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.