Elihu Stewart

“ If you want to enjoy absolute quiet for a season you can have it with a few days’ travel by visiting one of those posts just outside the borders of Canadian civilisation.
No rumblings of carriages, no screeching of whistles, no ringing of bells greet you in the morning. You may perchance hear a cow bell somewhere, but it is in perfect keeping with the tranquil surroundings. In summer if the post is on a lake or river as it usually is you may amuse yourself by paddling or fishing and shooting. ”

“ In some places where the river is straight enough to give a vista of a mile or two, and where the fire has been merciful enough to leave the hill sides clothed with spruce, balsam, aspen and birch, with an occasional lobstick standing up as a sentinel on the water’s edge, the scenery, if not strikingly beautiful, is at least pleasing in effect. I might here mention that the lobstick is always a curiosity to a new visitor. It will meet his view on his arrival at Athabaska Landing, and along the banks of all the rivers of the north, will be a familiar sight. ”

“ Twenty-seven years before he had come out from France as a young missionary at once entering the field in the neighbourhood of Peace River, and this was the first time that he had ventured out even as far as Edmonton. As we approached this modern city in the evening with its lighted streets and throngs of busy people and he mentally compared it with the little port of the lonely post twenty-seven years before, his surprise at the change can well be imagined. ”

“ Stewart was formerly Superintendent of Forestry for Canada, and much of the knowledge he thus acquired helps to form the present volume. Mr. Stewart gives many charming pen-pictures to relieve the more material side of “Down the Mackenzie and Up the Yukon,” and he shows a fine feeling of atmosphere for lands “where it is always afternoon,” where the late sun lingers in the quiet west; where the northern twilight embraces reluctant day, amid the profound silence of the gradual shadows. ”

“ I have long contended that there is just as great a diversity of character in individuals in savage as in civilised life, and this ignorant Loucheaux Indian possessed qualities that would adorn the life of the best in any society. ”

“ The loads that men of his type frequently carry for great distances on rough trails, over hills and even mountains is truly remarkable. On the other hand they have little idea of the value of time—and are never in a hurry. This they inherit from the Indian whose boast is that he has no need to be in a hurry; that he owns all the time there is, and will tell you that the white man acts as if there were no to-morrow. ”

“ It was the first of July, the natal day of the Dominion, that we arrived at Fort McMurray. Upwards of twenty large boats and barges, with boatmen and passengers numbering over 100 in all, made a rather imposing54 appearance as we rowed and floated down the river on that bright and exceedingly hot morning. Every craft had some kind of a flag flying in honour of the day, which caused us to realise that though we were in a wilderness beyond the borders of civilisation, we were still in our own country and viewing our own possessions. ”

“ I am well aware, however, that north of the North Saskatchewan, to east of the district I have named, and in perhaps some instances extending well up to the barren lands, may be many valleys that will yet be inhabited, but it remains for the Government to ascertain where these lie in order to direct the incoming settler aright. The life of the tiller of the soil is arduous enough in any case, and in a country such as ours there is no reason why his labour need be in vain. ”

“ In many parts of the country land has been surveyed, and opened up for settlement, that was unfit for agriculture and which should have been left for the growth of timber for which it was well suited. Frequently this land looked attractive to the inexperienced, and in many cases the settler spent years of hard labour only to find at last that beneath the few inches of humus there was nothing but barren sand.”
In a country like Canada with its vast areas of wonderfully fertile land, it is unnecessary that any one should waste his labour on any part that is unproductive. ”

“ We meet young men, enticed by the love of adventure or of gold in nearly every border settlement and in regions even more remote than these, who, in their early years, knew only the luxuries of city life, but who now are enduring hardships undreamed of by their parents at home. ”

“ The output of gold in the neighbourhood of Dawson City on the Yukon with the more recent discoveries of silver at Cobalt, and of gold at the Porcupine will lure the adventurous explorer into far northern fields, where much of his time will be spent in not only acquiring a knowledge of the geology of the country but also in tracing the courses of unknown rivers and locating great mountain ranges, which information will be for the benefit of Canada as a whole, and which she herself should supply in advance. ”

“ The law of compensation here makes heroic efforts to assert its claim, and though it fails192 in giving to those regions an equality of heat, it does succeed to the last fraction in bestowing on every portion of the globe an equality of light, the great luminary gives to the Esquimaux exactly as much sunlight during the entire year as the dweller on the far off Amazon or the Nile. There is as much truth as poetry in the lines of the old song: “For taking the year all round my dear, There isn’t more night than day.” ”

“ None but the traveller who has been so favoured can appreciate the comfort that he experiences on being welcomed by a fellow white man at one of these posts after perhaps weeks of travel; over a rough trail in winter, or through dangerous rapids in summer. This enjoyment too, is not lessened by the consciousness which he feels that his visit is welcome.256 He can on his part afford some enjoyment to his entertainers in the way of furnishing news of what has recently occurred in the outside world, for the agent and his family have little to break the dull monotony of their lives. ”

“ Some one has defined enjoyment as the reflex of successful effort, and another has said that pleasure is largely a matter of comparison. That there is much truth in both remarks is unquestionable and the five days I remained at Dawson were the most serene and restful I had ever experienced. To be sure there were many stages where conditions had constantly improved since that anxious and wearisome time in the canoes; first the visit at Rampart House, next the trip in the row boat to Fort Yukon, then the rest in the road house there, followed by the trip on the Lavelle Young. ”

“ It is a fortunate thing for the native to have his home in a country where fish and wild fowl abound, and without these it is doubtful if the native Indian could have preserved his existence. True it is that the caribou comes somewhat irregularly up from the barren lands and then there is abundance of meat. The moose and the bear also at times serve to keep starvation from the wigwam, but frequently they all fail to appear, but the wild fowl come as regularly as the seasons, and the fish is a constant occupant of the lakes and streams. ”

“ The Peace River deserves more than a passing reference. It is much the largest of the many tributary streams whose waters find an outlet to the Arctic Sea through the Mackenzie. In fact, it and the Slave might be regarded as the Upper Mackenzie with Great Slave Lake as an immense expansion. It is something in the neighbourhood of 800 miles from where the Finlay and the Parsnip, under the shadow of the Rockies, join to form the Peace, and from here to its mouth it flows through a valley containing a large percentage of exceedingly fertile land. ”

“ We need not fear that our imagination is misleading us as we see him push his bark canoe out from the shore and ascend the St. Lawrence, to the junction of the Ottawa, thence turning northwards he soon encounters the rapids of St. Annes, whose beauties have been extolled in immortal verse by the Irish poet, Tom Moore, in his “Canadian Boat Song.” Having made a portage here and offered up prayers to his patron saint in the little church hard by, he bids good-bye to his friends, who have accompanied him thus far. ”

“ This characteristic has also impressed itself on the few white men whose lot has been to pass their existence in the lonely outposts. The dull monotony of life at a trading post in unsettled Canada could hardly fail to have this effect. Procrastination is common enough everywhere, but the complacent way in which these people,251 whether Indian, half breed or white, will allow the opportune moments to escape, frequently results in far greater work for them in the future, and is very trying if not exasperating to the ambitious traveller, delayed by their deliberate methods. ”

“ The land falls gradually away till it is submerged. Islands innumerable have been formed while others in embryo exist in the sand bars extending for long distances in the neighbourhood of the channel. It was difficult to follow the outlet and we grounded several times after we were well into the lake. However, by appliances peculiar to such navigation, we finally got into deep water, and an hour’s run brought us to a fine bay on the shore of which we beheld another whitewashed village with a hundred or more Indian lodges in the foreground. ”

“ We found it difficult when we got below the last obstruction to navigation, and began to make rapid progress to the north, to accustom ourselves to the changed conditions and to seek rest at the old accustomed hours, and frequently while waiting for the darkness, the midnight hour was passed and the northern dawn was upon us before we realised that the evening and morning twilight were not separated by any perceptible intervening darkness. ”

“ The grief of the Indian woman at the loss of her child is very touching. On one occasion I remember seeing at a distance two Indians and a squaw pulling a little sleigh up the bank of a river, and curiosity prompted me to join them when I saw them stop at a little open space where there was a new made open grave. ”

“ The wind had subsided, and the great lake, which serves as a filtering basin for the turbid waters entering it from the Slave River, was here as clear as that of the great inland lakes of Eastern Canada—Huron, Erie or Ontario. Wherever a river contains muddy water, you may at once conclude that it has no large lake expansions above it. In nearly every stream pouring its waters into the great clear water lakes of the St. Lawrence basin the water is dark and more or less impure ”

“ Their ideas of these matters are vague and undefined, but the grief of this poor mother at the thought that her child was smothered in the earth instead of in some way living another form of life in conjunction with the tree, showed that ages of struggle for existence in the wilderness had failed to obliterate those finer feelings of the soul. ”

“ If a small hospital properly equipped were established say at Fort Simpson, at the junction of the Laird and Mackenzie Rivers, or at some point on Great Slave Lake, it could be reached by canoes in summer from269 points all along the Mackenzie even down to the sea on the north as well as the country to the south along the Athabaska and Great Slave Lakes and their tributary streams. By this means the poor people who are at present compelled to live out a life of suffering till death comes to their relief, would have the benefits that modern science affords to the afflicted in civilised life. ”

“ The desire for companionship is a very wide law in creation, and the Indian is an adept in imitating the sounds made by the wild animals with which he is familiar, as well as those of the bird tribe; and these he often employs to attract those he wishes to capture. On one occasion I saw this gift exercised with great success where I thought at first the attempt was useless. It was on the Little Slave River near the lake of the same name.
We saw a flock of wild geese in the distance at a very high altitude going south. ”

“ INHABITANTS Interesting as are the natural characteristics of the country and its undeveloped resources, the inhabitants who make their home there should demand from us first consideration.
The Indian, the Esquimaux, the half breed, the white trader and the missionary constitute the different classes of the very scattered population of that vast region between the borders of civilisation on the south and the Arctic sea on the north. ”

“ Perpetual frost was found only a foot beneath the surface of the soil, and we no longer beheld the emblems of civilised life, the vegetable and flower gardens, that go so far to make many of those lonely posts seem somewhat cheerful. ”