabasca eight pounds of moose-meat; in English River three large white fish; in the North, half fish and reindeer; and here in New Caledonia he receives for his day’s food eight rabbits or one salmon. Start not, reader, at the last item! The salmon is a dried one, and does not weigh more than a pound and a half in its reduced form.

After a day’s delay at Fort St. James, we started again on our southern road. A canoe carried us to a point some five and twenty miles lower down the Stuart’s River--a rapid stream of considerable size, which bears the out-flow of the lake and of the long line of lakes lying north of Stuart’s, into the main Frazer River.

I here said good-bye to Kalder, who was to return to Peace River on the following day. A whisky saloon in the neighbourhood of the fort had proved too much for this hot-tempered half-breed, and he was in a state of hilarious grief when we parted. “He had been very hasty,” he said, “would I exsqueeze him, as he was sorry; he would always go with this master again if he ever came back to Peace River;” and then the dog caught his eye, and overpowered by his feelings he vanished into the saloon.

Guided by an old carrier Indian chief, the canoe swept out of the beautiful lake and ran swiftly down the Stuart’s River. By sun-down we had reached the spot where the trail crosses the stream, and here we camped for the night; our horses had arrived before us under convoy of Tom the Indian.

On the following morning, the 31st of May, we reached the banks of the Nacharcole River, a large stream flowing from the west; open prairies of rich land fringed the banks of this river, and far as the eye could reach to the west no mountain ridge barred the way to the Western Ocean.

This river has its source within twenty miles of the Pacific, and is without doubt the true line to the sea for a northern railroad, whenever Canada shall earnestly take in hand the work of riveting together the now widely-severed portions of her vast dominion; but to this subject I hope to have time to devote a special chapter in the Appendix to this book, now my long journey is drawing to a close, and these latter pages of its story are written amid stormy waves, where a southward-steering ship reels on beneath the shadow of Madeira’s mountains.

Crossing the wide Nacharcole River, and continuing south for a few miles, we reached a broadly cut trail which bore curious traces of past civilization. Old telegraph poles stood at intervals along the forest-cleared opening, and rusted wire hung in loose festoons down from their tops, or lay tangled amid the growing brushwood of the cleared space. A telegraph in the wilderness! What did it mean?

When civilization once grasps the wild, lone spaces of the earth it seldom releases its hold; yet here civilization had once advanced her footsteps, and apparently shrunk back again frightened at her boldness. It was even so; this trail, with its ruined wire, told of the wreck of a great enterprise. While yet the Atlantic cable was an unsettled question, a bold idea sprung to life in the brain of an American. It was to connect the Old World and the New, by a wire stretched through the vast forests of British Columbia and Alaska, to the Straits of Behring; thence across the Tundras of Kamtschatka, and around the shores of Okhotsk the wires would run to the Amoor River, to meet a line which the Russian Government would lay from Moscow to the Pacific.

It was a grand scheme, but it lacked the elements of success, because of ill-judged route and faulty execution. The great Telegraph Company of the United States entered warmly into the plan. Exploring parties were sent out; one pierced these silent forests; another surveyed the long line of the Yukon; another followed the wintry shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, and passed the Tundras of the black Gulf of Anadir.

Four millions of dollars were spent in these expeditions. Suddenly news came that the Atlantic cable was an accomplished fact. Brunel had died of a broken heart; but the New World and the Old had welded their thoughts together, with the same blow that broke his heart.

Europe spoke to America beneath the ocean, and the voice which men had sought to waft through the vast forests of the Wild North Land, and over the Tundras of Siberia, died away in utter desolation.

So the great enterprise was abandoned, and to-day from the lonely shores of Lake Babine to the bend of the Frazer at Quesnelle, the ruined wire hangs loosely through the forest.

During the first two days of June we journeyed through a wild, undulating country, filled with lakes and rolling hills; grassy openings were numerous, and many small streams stocked with fish intersected the land.

The lakes of this northern plateau are singularly beautiful. Many isles lie upon their surface; from tiny promontories the huge Douglas pine lifts his motionless head. The great northern diver, the loon, dips his white breast in the blue wavelets, and sounds his melancholy cry through the solitude. I do not think that I have ever listened to a sound which conveys a sense of indescribable loneliness so completely as this wail, which the loon sends at night over the forest shores. The man who wrote

“And on the mere the wailing died away”

must have heard it in his dreams.

We passed the noisy Indian village of Lake Noola and the silent Indian graves on the grassy shore of Lake Noolkai, and the evening of the 2nd of June found us camped in the green meadows of the West Road River, up which a white man first penetrated to the Pacific Ocean just eighty years ago.

A stray Indian came along with news of disaster. A canoe had upset near the cotton-wood cañon of the Frazer, and the Hudson’s Bay officer at Fort George had gone down beneath a pile of driftwood, in the whirlpools of the treacherous river. The Indian had been with him, but he had reached the shore with difficulty, and was now making his way to Fort St. James, carrying news of the catastrophe.

Forty more miles brought us to the summit of a ridge, from which a large river was seen flowing in the centre of a deep valley far into the south. Beyond, on the further shore, a few scattered wooden houses stood grouped upon a level bank; the wild rose-trees were in blossom; it was summer in the forest, and the evening air was fragrant with the scent of flowers.

I drew rein a moment on the ridge, and looked wistfully back along the forest trail.

Before me spread civilization and the waters of the Pacific; behind me, vague and vast, lay a hundred memories of the Wild North Land.

* * * * *

For many reasons it is fitting to end this story here. Between the ridge on the west shore of the Frazer and those scattered wooden houses on the east, lies a gulf wider than a score of valleys. On one side man--on the other the wilderness; on one side noise of steam and hammer--on the other voice of wild things and the silence of the solitude.

It is still many hundred miles ere I can hope to reach anything save a border civilization. The road which runs from Quesnelle to Victoria is 400 miles in length. Washington territory, Oregon, and California have yet to be traversed ere, 1500 miles from here, the golden gate of San Francisco opens on the sunset of the Pacific Ocean.

Many scenes of beauty lie in that long track hidden in the bosom of the Sierras. The Cascades Ranier, Hood, and Shasta will throw their shadows across my path as the Untiring dog and his now tired master, wander south towards the grim Yosemite; but to link these things into the story of a winter journey across the yet untamed wilds of the Great North would be an impossible task.

One evening I stood in a muddy street of New York. A crowd had gathered before the door of one of those immense buildings which our cousins rear along their city thoroughfares and call hotels. The door opened, and half a dozen dusky men came forth.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They are the Sioux chiefs from the Yellowstone,” answered a bystander; “they’re a taking them to the the-a-ter, to see Lester Wallick.”

Out on the Great Prairie I had often seen the red man in his boundless home; savage if you will, but still a power in the land, and fitting in every way the wilds in which he dwells. The names of Red Cloud and his brother chiefs from the Yellowstone were household words to me. It was this same Red Cloud who led his 500 whooping warriors on Fetterman’s troops, when not one soldier escaped to tell the story of the fight in the foot-hills of the Wyoming Mountains; and here was Red Cloud now in semi-civilized dress, but still a giant ’midst the puny rabble that thronged to see him come forth; with the gaslight falling on his dusky features and his eyes staring in bewildered vacancy at the crowd around him.

Captain Jack was right: better, poor hunted savage, thy grave in the lava-beds, than this burlesque union of street and wilderness! But there was one denizen of the wilds who followed my footsteps into southern lands, and of him the reader might ask, “What more?”

Well, the Untiring took readily to civilization; he looked at Shasta, he sailed on the Columbia River, he climbed the dizzy ledges of the Yosemite, he gazed at the Golden Gate, and saw the sun sink beyond the blue waves of the great Salt Lake, but none of these scenes seemed to affect him in the slightest degree.

He journeyed in the boot or on the roof of a stage-coach for more than 800 miles; he was weighed once as extra baggage, and classified and charged as such; he conducted himself with all possible decorum in the rooms and corridors of the grand hotel at San Francisco; he crossed the continent in a railway carriage to Montreal and Boston, as though he had been a first-class passenger since childhood; he thought no more of the reception-room of Brigham Young in Utah, than had he been standing on a snow-drift in Athabasca Lake; he was duly photographed and petted and pampered, but he took it all as a matter of course.

There were, however, two facts in civilization which caused him unutterable astonishment--a brass band, and a butcher’s stall. He fled from the one; he howled with delight before the other.

I frequently endeavoured to find out the cause of his aversion to music. Although he was popularly supposed to belong to the species of savage beast, music had anything but a soothing effect upon him. Whenever he heard a band, he fled to my hotel; and once, when they were burying a renowned general of volunteers in San Francisco with full military honours, he caused no small confusion amidst the mournful cortége by charging full tilt through the entire crowd.

But the butcher’s stall was something to be long remembered. Six or eight sheep, and half as many fat oxen hung up by the heels, apparently all for his benefit, was something that no dog could understand. Planting himself full before it, he howled hilariously for some moments, and when with difficulty I succeeded in conducting him to the seclusion of my room, he took advantage of my absence to remove with the aid of his teeth the obnoxious door-panel which intervened between him and this paradise of mutton.

On the Atlantic shore I bid my old friend a long good-bye. It was night; and as the ship sailed away from the land, and I found myself separated for the first time during so many long months from the friend and servant and partner who

Thro’ every swift vicissitude Of changeful time, unchanged had stood,

I strung together these few rhymes, which were not the less true because they were only

MORE DOGGEREL.

Old dog, good-bye, the parting time has come, Hero on the verge of wild Atlantic foam; He who would follow, when fast beats the drum, Must have no place of rest, no dog, no home.

And yet I cannot leave thee even here, Where toil and cold in peace and rest shall end, Poor faithful partner of a wild career, Through icy leagues my sole unceasing friend,

Without one word to mark our long good-bye, Without a line to paint that wintry dream, When day by day, old Husky, thou, and I, Toiled o’er the great Unchagah’s frozen stream.

For now, when it is time to go, strange sights Rise from the ocean of the vanish’d year, And wail of pines, and sheen of northern lights, Flash o’er the sight and float on mem’ry’s ear.

We cross again the lone, dim shrouded lake, Where stunted cedars bend before the blast; Again the camp is made amidst the brake, The pine-log’s light upon thy face is cast.

We talk together, yes--we often spent An hour in converse, while my bit thou shared. One eye, a friendly one, on me was bent; The other, on some comrade fiercely glared.

Deep slept the night, the owl had ceased his cry, Unbroken stillness o’er the earth was shed; And crouch’d beside me thou wert sure to lie, Thy rest a watching, snow thy only bed.

The miles went on, the tens ’neath twenties lay; The scores to hundreds slowly, slowly, roll’d; And ere the winter wore itself away, The hundreds turn’d to thousands doubly told.

But still thou wert the leader of the band, And still thy step went on thro’ toil and pain; Until like giants in the Wild North Land, A thousand glittering peaks frown’d o’er the plain.

And yet we did not part; beside me still Was seen thy bushy tail, thy well-known face; Through cañon dark, and by the snow-clad hill, Thou kept unchanged thy old familiar pace.

Why tell it all? through fifty scenes we went, Where Shasta’s peak its lonely shadows cast; Till now for Afric’s shore my steps are bent, And thou and I, old friend, must part at last.

Thou wilt not miss me, home and care are thine, And peace and rest will lull thee to the end; But still, perchance with low and wistful whine, Thou’lt sometimes scan the landscape for thy friend.

Or when the drowsy summer noon is nigh, Or wintry moon upon the white snow shines, From dreamy sleep will rise a muffled cry, For him who led thee through the land of pines.

POSTSCRIPT

FOR THE EDITION OF 1907.

I have been asked to write a few new words for this old book, and it is not easy to do it. Most of the men and all the dogs of that wild time in the North are dead. I have never been able to understand why dogs should have short lives, and so many other things, such as tortoises, elephants, carp, and even men, should have long lives.

A few months ago I saw at St. Helena two tortoises which were said to have been at Plantation House for more than one hundred years. During a visit which I made to St. Helena in 1864 I became the owner of a picture of Plantation House, dated 1840. Two tortoises are shown in that picture on the lawn in front of the house, much smaller in size than the two now there. So it is probable that the legend of the hundred years on the Island is correct.

Strange! Napoleon, Bertrand, Montholon, Las Cases, Gourgaud, Hudson Lowe, O’Meara, all gone long ago--the two tortoises still there!

At the end of the Preface of 1873 I said that I was then about to proceed to Africa--a continent which appeared at the moment “to be offering adventure with a liberal hand.” That is thirty-four years ago; and, had Africa continued in her liberal mood, it might have been easier to write this Postscript to-day. Unfortunately the mood did not last. Africa proffered her adventures to me with a very conservative hand--so much so, indeed, that a great blank or void has arisen in my mind between these old days of the snow-shoe, the dog-sled, the buffalo, and the prairie of the Wild North Land and the present time. Over and above the lapse of years, Africa has intervened with rather more than a full share of her by-products--fever, ineffectual labour, and that eventual frustration of human effort which seems to have been the inevitable outcome of African adventure from the time of Hannibal the Carthaginian to Moneyball, the London Latitudinarian.

If you look at a map of the world you will see that what is, in a topographical sense, thickest and longest in Africa is thinnest and shortest in the rest of the globe. Africa, measured along the 10th degree of North latitude, gives about 4000 miles of land-line. The same latitude in all the other continents combined will give about 400 miles. We call the equator an imaginary line, but it is the only real live line that has lasting significance in relation to man’s life on earth.

The equator may be said to be the chest and heart of Africa. Elsewhere over the globe it is as a finger-tip or a toe-nail. That fact holds an immense human problem.

When the Great Divider of earth and ocean scooped out the central portion of the two Americas, forming the vast water receptacle now filled by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, He laid the line of a good deal of man’s destiny in the world.

Run the eye from this great sea gap in America across the Atlantic to the west coast of Africa, and in the same latitudes you find a corresponding land protuberance, sufficient (if we could tow it across the ocean) to fill the opposite land vacuum in Central America. And it is strange to note that it was from this African protuberance that the vast majority of the negroes were taken in the days of the slave trade, and carried over the Atlantic to work as slaves among the islands and on the coasts of this same Mexican Gulf and Carib Sea. Were the slave-traders of Bristol and Liverpool, unconsciously, in this hideous traffic, reversing the after idea of Canning by calling the old world into American slavery in order to redress the balance of colour in the new? For what seems probable is that had these, say twenty degrees, of solid Equatorial Africa originally filled up that Central American sea space, the greater part of the entire continent would to-day have belonged to the negro race.

The Aztec has gone, the Indian is going, but the imported African black man is going ahead.

At the end of the Civil War less than three million negroes were in the United States. There are now, I am told, ten millions. In spite of old slavery and modern race-exclusion and outrage, the African is making his way in the new world. Emigration from Europe throws nearly a million virile whites annually into America. Africa sends no fresh blood to replenish the old slave stock; nevertheless, the ratio of black increase exceeds that of the white.

Herein a strange contrariety presents itself in the two colours. The white man fails to live and propagate himself in Equatorial Africa, but the black man thrives and multiplies in America. And meanwhile what about the Wild North Land? That, like the men and dogs, is also dead.

One of the old friends of that time still survives--the gentleman of the Hudson’s Bay Company who was my companion from Fort Carlton to Lake Athabasca in the winter of ’72–73. His letters still breathe the same unconquerable energy that characterised him in the far North. He tells me in a letter written from Winnipeg at Christmas last that my little village at Fort Garry is now a great city, “which will one day,” he writes, “be the greatest, and in short the Chicago of Canada.” He tells me also of booms and bridges and expansions, and he sends me newspapers with pictures of hotels, grain-elevators, and universities, all of approved American design, and of entirely up-to-date ugliness. He says that even “a more progressive city government is expected from a new mayor who has recently been elected by nearly double the largest majority ever obtained by any previous mayor.”

All this is no doubt quite as it should be; but it goes to prove, all the same, that the Wild North Land is dead and buried. I do not want to see its grave--I prefer to remember it as I saw it more than a generation ago; and I believe that one Chicago is amply sufficient for any one world.

Indeed, I can never be grateful enough that it was given me to see the old things of North America before the deluge. Prairies pure and unspotted; great herds of buffaloes moving; the sun setting over a silent wilderness.

W. F. B.

_January 1907._

APPENDIX.

ON THE PASSES THROUGH THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS IN BRITISH TERRITORY,

AND

THE BEST ROUTE FOR A CANADIAN RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

APPENDIX.

Nearly twenty years ago we began to talk of building a railroad across the continent of North America to lie wholly within British territory, and we are still talking about it.

Meantime our cousins have built their inter-oceanic road, and having opened it and run upon it for six years: they are also talking much about their work. But of such things it is, perhaps, better to speak after the work has been accomplished than before it has been begun.

The line which thus connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans bears the name of the Union Pacific Railroad. It crosses the continent nearly through the centre of the United States, following, with slight deviation, the 42nd parallel of latitude. Two other lines have been projected south, and one north of this Union Pacific road, all lying within the United States; but all have come to untimely ends, stopping midway in their career across the sandy plains of the West.

There was the Southern Pacific Railroad to follow the 30th parallel; there was the Kansas Pacific line following the Republican valley, and stopping short at the city of Denver in Colorado; and there was the Northern Pacific Railroad, the most ambitious of all the later lines, which, starting from the city of Duluth on the western extremity of Lake Superior, traversed the northern half of the State of Minnesota, crossed the sandy wastes of Dakota, and has just now come heavily to grief at the Big Bend of the Missouri River, on the borders of the “Bad Lands” of the Yellowstone.

In an early chapter of this book it has been remarked that the continent of North America, east of the Rocky Mountains, sloped from south to north. This slope, which is observable from Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, has an important bearing on the practical working of railroad lines across the continent. The Union Pacific road, taken in connexion with the Central Pacific, attains at its maximum elevation an altitude of over 8000 feet above the sea-level, and runs far over 900 miles at an average height of about 4500 feet; the Northern Pacific reaches over 5000 feet, and fully half its projected course lies through a country 3000 to 4000 feet above ocean-level; the line of the Kansas Pacific is still more elevated, and the great plateau of the Colorado River is more than 7000 feet above the sea. Continuing northward, into British territory, the next projected line is that of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it is with this road that our business chiefly lies in these few pages of Appendix.

The depression, or slope, of the prairie level towards the north continues, with marked regularity, throughout the whole of British America; thus at the 49th parallel (the boundary-line between the United States), the mean elevation of the plains is about 4000 feet. Two hundred and fifty miles north, or in the 53rd parallel, it is about 3000 feet; and 300 miles still farther north, or about the entrance to the Peace River Pass, it has fallen to something like 1700 feet above the sea-level.

But these elevations have reference only to the prairies at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. We must now glance at the mountains themselves, which form the real obstacle to inter-oceanic lines of railroad.

It might be inferred from this gradual slope of the plains northwards, that the mountain-ranges followed the same law, and decreased in a corresponding degree after they passed the 49th parallel, but such is not the case; so far from it, they only attain their maximum elevation in 52° N. latitude, where, from an altitude of 16,000 feet, the summits of Mounts Brown and Hooker look down on the fertile plains at the sources of the Saskatchewan River.

As may be supposed, it is only here that the Rocky Mountains present themselves in their grandest form. Rising from a base only 3000 feet above the ocean, their full magnitude strikes at once upon the eye of the beholder; whereas, when looked at in the American States from a standpoint already elevated 6000 or 7000 feet above the sea, and rising only to an altitude of 10,000 or 12,000 feet, they appear insignificant, and the traveller experiences a sense of disappointment as he looks at their peaks thus slightly elevated above the plain. But though the summits of the range increase in height as we go north, the levels of the valleys or passes, decrease in a most remarkable degree.

Let us look for a moment at these gaps which Nature has formed through this mighty barrier. Twenty miles north of the boundary-line the Kootanie Pass traverses the Rocky Mountains.

The waters of the Belly River upon the east, and those of the Wigwam River on the west, have their sources in this valley, the highest point of which is more than 6000 feet above sea-level.

Fifty miles north of the Kootanie, the Kananaskiss Pass cuts the three parallel ranges which here form the Rocky Mountains; the height of land is here 5700 feet. Thirty miles more to the north the Vermilion Pass finds its highest level at 4903; twenty miles again to the north the Kicking Horse Pass reaches 5210 feet; then comes the House Pass, 4500 feet; and, lastly, the pass variously known by the names of Jasper’s House, Tête Jeune, and Leather Pass, the highest point of which is 3400 feet.

From the House Pass to the Tête Jeune is a little more than sixty miles, and it is a singular fact that these two lowest passes in the range have lying between them the loftiest summits of the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

The outflow from all these passes, with the exception of the one last named, seeks on the east the river systems of the Saskatchewan, and on the west the Columbia and its tributaries. The Tête Jeune, on the other hand, sheds its dividing waters into the Athabasca River on the east, and into the Frazer River on the west.

So far we have followed the mountains to the 53° of N. latitude, and here we must pause a moment to glance back at the long-projected line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. As we have already stated, it is now nearly twenty years since the idea of a railroad through British America was first entertained. A few years later a well-equipped expedition was sent out by the British Government for the purpose of thoroughly exploring the prairie region lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains, and also reporting upon the nature of the passes traversing the range, with a view to the practicability of running a railroad across the continent. Of this expedition it will be sufficient to observe, that while the details of survey were carried out with minute attention and much labour, the graver question, whether it was possible to carry a railroad through British territory to the Pacific, appears to have been imperfectly examined and, after a survey extending us far north as the Jasper’s House Pass, but not including that remarkable valley, the project was unfavourably reported upon by the leader of the expedition.

The reasons adduced in support of this view were strong ones. Not only had the unfortunate selection of an astronomical boundary-line (the 49th parallel) shut us out from the western extreme of Lake Superior, and left us the Laurentian wilderness lying north of that lake, as a threshold to the fertile lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River; but far away to the west of the Rocky Mountains, and extending to the very shores of the Pacific, there lay a land of rugged mountains almost insurmountable to railroad enterprise.

Such was the substance of the Report of the expedition. It would be a long, long story now to enter into the details involved in this question; but one fact connected with “this unfortunate selection of an astronomical line” may here be pertinently alluded to, as evincing the spirit of candour, and the tendency to sharp practice which the Great Republic early developed in its dealings with its discarded mother. By the treaty of 1783, the northern limit of the United States was defined as running from the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods to the river Mississippi along the 49th parallel; but as we have before stated, the 49th parallel did not touch the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods or the river Mississippi; the former lay north of it, the latter south. Here was clearly a case for a new arrangement. As matters stood we had unquestionably the best of the mistake; for, whereas the angle of the Lake of the Woods lay only a few miles north of the parallel, the extreme source of the Mississippi lay a long, long way south of it: so that if we lost ten miles at the beginning of the line, we would gain 100 or more at the end of it.

All this did not escape the eyes of the fur-hunters in the early days of the century. Mackenzie and Thompson both noticed it and both concluded that the objective point being the river Mississippi, the line would eventually be run with a view to its terminal definitions, the Lake of the Woods and the Mississippi. In 1806, the United States Government sent out two Exploring Expeditions into its newly-acquired territory of Louisiana; one of them, in charge of a Mr. Zebulon Pike of the American army, ascended the Mississippi, and crossed from thence to Lake Superior. Here are his remarks upon the boundary-line. “The admission of this pretension” (the terminal point at the river Mississippi) “will throw out of our territory the upper portion of Red River, and nearly two-fifths of the territory of Louisiana; whereas if the line is run due west from the head of the Lake of the Woods, it will cross Red River nearly at the centre, and strike the Western Ocean at Queen Charlotte’s Sound. This difference of opinion, it is presumed, might be easily adjusted between the two Governments at the present day; but delay, _by unfolding the true value of the country_, may produce difficulties which do not now exist.”

The italics are mine.

Zebulon Pike has long passed to his Puritan fathers. Twelve years after he had visited the shores of Lake Superior, and long before our Government knew “the value of the country” of which it was discoursing, the matter was arranged to the entire satisfaction of Pike and his countrymen. They held tenaciously to their end, the Lake of the Woods; we hastened to abandon ours, the Mississippi River. All this is past and gone; but if to-day we write Fish, or Sumner, or any other of the many names which figure in boundary commissions or consequential claims, instead of that of Zebulon Pike, the change of signature will but slightly affect the character of the document.

But we must return to the Rocky Mountains. It has ever been the habit of explorers in the north-west of America, to imagine that beyond the farthest extreme to which they penetrate, there lay a region of utter worthlessness. One hundred years ago, Niagara lay on the confines of the habitable earth; fifty years ago a man travelling in what are now the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, would have been far beyond the faintest echo of civilization. So each one thought, as in after-time fresh regions were brought within the limits of the settler. The Government Exploring Expedition of sixteen years since, deemed that it had exhausted the regions fit for settlement when it reached the northern boundary of the Saskatchewan valley. The project of a railroad through British territory was judged upon the merits of the mountains lying west of the sources of the Saskatchewan, and the labyrinth of rock and peak stretching between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Even to-day, with the knowledge of further exploration in its possessions, the Government of the Dominion of Canada seems bent upon making a similar error. A line has been projected across the continent, which, if followed, must entail ruin upon the persons who would attempt to settle along it upon the bleak treeless prairies east of the mountains, and lead to an expenditure west of the range, in crossing the multitudinous ranges of Middle and Southern British Columbia, which must ever prevent its being a remunerative enterprise.

The Tête Jeune Pass is at present the one selected for the passage of the Rocky Mountains. This pass has many things to recommend it, so far as it is immediately connected with the range which it traverses; but unfortunately the real obstacles become only apparent when its western extremity is reached, and the impassable “divide” between the Frazer, the Columbia, and the Thompson Rivers looms up before the traveller. It is true that the cañon valley of the North Thompson lies open, but to follow this outlet, is to face still more imposing obstacles where the Thompson River unites with the Frazer at Lytton, some 250 miles nearer to the south-west; here, along the Frazer, the Cascade Mountains lift their rugged heads, and the river for full sixty miles flows at the bottom of a vast angle cut by nature through the heart of the mountains, whose steep sides rise abruptly from the water’s edge: in many places a wall of rock.

In fact, it is useless to disguise that the Frazer River affords the sole outlet from that portion of the Rocky Mountains lying between the boundary-line, the 53rd parallel of latitude and the Pacific Ocean; and that the Frazer River valley is one so singularly formed, that it would seem as though some superhuman sword had at a single stroke cut through a labyrinth of mountains for 300 miles, down deep into the bowels of the land.

Let us suppose that the mass of mountains lying west of the Tête Jeune has been found practicable for a line, and that the Frazer River has been finally reached on any part of its course between Quesnelle and the Cascade range at Lytton.

What then would be the result?

Simply this: to turn south along the valley of the river, would be to face the cañons of the Cascades, between Lytton and Yale. To hold west, would be to cross the Frazer River itself, and by following the Chilcotin River, reach the Pacific Ocean at a point about 200 miles north of the estuary of the Frazer. But to cross this Frazer River would be a work of enormous magnitude,--a work greater, I believe, than any at present existing on the earth; for at no point of its course from Quesnelle to Lytton is the Frazer River less than 1200 feet below the level of the land lying at either side of it, and from one steep scarped bank to the other is a distance of a mile or more than a mile.

How, I ask, is this mighty fissure, extending right down the country from north to south, to be crossed, and a passage gained to the Pacific? I answer that the _true passage to the Pacific lies far north of the Frazer River_, and that _the true passage of the Rocky Mountains lies far north of the Tête Jeune Pass_.

And now it will be necessary to travel north from this Tête Jeune Pass, along the range of the Rocky Mountains.

One hundred miles north of the Tête Jeune, on the east, or Saskatchewan side of the Rocky Mountains, there lies a beautiful land. It is some of the richest prairie land in the entire range of the north-west. It has wood and water in abundance. On its western side the mountains rise with an ascent so gradual that horses can be ridden to the summits of the outer range, and into the valley lying between that range and the Central Mountain.

To the north of this prairie country, lies the Peace River; south, the Lesser Slave Lake; east, a land of wood and muskeg and trackless forest. The Smoking River flows almost through its centre, rising near Jasper’s House, and flowing north and east until it passes into the Peace River, fifty miles below Dunveyan. From the most northerly point of the fertile land of the Saskatchewan, to the most southerly point of this Smoking River country, is about 100 or 120 miles. The intervening land is forest or muskeg, and partly open.

The average elevation of this prairie above sea level would be under 2000 feet. In the mountains lying west and north-west there are two passes; one is the Peace River, with which we are already acquainted; the other is a pass lying some thirty or forty miles south of the Peace River, known at present only to the Indians, but well worth the trouble and expense of a thorough exploration, ere Canada hastily decides upon the best route across its wide Dominion.

And here I may allude to the exploratory surveys which the Canadian Government has already inaugurated. A great amount of work has without doubt been accomplished, by the several parties sent out over the long line from Ottawa to New Westminster; but the results have not been, so far, equal to the expenditure of the surveys, or to the means placed at the disposal of the various parties. In all these matters, the strength of an Executive Government resting for a term of years independent of political parties, as in the case of the United States, becomes vividly apparent; and it is not necessary for us in England to seek in Canada for an exemplification of the evils which militate against a great national undertaking, where an Executive has to frame a budget, or produce a report, to suit the delicate digestions of evenly balanced parties.

It would be invidious to particularize individuals, where many men have worked well and earnestly; but I cannot refrain from paying a passing tribute to the energy and earnestness displayed by the gentlemen who, during the close of the summer of 1872, crossed the mountains by the Peace River Pass, and reached the coast at Fort Simpson, near the mouth of the Skeena River.

But to return to the Indian Pass, lying west of the Smoking River prairies. As I have already stated, this pass is known only to the Indians; yet their report of it is one of great moment. They say (and who has found an Indian wrong in matters of practical engineering?) that they can go in three or four days’ journey from the Hope of Hudson to the fort on Lake Macleod, across the Rocky Mountains; they further assert that they can in summer take horses to the central range, and that they could take them all the way across to the west side, but for the fallen timber which encumbers the western slope.

Now when it is borne in mind that this Lake Macleod is situated near the height of land between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans; that it stands at the head of the Parsnip River (the south branch of the Peace); and that further, a level or rolling plateau extends from the fort to the coast range of mountains at Dean’s Inlet, or the Bentinck arm on the coast of British Columbia, nearly opposite the northern extreme of Vancouver’s Island; the full importance of this Indian Pass, as a highway to the Pacific through the Rocky Mountains, will be easily understood.

But should this Indian Pass at the head of the Pine River prove to be, on examination, unfit to carry a railroad across, I am still of opinion that in that case the Peace River affords a passage to the Western Ocean vastly superior to any of the known passes lying south of it. What are the advantages which I claim for it? They can be briefly stated.

It is level throughout its entire course; it has a wide, deep, and navigable river flowing through it; its highest elevation in the main range of the Rocky Mountains is about 1800 feet; the average depth of its winter fall of snow is about _three feet_; by the first week of May this year the snow (unusually deep during the winter) had entirely disappeared from the north shore of the river, and vegetation was already forward in the woods along the mountain base.

But though these are important advantages for this mountain pass, the most important of all remains to be stated. From the western end of the pass to the coast range of mountains, a distance of 300 miles across British Columbia, there does not exist one single formidable impediment to a railroad. By following the valley of the Parsnip River from “the Forks” to Lake Macleod, the Ominica range is left to the north, and the rolling plateau land of Stuart’s Lake is reached without a single mountain intervening; from thence the valley of the Nacharcole can be attained, as we have seen in my story, without the slightest difficulty, and a line of country followed to within twenty miles of the ocean, at the head of Dean’s Inlet.

I claim, moreover, for this route that it is shorter than any projected line at present under consideration; that it would develope a land as rich, if not richer, than any portion of the Saskatchewan territory; that it altogether avoids the tremendous mountain ranges of Southern British Columbia, and the great gorge of the Frazer River; and, finally, that along the Nacharcole River there will be found a country admirably suited to settlement, and possessing prairie land of a kind nowhere else to be found in British Columbia.

With regard to the climate of the country lying east of the mountains, those who have followed me through my journey will remember the state in which I found the prairies of Chimeroo on the 22nd and 23rd of April, snow all gone and mosquitoes already at work. Canadians will understand these items. I have looked from the ramparts of Quebec on the second last day of April, and seen the wide landscape still white with the winter’s snow.

In the foregoing sentences I have briefly pointed out the advantages of the Peace River Pass, the absence of mountain-ranges in the valleys of the Parsnip and Nacharcole Rivers, and the fertile nature of the country between the Lesser Slave Lake and the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. It only remains to speak of the connecting line between the Saskatchewan territory and the Smoking River prairies.

The present projected line through the Saskatchewan is eminently unsuited to the settlement; it crosses the bleak, poor prairies of the Eagle Hills, the country where, as described in an earlier chapter, we hunted the buffalo during the month of November in the preceding year. For all purposes of settlement it may be said to lie fully 80 miles too far south during a course of some 300 or 400 miles.

The experience of those most intimately acquainted with the territory points to a line _north_ of the North Saskatchewan as one best calculated to reach the country really fitted for immediate settlement; a country where rich soil, good water, and abundant wood for fuel and building can be easily obtained. All of these essentials are almost wholly wanting along the present projected route throughout some 350 miles of its course.

Now if we take a line from the neighbourhood of the Mission of Prince Albert, and continue it through the very rich and fertile country lying 20 or 30 miles to the north of Carlton, and follow it still further to a point 15 or 20 miles north of Fort Pitt, we will be about the centre of the _true_ Fertile Belt of this portion of the continent. Continuing north-west for another 60 miles, we would reach the neighbourhood of the Lac la Biche (a French mission, where all crops have been most successfully cultivated for many years), and be on the water-shed of the Northern Ocean.

Crossing the Athabasca, near the point where it receives the Rivière la Biche, a region of _presumed_ muskeg or swamp would be encountered, but one neither so extensive nor of as serious a character as that which occurs on the line at present projected between the Saskatchewan and Jasper’s House.

The opinions thus briefly stated regarding the best route for a Canadian-Pacific Railroad across the continent result from no inconsiderable experience in the North-West Territory, nor are they held solely by myself. I could quote, if necessary, very much evidence in support of them from the testimony of those who have seen portions of the route indicated.

In the deed of surrender, by which the Hudson’s Bay Company transferred to the Government of Canada the territory of the North-West, the Fertile Belt was defined as being bounded on the north by the North Saskatchewan River. It will yet be found that there are ten acres of fertile land lying _north_ of the North Saskatchewan for every one acre lying south of it.

* * * * *

These few pages of Appendix must here end. There yet remain many subjects connected with the settlement of Indian tribes of the West and their protection against the inevitable injustice of the incoming settler, and to these I would like to call attention, but there is not time to do so.

Already the low surf-beat shores of West Africa have been visible for days, and ’midst the sultry atmosphere of the Tropics it has become no easy task to fling back one’s thoughts into the cold solitudes of the northern wilds.

SIERRA LEONE, _October 15th, 1873_.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

In the Table of Contents, page references to the first three chapters were off by 2, and have been corrected here.

Transcriber removed redundant hemi-title following the List of Illustrations.

Original text used “cortége” and “cortêge”. Although neither is likely correct, this ebook uses “cortége.”

Page 256: “household gods” was printed that way; may be a typo for “household goods.”

Page 334: “Kamtschatka” was printed that way.