PREFACE.

The stream of immigration steadily flowing westward in ever-increasing volume is rapidly exhausting the reserves of vacant land in that part of the Canadian west which used to be known, to the detriment of the territory farther to the north, as “The Fertile Belt.”

Already settlement has overflowed the northern frontier of the “belt of supposed limited fertility” and many thousands of acres of agricultural land have been surveyed by the Dominion Government immediately north of the North Saskatchewan and in the Peace river valley, and the surveys are being rapidly extended to keep up with the pressure of advancing settlement. While the trend of immigration is turning northward, the eyes of the capitalist are attracted in the same direction. Information concerning the resources of the country once ignored is now sought for. Facts about the climate, the soil, the timber, the rivers, the lakes, the minerals, the fish, the game obtained at the risk of life and limb by fur trader, explorer, missionary, geologist and sportsman, even those facts regarded not so long ago as merely interesting, have now a practical value.

The once prevalent notion that the whole of the immense territory north of the North Saskatchewan was a sterile, frost-bound waste destined for all time to remain a wilderness, is now largely a thing of the past, and the opportunities which the latent resources of the silent places of the unexploited northwest afford to the enterprising and adventurous at the present moment challenge the attention of the world.

With interest powerfully attracted to the more easterly sections of the country under review by the recent extensions northward of the limits of the prosperous provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, and with easy means of communication with the larger divisions farther west assured, thanks to the progress of the construction of railways northward to Port Nelson on Hudson bay and to McMurray in the Athabaska country, it certainly looks as though the long neglected Northland were coming to its own at last.

By connecting with the three thousand miles of almost uninterrupted steamboat communication on Athabaska, Peace, Slave and Mackenzie rivers, and Athabaska and Great Slave lakes, the railway being pushed into the Athabaska country will place the whole of Mackenzie basin within easy reach of the prospector, the explorer, the sportsman and the tourist. The line being constructed to Hudson bay, as soon as steamboat connection is established therewith, will lay the very heart of that alluring El Dorado which we call the Barren Lands, with its herds of musk-oxen and caribou and its mineral wealth, open to the prospector and the sportsman, for, via Chesterfield inlet, Baker lake and the Thelon, there is a splendid, uninterrupted waterway from Hudson bay for a distance of five hundred and fifty miles into the interior.

The exceptional attractions which the Northland holds out to the sportsman are certain to contribute largely towards the discovery and development of the natural resources of the country. A couple of years ago Mr. W. T. Robson, General Advertising Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, submitted to a convention of railway men a thoughtful paper on the value of the tourist sportsman as a means of publicity for undeveloped country, in which he pointed out that the cultured business men who find their greatest pleasure, relaxation and physical benefit from trips into the wilds, are quick to discern the commercial value of water powers, timber and minerals, and he related a number of instances where hunting trips had resulted either in the discovery of unexpected natural resources or in large investments in the country visited.

The object of the present publication is to present, with some degree of systematic arrangement, all of the authentic information available at the moment as to the natural resources of the less-known and unexploited portions of northern Canada lying west of Hudson bay and James bay and east of the main range of Rocky mountains.

This general definition of area brings within the scope of this volume the whole of that portion of the old provisional district of Keewatin recently divided by act of parliament between the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, those portions of the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta north of the unsettled and unsurveyed territory, the basin of Mackenzie river, and that immense country north of the new provincial lines extending from Mackenzie basin to Hudson bay, which has apparently, undeservedly, come to be known as “Barren Lands” or “Barren Grounds.”

In these immense regions there are wide areas of which we in this year of grace 1912 know as little as was known of Bow river valley in 1812, and that was nothing. On the other hand considerable is known in a general way about certain portions of every one of the great districts which form this vast territory, or, to be quite exact, considerable has been written about them. The subject matter has been so widely distributed that no one could be expected to be familiar with it all.

Practically the first authoritative data as to the natural resources of Canada’s unexploited northland was contained in the published evidence of a British parliamentary committee which sat in 1749 to enquire into the resources of the country administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company. With this as a nucleus, a considerable amount of information on the subject has