explorer who put me in the way of making a fair start, Dr. Mackay of Athabasca, Mr. Camsell of Mackenzie River, Mr. Ewen Macdonald of Peace River, and most of all to Mr. Mackinlay of Fort Resolution on the Great Slave Lake, who was my companion during a long summer journey in the Barren Ground.

My only excuse for publishing this account of my travels is that the subject is a reasonably new one, and deals with a branch of sport that has never been described. I have spared the reader statistics, and I have kept my story as short as possible. I hope that in return anyone who may be interested in these pages will spare his comments on faulty style, and the various errors into which a man who has spent much time among the big game is sure to fall when he is rash enough to lay down his rifle and take up the pen.

I have also cut out the chapter with which these books usually begin,—a description of the monotonous voyage by Atlantic steamer and Canadian Pacific Railway, and start at once from Calgary, a thriving cattle-town close under the eastern foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains.

London, 1891.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BARREN GROUND
OF
NORTHERN CANADA

THE
BARREN GROUND
OF
NORTHERN CANADA

CHAPTER I

In the middle of June, 1889, I left Calgary for a drive of two hundred miles to Edmonton, the real starting-point for the great northern country controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, and, with the exception of their scattered trading-posts, and an occasional Protestant or Roman Catholic Mission, entirely given up to what it was evidently intended for, a hunting-ground for the Indian.

My conveyance was a light buckboard, containing my whole outfit, which was as small as possible, consisting almost entirely of ammunition for a 12-bore Paradox and a 50-95 Winchester Express, besides a pair of large blankets and a little necessary clothing.

Forest fires were raging in the Rocky Mountains close at hand, and the thick smoke obscuring the sun, the heat was not nearly so fierce as usual at this time of the year; the road was good for a prairie road, and comfortable stopping-places each night made the journey quite easy. About sixty miles out the country loses the appearance of what is known among cattlemen as the bald-headed prairie, and is dotted with clumps of poplar, and occasionally pines; half way to Edmonton the road crosses the broad stream of the Red Deer, and passes through the most attractive country that I have seen in the north-west territories. It is being rapidly settled, and, with the convenience of a railway now building between Calgary and Edmonton, cannot fail to be an important farming and stock-raising district within a few years.

On the morning of the fifth day I reached Edmonton, a pleasant little town scattered along the far bank of the North Saskatchewan,