The Forks of the Saskatchewan.--A perverse Parallel.--
Diplomatic Bungling.--Its results.
Two hundred and fifty feet above water level, the narrow tongue of
land rises over the junction of the two Saskatchewan rivers. Bare and
level at top, its scarped front descends like a wall to the rivers; but
land-slip and the wear of time have carried down to a lower level the
loose sand and earth of the plateau, and thickly clustering along the
northern face, pines, birch, and poplar shroud the steep descent. It is
difficult to imagine a wilder scene than that which lay beneath this
projecting point.
From north-west and from south-west two broad rivers roll their waters
into one common channel, two rivers deep furrowed below the prairie
level, curving in great bends through tree-fringed valleys. One river
has travelled through eight hundred miles of rich rolling landscape;
the other has run its course of nine hundred through waste and arid
solitudes; both have had their sources in mountain summits where the
avalanche thundered forth to solitude the tidings of their birth. And
here at this point, like two lives, which, coming from a distance, are
drawn together by some mysterious sympathy, and blended into one are
henceforth to know only the final separation, these rivers roll their
currents into one majestic stream, which, sinking into a deep gorge,
sweeps eastward through unbroken pine forest. As yet no steamboat
furrows the deep water; no whistle breaks the sleeping echoes of these
grim scarped shores; the winding stream rests in voiceless solitude,
and the summer sun goes down beyond silent river reaches, gleaming upon
a virgin land.
Standing at this junction of the two Saskatchewan rivers, the traveller
sees to the north and east the dark ranks of the great sub-Arctic
forest, while to the south and west begin the endless prairies of the
middle continent. It is not a bad position from whence to glance at the
vast region known to us as British North America.
When the fatal error at Saratoga had made room for diplomatists of
Old and New England, and removed the arbitrament of rebellion from
the campaign to the council, those who drew on the part of Great
Britain the boundary-lines of her transatlantic empire, bungled even
more conspicuously in the treaty-chamber than her generals had failed
in the field. Geographical knowledge appears ever to have been deemed
superfluous to those whose business it was to shape the destinies of
our colonial dominions, and if something more tangible than report be
true, it is not many months since the British members at a celebrated
conference stared blankly at each other when the free navigation of
a river of _more than two thousand miles in length_ was mooted at
the Council Board. But then, what statesman has leisure to master
such trifles as the existence of the great river Yukon, amid the
more important brain toil of framing rabbit laws, defining compound
householders, and solving other equally momentous questions of our
Imperial and Parochial politics? However to our subject. When in
1783 the great quarrel between Britain and her Colonies was finally
adjusted, the northern boundary of the United States was to follow the
49th parallel of latitude from the north-west angle of the Lake of the
Woods to the river Mississippi, and thence down that river, &c., &c.
Nothing could possibly have been more simple, a child might comprehend
it; but unfortunately it fell out in course of time that the 49th
parallel was one of very considerable latitude indeed not at all a
parallel of diplomatic respectability, or one that could be depended
on, for neither at one end or the other could it be induced to approach
the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods or the river Mississippi.
Do all that sextant, or quadrant, or zenith telescope could, the 49th
parallel would not come to terms.
Doggedly and determinedly it kept its own course; and, utterly
regardless of big-wig or diplomatic fogie, it formed an offensive
and defensive alliance with the Sun and the Pole Star (two equally
obstinate and big-wig disrespectful bodies), and struck out for itself
an independent line.
Beyond the Mississippi there lay a vast region, a region where now
millions (soon to be tens of millions) draw from prairie and river flat
the long-sleeping richness of the soil. Then it was a great wilderness,
over which the dusky bison and his wilder master roamed, in that fierce
freedom which civilization ends for ever.
To the big-wigs at the Council Board this region was a myth--a land so
far beyond the confines of diplomatic geography that its very existence
was questioned. Not so to the shrewd solicitor, admiral, auctioneer,
general conveyancer, and Jack-of-all-trades in one, who guided the
foreign policy of the United States.
Unencumbered by the trappings of diplomatic tradition, he saw, vaguely
perhaps, but still with prescient knowledge, the empire which it was
possible to build in that western wild; and as every shifting scene in
the outside world’s politics called up some new occasion for boundary
rearrangement, or treaty rectification, he grasped eagerly at a fresh
foothold, an additional scrap of territory, in that land which was to
him an unborn empire, to us a half-begotten wilderness. Louisiana,
purchased from Napoleon for a trifle, became in his hands a region
larger than European Russia, and the vast water-shed of the Missouri
passed into the Empire of the United States.
Cut off from the Mississippi, isolated from the Missouri, the unlucky
boundary traversed an arid waste until it terminated at the Rocky
Mountains.
Long before a citizen of the United States had crossed the Missouri,
Canadian explorers had reached the Rocky Mountains and penetrated
through their fastnesses to the Pacific; and British and Canadian
fur traders had grown old in their forts across the Continent before
Lewis and Clark, the pioneers of American exploration, had passed
the Missouri. Discovered by a British sailor, explored by British
subjects, it might well have been supposed that the great region along
the Pacific slope, known to us as Oregon, belonged indisputably to
England; but at some new treaty “rectification,” the old story was once
more repeated, and the unlucky 49th parallel again selected to carry
across the Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, the same record of British
bungling and American astuteness which the Atlantic had witnessed sixty
years earlier on the rugged estuary of the St. Croix.
For the present our business lies only with that portion of British
territory east of the Rocky Mountains, and between them, the Bay of
Hudson and the Arctic Ocean.
From the base of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, the Continent
of British America slopes towards North and East, until, unbroken by
one mountain summit, but in a profound and lasting desolation, it dips
its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into a sea as drear and desolate.
Two great rivers, following of necessity this depression, shed their
waters into the Bay of Hudson. One is the Saskatchewan, of which
we have already spoken; the other, that river known by various
names--“English,” because the English traders first entered the country
by it; “Beaver,” from the numbers of that animal trapped along it in
olden time; “Churchill,” because a fort of that name stands at its
estuary; and “Missinipi,” or “much water,” by the wild races who dwell
upon it. The first river has a total length of 1700 miles; the last
runs its course through worthless forest and primeval rock for 1200
miles.
[Illustration: “OUR HUT AT THE FORKS OF THE SASKATCHEWAN”]