North River

“ Standing on the high ground at the back of the hut in which we awaited the opening of the great river, and looking westward at the mountains piled together in endless masses, it was difficult to imagine by what process a mighty river had cloven asunder this wilderness of rock,—giving us the singular spectacle of a wide, deep, tranquil stream flowing through the principal mountain range of the American continent. ”

“ At the bend of the Peace River, where a lofty ridge runs out from the southern side, and the hills along the northern shore rise to nearly 1000 feet above the water, stands the little fort of St. John. It is a remote spot, in a land which is itself remote. From out the plain to the west, forty or fifty miles away, great snowy peaks rise up against the sky. To the north and south and east all is endless wilderness—wilderness of pine and prairie, of lake and stream—of all the vast inanity of that moaning waste which sleeps between the Bay of Hudson and the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ Nevertheless, for suitableness of navigation, and for rich land on both sides, all the way up, the South River excels the North; but what gives the North River the preference, and crowns it over the South River, is its salubrious climate; though above Christina Creek the South River is healthy, and it is every day becoming more so, along the whole of that river. On the North River, however, one has not to wait and die before this improvement may take place. ”

“ Through 300 miles of mountain the Peace River takes its course, countless creeks and rivers seek its waters; 200 miles from its source it cleaves the main Rocky Mountain chain through a chasm whose straight, steep cliffs frown down on the black water through 6000 feet of dizzy verge. Then it curves into the old ocean bed, of which we have already spoken, and for 500 miles it flows in a deep, narrow valley, from 700 to 800 feet below the level of the surrounding plateau. ”

“ The broad and straight river, full of light and life, with its sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which divides the stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly under your feet, so near that you can converse with its inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the woodland lake at its western base, and the mountains in the north and north-east, make a scene of rare beauty and completeness, which the traveller should take pains to behold. ”

“ To the north is a narrow glen running down into a fertile strath well-wooded and watered by a river of some size; beyond, the lofty Highland mountains toss their battered summits in the air, a very sea of emulously-surging peaks. ”

“ Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. ”

“ Once again we set out: debouching from the forest we entered a large marsh. Soon a lake, with low-lying shores, spread before us. Another marsh, another frozen river, and at last, a vast lake opened out upon our gaze. Islands, rocky, and clothed with pine-trees, rose from the snowy surface. To the east, nothing136 but a vast expanse of ice-covered sea, with a blue, cold sky-line; to the north, a shore of rocks and hills, wind-swept, and part covered with dwarf firs, and on the rising shore, the clustered buildings of a large fort, with a red flag flying above them in the cold north blast. ”

“ Having its origin on the slopes of the Cam mountain, in the north-west of the county, it traverses, in the sixty or seventy miles of its course to the Ouse, almost every description of the scenery for which this great division of England is famous. Over moorland and meadowland, rushing madly down precipitous rocks and flowing placidly along fertile plains, shut up in some parts within deep gorges and at other points spreading out to river-like dimensions, it has an ever-varying charm to all who trace its progress. ”

“ To the west is Black River Point, with its rocky promontories, and on the north stretches out an unbroken expanse of water, with here and there the long black trail of a steamer floating in the air, its wake like a white line upon the water ”

“ 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. ”

“ It heads far westward of the Rio Norte, or North River. There is, in the villages of Kaskaskia, Cohoes and St. Vincennes, no inconsiderable quantity of plate, said to have been plundered during the last war by the Indians from the churches and private houses of Santa Fé, on the North River, and brought to these villages for sale. ”

“ 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 has37 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. ”

“ The country spreads into a succession of prairies, lakes, and copses, through which the traveller can ride with ease, safe from the badger-holes which form such an objectionable feature in more southern prairies. At times the river-bed fills up the entire bottom of the deep valley through which it runs; but more frequently a wooded terrace lies between the foot of the ridge and the brink of the water, or the land rises to the upper level in a series of rounded and less abrupt ascents. ”

“ Grassy and partly wooded plains skirt its southern shores and extend southward towards Peace river, and Hay river may be regarded as practically the northern limit of the prairie country, although small isolated plains occur much farther north in the vicinity of Slave river. ”

“ The ground was covered with snow, and the weather most winterly, when we embarked in our open boats to cross the lake for the Red River. Its length, from north to south, is about three hundred miles; and it abounds with sunken rocks, which are very dangerous to boats sailing in a fresh breeze. It is usual to run along shore, for the sake of an encampment at night, and of getting into a creek for shelter, in ease of storms and tempestuous weather. ”

“ On the north side of the river is a range of high hill, or mountains which runs paralell with the river, gradually declining, as we run up the stream. All the mountains or hills are much higher near the bay than they are up the rivers. There is one place at the mouth of this stream, or jus below the mouth, that it appears to me might be sufficiently large for a town, or for a good number of claims, and has the best landing that I know of on the bay. ”

“ The general term “prairie” comprises many varieties of open landscape. There are the level, alluvial prairies of Illinois, long since settled and colonized; there are the low, fertile prairies of the Red River, where the rich black mould, fallow under five months of snow, puts forth the rank luxuriance of a hot-bed during the half tropic heat of summer ”

“ After three days of wearisome labour on this summit ridge of the northern continent we reached the edge of a deep glen, 700 feet below the plateau. At the bottom of this valley a small river ran in many curves between high-wooded shores. The sleds bounded rapidly down the steep descent, dogs and loads rolling frequently in a confused heap together. Night had fallen when we gained the lower valley, and made a camp in the darkness near the winding river; the height of land was passed, and the river in the glen was the Clearwater of the Athabasca. ”

“ From another, the river, before it empties into the lake, expands into a stretch of shallow water contained within the north or Minnesota shore, upon which is Duluth, and the south or Wisconsin shore, upon which is the city of Superior, through which shallow stretch a tortuous but navigable channel curvingly continues to flow until, by a passage through an intervening bar, the river, emptying into the bay, merges its existence with that of the lake. ”

“ The low grounds of the river extend nearly six miles to the southward, when they rise into plains reaching to the mountains, and watered with a large creek, while at some distance below a range of highland, covered with pine, stretches on both sides of the river, in a direction north and south. The north side of the river, for some distance, is surrounded by jutting romantic cliffs; these are succeeded by rugged hills, beyond which the plains are again open and extensive; and the whole country is enlivened by herds of buffaloe, elk and wolves. ”

“ The water-partings are characteristically level uplands, often with shallow depressions, once lakes, and some of them still so. The valleys of the greatest streams are huge shallow troughs. The valley floor of the North Platte in the foot-hills, the flood-plain of an older river, is in places 700 ft. ”

“ After a journey of thirteen hundred miles to the west he found the Coppermine River and the Great Slave Lake, and he traced the river to its mouth and emerged on the northern shore, being the first known white man to see the Arctic Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering Strait. ”

“ What the Irish Sea, the Channel, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean are to the Atlantic, so are these various outlying regions of plain to the vast rigid ocean of the central continent. It is50 true that on the Red River, or the Qu’Appelle, or along the line I have lately passed, one may frequently “get out of sight of land;” there are spaces where no tree or bush breaks the long monotony of the sky-line; but all these expanses are as nothing compared to the true prairie. ”

“ In regard to the region south of the great river it is very thickly settled, much more so than that on the north, and by tribes who are at war with each other. The country is very pleasant, much more so than that on the northern border, and the air is more temperate. There are many kinds of trees and fruits not found north of the river, while there are many things on the north side, in compensation, not found on the south. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A trail, passable for horses, leads along the north shore of the river to this last trading-post of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the verge of the mountains. Along this trail I now determined to223 continue my journey, so as to gain the west side of the Great Cañon before the ice had left the river, and thus reap the advantage of the low water in ascending still farther into the mountains.
It is no easy matter to place an exact picture of the topography of a country before a reader: we must, however, endeavour to do so. ”

“ The plains are more fertile some distance from the river than near its banks, where the surface of the earth is very generally strewed with small pebbles, which appear to be smoothed and worn by the agitation of the waters with which they were no doubt once covered. A mountain or part of the North mountain approaches the river within eight or ten miles, bearing north from our encampment of last evening; and this morning a range of high mountains bearing S.W. from us and apparently running to the westward, are seen at a great distance covered with snow. ”

“ At seven o’clock in the morning of the 16th we set forth up the river always in a northerly direction with a few turns east-northeast and northwest. At five miles we passed a mouth, or arm, of the river which came from the northeast and joined that along which we were traveling, which runs north and south. Three miles farther on we descried some rafts of Indians, who immediately concealed themselves in the bushes along the riverbank. ”

“ A curious phenomenon is the abrupt and unreasonable behavior of the rivers and streams in that region, which, like the North Platte of Nebraska, disappear from the surface of the earth and lose themselves in underground passages called ponars, reappearing in the most eccentric and surprising manner. The Narenta is the only river that finds its way to the sea entirely above ground. ”

“ After having gone to the head of this river, and returned to the bay again, we then entered a small river which empties itself in the north-west part of the bay; this river, as far as I went up, which was about five miles, is all shoal water (it has since been examined to the head by Lieutenant Bradley) : in short, these rivers were with me no object at this time to throw away time upon; I therefore made no other survey than an eye sketch; every reach is laid down true with respect to direction; the soundings are the depth at or near low water ”

“ It is the longest river of the Colony, has its upper basin in the North-West angle of the Lake district, to the Eastward of the Greenough and Gascoigne, and on its banks the first specimens of the fauna and flora of the North coast are apparent. It has a deep channel above its mouth. The river, in its middle and lower courses, winds through an irregular valley, rich in minerals, for more than 100 miles is a direct line without an affluent. ”