TO THE PACIFIC THROUGH CANADA.BY ERNEST INGERSOLL.PART I.OONE hundred years ago, “through Canada to the Pacific” was first achieved by Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Making his way in a birch canoe from Montreal up the Ottawa and connecting rivers to Lake Huron, he came to the Sault Sainte Marie. Then followed hundreds of miles of paddling along the homeless shores of Lake Superior until civilization was seen again at Fort William on the northern shore. Yet that was only the real starting-point. Here Mackenzie began one of the most adventurous and productive explorations of that era, when the world was busy with exploration. Through rivers, ponds, and portages to Lake Winnipeg, across it and up the Saskatchewan, he pursued a well-defined route of the Hudson Bay Company’svoyageurs. But finally he reached even the fur-trader’s frontier, and pushed forward into a region never then penetrated by a white man. He came to the Peace River and began its ascent. It led him into, and guided him through, the mountains. At its sources he found water flowing westward, and through weeks of hardy adventure traced this river or that until he scented the salt breezes, and looked abroad upon the Pacific—the first man to cross Canada!That is only a century ago; yet when you place Mackenzie’s canoe beside our transcontinental railway train, the contrast is as wide as between the first and last page of history; but put the courage of the old fur-trader beside the pluck which built this railway, and the extremes meet again.The transcontinental trip by the Canadian Pacific Railway, then, is the subject of this article. We shall not precisely follow Mackenzie’s devious route, but shall touch it here and there, and see all the way the same kind of things that he saw.Let us, first of all, have a clear understanding of what this journey is to be.The Canadian Pacific is the largest railway system on the continent, yet there is none so little known to the general public in the United States, and none so widely misapprehended. It lies wholly in Canada. From Quebec it follows the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and then the Ottawa to the capital of the Dominion. From Ottawa it directs an almost straight course to the northernmost angle of Lake Superior, and skirting its shore for a hundred miles, strikes west to Winnipeg. Thence it crosses 900 miles of prairie, enters the Rocky Mountains 150 miles north of the United States boundary, and forcing its way through 250 miles of magnificent highlands, descends to the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Fraser River.This main line is 3,070 miles in length, and reaches from ocean to ocean. Its through trains do not change their sleeping-cars all the way. An English family bound for China need make only two changes of conveyance between Liverpool and Hong-Kong—one at Montreal from the steamer to the cars, and another in re-embarking at Vancouver, the Pacific terminus. This is a notable advantage over the pieced-up route through Europe or the United States.Yet this main line is only thestemof the great system. One side-line goes to Boston. Two others communicate with railways in New York State, at Brockville and Prescott, on the St. Lawrence. Short branches reach a dozen towns in Quebec. Westward, Montreal and Ottawa are connected with Toronto, whence branches ramify through all Ontario. Lake Huron is reached at Owen Sound, whence a line of ocean-like steamships on the Great Lakes is sustained. From Sudbury, a station 443 miles west of Montreal, a branch runs along the northern shore of Lake Huron to Sault Sainte Marie, where it is joined by a bridge over those historic rapids with two new American lines—one to Minneapolis, and another to Duluth. In Manitoba, branches penetrate all the corners of that rich wheat-growing province. Thus, the total length of its railways approaches 5,000 miles, and a yearhence will be increased by a direct line to St. John, N. B., and Cape Breton, to connect with especially swift steamers, forming a new Atlantic ferry and carrying England’s Oriental mails. Yet, as has been said, few Americans know or realize these important facts in Canadian progress.“SMOKING IN A SNUG CORNER.”The new station in Montreal, whence we take our departure for the transcontinental journey one summer evening, is a magnificent piece of architecture. It stands just at the corner of Dominion Square, where the first strains of the band concert are calling together the loitering, pleasure-making crowds which twice a week throng its gravel walks or lounge upon the turf of its green parterres.Out from the station stretches a series of broad stone arches, carrying the tracks upon an elevated way that reminds one of London, to the outskirts of the city, and into the quaint French villages named by pious founders after some Ste. Rose, Ste. Therése, or St. Phillipe, or other revered personages of the olden times.We go to sleep, and do not know when Ottawa, Canada’s pleasant capital and lumber market, is passed at midnight. We are oblivious to this and all the world besides until a cheery call of “Breakfast-time, sir!” rouses our energies, and we peep out of our window to find ourselves rushing through a dense green forest, still glistening with the night’s dew. Then the breadth of Lake Nipissing opens like a plain of azure amid the green woods, and we halt at North Bay, where a road from Niagara Falls and Toronto terminates and makes a junction with ours. We step out and take a run up and down the long platform. The sunlight seems unusually bright and clear, the breeze from the lake is “nipping and eager”—everything and everybody has an air of alertness and glee which is inspiriting. We have slept well—we are wide awake; this balsamic odor of the woods is appetizing—we are hungry. The dining-car is therefore doubly inviting. Its furnishing is in elegant taste; its linen white as the breaking of the lake-waves; its silver glitters in the sunlight; on every table is a bouquet of wild flowers, masking a basket of fruit. There are tables for two and tables for four. One of the latter holds a family party—father, mother and two young ladies, Vassar girls, perhaps. We seat ourselves opposite, and as the train moves smoothly on, eat and talk with a gusto forgotten since last summer’s outing.Ourvis-à-visat table proves to be an official of the company, who knows the whole line, as he says, “like the book.” He is going clear through to attend to matters on the western coast. This is great luck, for he seems quite as willing to answer our eager questions as we are to ask them. He is intensely interested in this great achievement, as is everybody connected with it, and wants us to become equally enthusiastic.“This ought to be a good region for fishing,” we suggest, looking out upon the beautiful lake whose rocky shores we are skirting.“Excellent,” the official agrees, as he quarters his orange.“Lake Nipissing abounds in big fish, and so does French River, its outlet into Lake Huron. I have had capital sport at the end of the steamboat pier at North Bay, ‘whipping’ with a rod and spoon for pike, bass, pickerel, whitefish, etc. Sometimes muskallonge weighing forty or fifty pounds are caught by trolling from a boat.”“How about trout?”“Well, if you’re bent upon trout, and don’t want to go up to the Jackfish or Nepigon River (which we shall cross to-morrow morning), your best plan is to go to Trout Lake and down to the Mattawan. Trout Lake lies four or five miles inland, behind those hills, where the scenery is exceedingly beautiful and the fishing practically untouched. In the lake itself are huge bass, pickerel and muskallonge. I know of one caught there by a lady, which weighed thirty-five pounds. Down to the lake, through tortuous, shady ravines, come cataract-rivers filled with untroubled trout. You can get a boat at a settler’s, or take your own and camp where you please, and fish in a new place every day all summer. Then from Trout Lake you can run a canoe down through a chain of lakes into the Mattawan River. Each of these lakes and streams has plenty of fish of several kinds, and charming camping places. The Mattawan carries you into the Ottawa, which you can descend in a boat—fishing all the way—to the St. Lawrence.”“That’s an alluring story,” we say.“It’s literally true; and in the fall and winter, sport with the gun is equally good. Moose, caribou, and deer are plentiful, and the town of Mattawan forms an excellent outfitting place for a shooting trip. Indian and white guides can be got who know the country, and the many lumberers’ roads and camps facilitate the sport. New Brunswick used to be the best place for that sport, but now this part of Canada is far more accessible and convenient.”At noon we come to Sudbury, where extensive mines of copper and gold are worked, and a brisk village is growing up, with some farming and a great deal of lumbering in the neighborhood. Here branches off the new “Soo” route to St. Paul.All the afternoon we run through forested hills, the line bending hither and yon to avoid rocky ridges and crystalline lakes, cutting athwart promontories, and bridging ravines. Here and there are extensive tracts of arable land, but little agricultural settlement can be expected in these forests as long as the rich prairies westward, all ready for the plow, are only half-tenanted. Yet the cabins of settlers, who are part farmers, part lumbermen, part trappers, and part “Injun,” are scattered all along the line; and every hundred miles or so we encounter a railway “divisional” station, where there are engine-houses, repairing shops, and the homes of the men employed on that section of the line.In the evening, groups gathered in our brilliantly-lighted palaces—for every one had become acquainted, like a cozy ship’s company at sea—and whiled away the time with books, story-telling and whist. The Vassar girls, the Official and the EditorialWehad a grand game, closing with a tie at eleven o’clock. Just then we were at Missanabie, where you might launch a canoe—“that frail vehicle of an amphibious navigation,” as Sir George Simpson styled it—and run down to the fur-famed—“Beware of puns!” cried Miss Dimity Vassar.—Michipicoten, in Lake Superior; or, with a few portages, glide northward to Hudson’s Bay.Bidden to be awake early, at six next morning we were astir, and, lo! there was Lake Superior. All day we ran along its shores, here taking advantage of a natural terrace or ledge, there rolling with thunderous roar along some gallery blasted out of the face of the gigantic cliffs whose granite bases were beaten by the waves; next darting through a tunnel or safely overriding a long and lofty bridge, beneath which poured some wine-colored torrent. This is daring and costly engineering.Always high above the water, which sometimes dashes at the very foot of the trackway, and sometimes is separated from us by barriers of vine-clad rock, the eye overlooks a wide and radiant scene. A line of distant and hilly islands cuts off this interior part (Nepigon Bay) from the open lake; and as we swerve hither and yon in our rapid advance, these islands group themselves into ever changing combinations, opening and closing lanes of blue water, displaying and hiding the silvery horizon, letting passing vessels appear and disappear, and taking some new charm of color with each new position.Nor was this all. Cliffs and shore are grandly picturesque in form, brilliant in color, and constantly varied. After we had reached Jackfish River—a famous fishing-place—and the gaudy overhangingcliffs had been left behind, the lake began to be hidden by a line of trap-buttes, masked in dense foliage; and these beautiful table-lands lasted all the way to the crossing of the Nepigon, where again we were face to face with Nepigon Bay. You may say later that the scenery of the Rocky Mountains is better than this morning ride along Lake Superior; but you will not forget, nor be willing to omit it, all the same.INDIAN TEPEES.Nepigon River, up which we have a long view, is the prince of trout-rivers, and at the railway station canoes, camping supplies and Indian crews are always obtainable. Think of brook-trout weighing five or six pounds, to be caught, and bass and whitefish and what not in plenty besides!That afternoon we passed Port Arthur, a town of 3,500 population, on Thunder Bay, and the port for the fine Canadian Pacific steamers, which present an alternative summer route between the East and West by way of the lakes, Owen Sound and Toronto. Five miles farther on we came to old Fort William, now a growing village and grain port. Here, on the fertile flats of the Kaministiquia, more than two hundred years ago, was planted an Indian trading-post, which a century later became the headquarters of the great Northwest Fur Company, and then an important post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to which, after years of warfare, the Northwest corporation finally capitulated. Some of the storied old buildings, to which a whole magazine article might easily be devoted, still stand, but they are overshadowed by the railway shops and warehouses, the huge elevators and coal-bins, which here, as at Port Arthur, testify to an enormous shipping traffic.For four hundred miles west of Fort William, where we bid good-bye to Lake Superior, the road passes through a wild, rough region of rocks and forest, reticulated with lakes and rivers. It is the most unattractive piece of country on the whole line, but it abounds in minerals, and supplies the treeless region beyond with lumber. Near its eastern border, at Rabbit Mountain, exceedingly rich silver mines are worked. The Lake of the Woods, in the centre of this tract, is a very beautiful spot, and one whose water-power supplies many large mills.Morning found us among open groves and thickets—the fringed-out western edge of that almost continental forest which sweeps behind us to the Atlantic, and northward until it half envelops Hudson’s Bay. Finally even this disappeared in an expanse of verdant turf—the prairie of Manitoba,—its perfectly level horizon broken only by the tall buildings and steeples of the city of Winnipeg.Winnipeg stands at the point where Red River receives its largest western tributary, the Assiniboine. It has been the site of an Indian trading post, and the centre of the “Red River settlements” for almost a century; but until ten years ago it was nothing more. Then it sprung at one bound, amid an ecstasy of speculation, into a city. It had a hard time after this injudicious exuberance began to subside; but it survived, and now Winnipeg is as well founded, and growing as healthfully, as is Denver or Omaha. The town has ridiculously wide streets, which it cost a fortune to pave with cedar blocks, and which make the really tall and fine business buildings look dwarfed. There are several expensive churches, hundreds of elegant residences, and some stately public buildings. The width of the streets; the great number of vacant lots, due to the large expectations of the “boom” period, which spread the town beyond all reason; and the use of cream-colored brick and light paint in the buildings, give to Winnipeg a singularly pale and scattered appearance, likely to diminish in the eyes of a casual visitor the city’s real wealth and importance.THE VIEW FROM THE HOT SPRINGS, BANFF, LOOKING DOWN THE BOW.⇒LARGER IMAGE“While you would find here in Winnipeg,” says ourcicerone, as we sat smoking in a snug corner,“if you studied the matter a little, the key to much that you will see beyond, you must look beyond for the key to much you will see in Winnipeg. Situated just where the forests end and the vast prairies begin, with thousands of miles of river navigation to the north, south and west, and with railways radiating in every direction into the wheat lands of all Manitoba, like spokes in a wheel, Winnipeg has become, what it must always be, the commercial focus of the Canadian Northwest. Looking at these long lines of warehouses filled with goods, and these twenty miles or more of railway side-tracks all crowded with cars, you begin to realize the vastness of the country we are about to enter. From here the wants of the people in the west are supplied, and this way come the products of their fields, while from the far north are brought furs in great variety and number.”NEARING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.The surrounding prairie is absolutely flat, and was the bed of a prehistoric lake—the last remnant of the waters that once covered the whole interior; and as we race across it we can picture how the wavelets rose and fell before the ancient wind by noticing the olive-and-gray ripples that flow over the long grass under this noonday breeze. Here and there cattle are standing up to their bellies in the lush meadow. Far off to the southward a dark line indicates the fringe of trees along the Assiniboine. Nothing else breaks the verdant flats that sweep around us save the track and the telegraph poles, straight as a ray of light behind and ahead to their vanishing points on each horizon. After a while habitations and farms grow more numerous, for we have imperceptibly risen to a region lighter in soil and formerly held at a cheaper price than the speculative tracts near the city, whose owners have seen settlers go steadily past them.The centre of this is the far-scattered town of Portage la Prairie, an old landing-place of thevoyageurs, who here loaded their boat-cargoes into carts and carried them across to Lake Manitoba, there to be re-embarked for the long canoe voyage inland. Here are now great wheat elevators and mills, and hence a railway has pushed 250 miles northwestward, to continue nobody knows how much farther. Brandon, seventy-five miles beyond, is a wide-awake, handsomely built young city on the Assiniboine, sustained by an immense agricultural environment. In regard to this let me quote somewhat from a standard work on the prairies:“Leaving Brandon, we have fairly reached the first of the great prairie steppes, that rise one after the other at long intervals to the Rocky Mountains; and now we are on the real prairie, not the monotonous, uninteresting plain your imagination has pictured, but a great billowy ocean of grass and flowers, now swelling into low hills, again dropping into broad basins with gleaming ponds, and broken here and there by valleys and by irregular lines of trees marking the watercourses. The horizon only limits the view; and, as far as the eye can reach, the prairie is dotted with newly made farms, with great black squares where the sod has just been turned by the plow, and with herds of cattle. The short, sweet grass, studded with brilliant flowers, covers the land as with a carpet, ever changing in color as the flowers of the different seasons and places give to it their predominating hue.... Here is produced, in the greatest perfection, the most famous of all varieties of wheat—that known as the ‘hard Fyfe wheat of Manitoba’—and oats as well, and rye, barley and flax, and gigantic potatoes, and almost everything that can be grown in a temperate climate.... Three hundred miles from Winnipeg we pass through the famous Bell Farm, embracing one hundred square miles of land. This is a veritable manufactory of wheat, where the work is done with almost military organization—plowing by brigades and reaping by divisions. Think of a farm where the furrows are ordinarily four miles long, and of a country where such a thing is possible! There are neat stone cottages and ample barns for miles around, and the collection of buildings about the headquarters near the railway station makes a respectable village, there being among them a church, an hotel, a flour mill, and, of course, a grain elevator, for in this country these elevators appear wherever there is wheat to be handled or stored.”The fertile, pleasantly habitable region of the Canadian West is a triangular region with a base 800 miles in width east and west, and a northern limit marked by the forests beyond the Saskatchewan. Between these forests and the Rocky Mountains the arable country extends almost to the borders of Alaska, and through it are scattered trading stations and small settlements among a peaceful and semi-industrious Indian population. The climate is dry, yet the rainfall (except in the southwestern part) is quite sufficient for agriculture. The winters are rigorous, but not so long as those of Quebec, and the snowfall is light. Wheat, oats, barley and vegetables grow to perfection even farther north than the Peace River valley, in latitude 56° to 57°—the parallel which in the east passes just north of Labrador. Settlement on these fine prairies (which are often bushy, and show no sage-brush and little alkali) is only a decade old, yet last year there was produced a surplus for export of twelve million bushels of wheat alone.Not far beyond the Regina wheat plain, which is about 1,800 feet above the sea, the altitude is abruptly increased by a rise to the top of theCoteau de Missouri, where the average of elevation is 3,000 feet. Here the climate is drier, and grazing becomes the principal industry, especially toward the foothills, where enormous herds of horses, cattle and sheep are pastured. Of this great and growing business Calgary is headquarters.Only ten years ago this was the home of millions of buffalo, whose trails and wallows mark the surface in every direction; but not a bison is now to be seen within a long distance northward. The prairies from Regina westward are dotted with lakes, generally of fresh water, are well grassed, and broken by wooded eminences. The elk and mule-deer are still common, and in the autumn immense herds of antelope, migrating southward, are still to be seen from the car windows. Around the lakes crowd countless wild fowl at all seasons, while flocks of prairie chickens whirl away on each side at our approach. In the seasons of migration geese and ducks are here in myriads.We cross the South Saskatchewan near some extensive coal mines, and toward evening of Friday (we left Montreal on Monday night and Winnipeg on Thursday morning) we catch our first brief glimpse of the Rockies—a serrated white line notching the sunset horizon. To-morrow morning we shall awake within their glorious gates.STONE POGAMOGGANS OF THE CANADIAN SIOUX.
TO THE PACIFIC THROUGH CANADA.BY ERNEST INGERSOLL.PART I.
BY ERNEST INGERSOLL.
O
ONE hundred years ago, “through Canada to the Pacific” was first achieved by Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Making his way in a birch canoe from Montreal up the Ottawa and connecting rivers to Lake Huron, he came to the Sault Sainte Marie. Then followed hundreds of miles of paddling along the homeless shores of Lake Superior until civilization was seen again at Fort William on the northern shore. Yet that was only the real starting-point. Here Mackenzie began one of the most adventurous and productive explorations of that era, when the world was busy with exploration. Through rivers, ponds, and portages to Lake Winnipeg, across it and up the Saskatchewan, he pursued a well-defined route of the Hudson Bay Company’svoyageurs. But finally he reached even the fur-trader’s frontier, and pushed forward into a region never then penetrated by a white man. He came to the Peace River and began its ascent. It led him into, and guided him through, the mountains. At its sources he found water flowing westward, and through weeks of hardy adventure traced this river or that until he scented the salt breezes, and looked abroad upon the Pacific—the first man to cross Canada!
That is only a century ago; yet when you place Mackenzie’s canoe beside our transcontinental railway train, the contrast is as wide as between the first and last page of history; but put the courage of the old fur-trader beside the pluck which built this railway, and the extremes meet again.
The transcontinental trip by the Canadian Pacific Railway, then, is the subject of this article. We shall not precisely follow Mackenzie’s devious route, but shall touch it here and there, and see all the way the same kind of things that he saw.
Let us, first of all, have a clear understanding of what this journey is to be.
The Canadian Pacific is the largest railway system on the continent, yet there is none so little known to the general public in the United States, and none so widely misapprehended. It lies wholly in Canada. From Quebec it follows the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and then the Ottawa to the capital of the Dominion. From Ottawa it directs an almost straight course to the northernmost angle of Lake Superior, and skirting its shore for a hundred miles, strikes west to Winnipeg. Thence it crosses 900 miles of prairie, enters the Rocky Mountains 150 miles north of the United States boundary, and forcing its way through 250 miles of magnificent highlands, descends to the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Fraser River.
This main line is 3,070 miles in length, and reaches from ocean to ocean. Its through trains do not change their sleeping-cars all the way. An English family bound for China need make only two changes of conveyance between Liverpool and Hong-Kong—one at Montreal from the steamer to the cars, and another in re-embarking at Vancouver, the Pacific terminus. This is a notable advantage over the pieced-up route through Europe or the United States.
Yet this main line is only thestemof the great system. One side-line goes to Boston. Two others communicate with railways in New York State, at Brockville and Prescott, on the St. Lawrence. Short branches reach a dozen towns in Quebec. Westward, Montreal and Ottawa are connected with Toronto, whence branches ramify through all Ontario. Lake Huron is reached at Owen Sound, whence a line of ocean-like steamships on the Great Lakes is sustained. From Sudbury, a station 443 miles west of Montreal, a branch runs along the northern shore of Lake Huron to Sault Sainte Marie, where it is joined by a bridge over those historic rapids with two new American lines—one to Minneapolis, and another to Duluth. In Manitoba, branches penetrate all the corners of that rich wheat-growing province. Thus, the total length of its railways approaches 5,000 miles, and a yearhence will be increased by a direct line to St. John, N. B., and Cape Breton, to connect with especially swift steamers, forming a new Atlantic ferry and carrying England’s Oriental mails. Yet, as has been said, few Americans know or realize these important facts in Canadian progress.
“SMOKING IN A SNUG CORNER.”
“SMOKING IN A SNUG CORNER.”
The new station in Montreal, whence we take our departure for the transcontinental journey one summer evening, is a magnificent piece of architecture. It stands just at the corner of Dominion Square, where the first strains of the band concert are calling together the loitering, pleasure-making crowds which twice a week throng its gravel walks or lounge upon the turf of its green parterres.
Out from the station stretches a series of broad stone arches, carrying the tracks upon an elevated way that reminds one of London, to the outskirts of the city, and into the quaint French villages named by pious founders after some Ste. Rose, Ste. Therése, or St. Phillipe, or other revered personages of the olden times.
We go to sleep, and do not know when Ottawa, Canada’s pleasant capital and lumber market, is passed at midnight. We are oblivious to this and all the world besides until a cheery call of “Breakfast-time, sir!” rouses our energies, and we peep out of our window to find ourselves rushing through a dense green forest, still glistening with the night’s dew. Then the breadth of Lake Nipissing opens like a plain of azure amid the green woods, and we halt at North Bay, where a road from Niagara Falls and Toronto terminates and makes a junction with ours. We step out and take a run up and down the long platform. The sunlight seems unusually bright and clear, the breeze from the lake is “nipping and eager”—everything and everybody has an air of alertness and glee which is inspiriting. We have slept well—we are wide awake; this balsamic odor of the woods is appetizing—we are hungry. The dining-car is therefore doubly inviting. Its furnishing is in elegant taste; its linen white as the breaking of the lake-waves; its silver glitters in the sunlight; on every table is a bouquet of wild flowers, masking a basket of fruit. There are tables for two and tables for four. One of the latter holds a family party—father, mother and two young ladies, Vassar girls, perhaps. We seat ourselves opposite, and as the train moves smoothly on, eat and talk with a gusto forgotten since last summer’s outing.
Ourvis-à-visat table proves to be an official of the company, who knows the whole line, as he says, “like the book.” He is going clear through to attend to matters on the western coast. This is great luck, for he seems quite as willing to answer our eager questions as we are to ask them. He is intensely interested in this great achievement, as is everybody connected with it, and wants us to become equally enthusiastic.
“This ought to be a good region for fishing,” we suggest, looking out upon the beautiful lake whose rocky shores we are skirting.
“Excellent,” the official agrees, as he quarters his orange.“Lake Nipissing abounds in big fish, and so does French River, its outlet into Lake Huron. I have had capital sport at the end of the steamboat pier at North Bay, ‘whipping’ with a rod and spoon for pike, bass, pickerel, whitefish, etc. Sometimes muskallonge weighing forty or fifty pounds are caught by trolling from a boat.”
“How about trout?”
“Well, if you’re bent upon trout, and don’t want to go up to the Jackfish or Nepigon River (which we shall cross to-morrow morning), your best plan is to go to Trout Lake and down to the Mattawan. Trout Lake lies four or five miles inland, behind those hills, where the scenery is exceedingly beautiful and the fishing practically untouched. In the lake itself are huge bass, pickerel and muskallonge. I know of one caught there by a lady, which weighed thirty-five pounds. Down to the lake, through tortuous, shady ravines, come cataract-rivers filled with untroubled trout. You can get a boat at a settler’s, or take your own and camp where you please, and fish in a new place every day all summer. Then from Trout Lake you can run a canoe down through a chain of lakes into the Mattawan River. Each of these lakes and streams has plenty of fish of several kinds, and charming camping places. The Mattawan carries you into the Ottawa, which you can descend in a boat—fishing all the way—to the St. Lawrence.”
“That’s an alluring story,” we say.
“It’s literally true; and in the fall and winter, sport with the gun is equally good. Moose, caribou, and deer are plentiful, and the town of Mattawan forms an excellent outfitting place for a shooting trip. Indian and white guides can be got who know the country, and the many lumberers’ roads and camps facilitate the sport. New Brunswick used to be the best place for that sport, but now this part of Canada is far more accessible and convenient.”
At noon we come to Sudbury, where extensive mines of copper and gold are worked, and a brisk village is growing up, with some farming and a great deal of lumbering in the neighborhood. Here branches off the new “Soo” route to St. Paul.
All the afternoon we run through forested hills, the line bending hither and yon to avoid rocky ridges and crystalline lakes, cutting athwart promontories, and bridging ravines. Here and there are extensive tracts of arable land, but little agricultural settlement can be expected in these forests as long as the rich prairies westward, all ready for the plow, are only half-tenanted. Yet the cabins of settlers, who are part farmers, part lumbermen, part trappers, and part “Injun,” are scattered all along the line; and every hundred miles or so we encounter a railway “divisional” station, where there are engine-houses, repairing shops, and the homes of the men employed on that section of the line.
In the evening, groups gathered in our brilliantly-lighted palaces—for every one had become acquainted, like a cozy ship’s company at sea—and whiled away the time with books, story-telling and whist. The Vassar girls, the Official and the EditorialWehad a grand game, closing with a tie at eleven o’clock. Just then we were at Missanabie, where you might launch a canoe—“that frail vehicle of an amphibious navigation,” as Sir George Simpson styled it—and run down to the fur-famed—
“Beware of puns!” cried Miss Dimity Vassar.
—Michipicoten, in Lake Superior; or, with a few portages, glide northward to Hudson’s Bay.
Bidden to be awake early, at six next morning we were astir, and, lo! there was Lake Superior. All day we ran along its shores, here taking advantage of a natural terrace or ledge, there rolling with thunderous roar along some gallery blasted out of the face of the gigantic cliffs whose granite bases were beaten by the waves; next darting through a tunnel or safely overriding a long and lofty bridge, beneath which poured some wine-colored torrent. This is daring and costly engineering.
Always high above the water, which sometimes dashes at the very foot of the trackway, and sometimes is separated from us by barriers of vine-clad rock, the eye overlooks a wide and radiant scene. A line of distant and hilly islands cuts off this interior part (Nepigon Bay) from the open lake; and as we swerve hither and yon in our rapid advance, these islands group themselves into ever changing combinations, opening and closing lanes of blue water, displaying and hiding the silvery horizon, letting passing vessels appear and disappear, and taking some new charm of color with each new position.
Nor was this all. Cliffs and shore are grandly picturesque in form, brilliant in color, and constantly varied. After we had reached Jackfish River—a famous fishing-place—and the gaudy overhangingcliffs had been left behind, the lake began to be hidden by a line of trap-buttes, masked in dense foliage; and these beautiful table-lands lasted all the way to the crossing of the Nepigon, where again we were face to face with Nepigon Bay. You may say later that the scenery of the Rocky Mountains is better than this morning ride along Lake Superior; but you will not forget, nor be willing to omit it, all the same.
INDIAN TEPEES.
INDIAN TEPEES.
Nepigon River, up which we have a long view, is the prince of trout-rivers, and at the railway station canoes, camping supplies and Indian crews are always obtainable. Think of brook-trout weighing five or six pounds, to be caught, and bass and whitefish and what not in plenty besides!
That afternoon we passed Port Arthur, a town of 3,500 population, on Thunder Bay, and the port for the fine Canadian Pacific steamers, which present an alternative summer route between the East and West by way of the lakes, Owen Sound and Toronto. Five miles farther on we came to old Fort William, now a growing village and grain port. Here, on the fertile flats of the Kaministiquia, more than two hundred years ago, was planted an Indian trading-post, which a century later became the headquarters of the great Northwest Fur Company, and then an important post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to which, after years of warfare, the Northwest corporation finally capitulated. Some of the storied old buildings, to which a whole magazine article might easily be devoted, still stand, but they are overshadowed by the railway shops and warehouses, the huge elevators and coal-bins, which here, as at Port Arthur, testify to an enormous shipping traffic.
For four hundred miles west of Fort William, where we bid good-bye to Lake Superior, the road passes through a wild, rough region of rocks and forest, reticulated with lakes and rivers. It is the most unattractive piece of country on the whole line, but it abounds in minerals, and supplies the treeless region beyond with lumber. Near its eastern border, at Rabbit Mountain, exceedingly rich silver mines are worked. The Lake of the Woods, in the centre of this tract, is a very beautiful spot, and one whose water-power supplies many large mills.
Morning found us among open groves and thickets—the fringed-out western edge of that almost continental forest which sweeps behind us to the Atlantic, and northward until it half envelops Hudson’s Bay. Finally even this disappeared in an expanse of verdant turf—the prairie of Manitoba,—its perfectly level horizon broken only by the tall buildings and steeples of the city of Winnipeg.
Winnipeg stands at the point where Red River receives its largest western tributary, the Assiniboine. It has been the site of an Indian trading post, and the centre of the “Red River settlements” for almost a century; but until ten years ago it was nothing more. Then it sprung at one bound, amid an ecstasy of speculation, into a city. It had a hard time after this injudicious exuberance began to subside; but it survived, and now Winnipeg is as well founded, and growing as healthfully, as is Denver or Omaha. The town has ridiculously wide streets, which it cost a fortune to pave with cedar blocks, and which make the really tall and fine business buildings look dwarfed. There are several expensive churches, hundreds of elegant residences, and some stately public buildings. The width of the streets; the great number of vacant lots, due to the large expectations of the “boom” period, which spread the town beyond all reason; and the use of cream-colored brick and light paint in the buildings, give to Winnipeg a singularly pale and scattered appearance, likely to diminish in the eyes of a casual visitor the city’s real wealth and importance.
THE VIEW FROM THE HOT SPRINGS, BANFF, LOOKING DOWN THE BOW.⇒LARGER IMAGE
THE VIEW FROM THE HOT SPRINGS, BANFF, LOOKING DOWN THE BOW.
⇒LARGER IMAGE
“While you would find here in Winnipeg,” says ourcicerone, as we sat smoking in a snug corner,“if you studied the matter a little, the key to much that you will see beyond, you must look beyond for the key to much you will see in Winnipeg. Situated just where the forests end and the vast prairies begin, with thousands of miles of river navigation to the north, south and west, and with railways radiating in every direction into the wheat lands of all Manitoba, like spokes in a wheel, Winnipeg has become, what it must always be, the commercial focus of the Canadian Northwest. Looking at these long lines of warehouses filled with goods, and these twenty miles or more of railway side-tracks all crowded with cars, you begin to realize the vastness of the country we are about to enter. From here the wants of the people in the west are supplied, and this way come the products of their fields, while from the far north are brought furs in great variety and number.”
NEARING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
NEARING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
The surrounding prairie is absolutely flat, and was the bed of a prehistoric lake—the last remnant of the waters that once covered the whole interior; and as we race across it we can picture how the wavelets rose and fell before the ancient wind by noticing the olive-and-gray ripples that flow over the long grass under this noonday breeze. Here and there cattle are standing up to their bellies in the lush meadow. Far off to the southward a dark line indicates the fringe of trees along the Assiniboine. Nothing else breaks the verdant flats that sweep around us save the track and the telegraph poles, straight as a ray of light behind and ahead to their vanishing points on each horizon. After a while habitations and farms grow more numerous, for we have imperceptibly risen to a region lighter in soil and formerly held at a cheaper price than the speculative tracts near the city, whose owners have seen settlers go steadily past them.
The centre of this is the far-scattered town of Portage la Prairie, an old landing-place of thevoyageurs, who here loaded their boat-cargoes into carts and carried them across to Lake Manitoba, there to be re-embarked for the long canoe voyage inland. Here are now great wheat elevators and mills, and hence a railway has pushed 250 miles northwestward, to continue nobody knows how much farther. Brandon, seventy-five miles beyond, is a wide-awake, handsomely built young city on the Assiniboine, sustained by an immense agricultural environment. In regard to this let me quote somewhat from a standard work on the prairies:“Leaving Brandon, we have fairly reached the first of the great prairie steppes, that rise one after the other at long intervals to the Rocky Mountains; and now we are on the real prairie, not the monotonous, uninteresting plain your imagination has pictured, but a great billowy ocean of grass and flowers, now swelling into low hills, again dropping into broad basins with gleaming ponds, and broken here and there by valleys and by irregular lines of trees marking the watercourses. The horizon only limits the view; and, as far as the eye can reach, the prairie is dotted with newly made farms, with great black squares where the sod has just been turned by the plow, and with herds of cattle. The short, sweet grass, studded with brilliant flowers, covers the land as with a carpet, ever changing in color as the flowers of the different seasons and places give to it their predominating hue.... Here is produced, in the greatest perfection, the most famous of all varieties of wheat—that known as the ‘hard Fyfe wheat of Manitoba’—and oats as well, and rye, barley and flax, and gigantic potatoes, and almost everything that can be grown in a temperate climate.... Three hundred miles from Winnipeg we pass through the famous Bell Farm, embracing one hundred square miles of land. This is a veritable manufactory of wheat, where the work is done with almost military organization—plowing by brigades and reaping by divisions. Think of a farm where the furrows are ordinarily four miles long, and of a country where such a thing is possible! There are neat stone cottages and ample barns for miles around, and the collection of buildings about the headquarters near the railway station makes a respectable village, there being among them a church, an hotel, a flour mill, and, of course, a grain elevator, for in this country these elevators appear wherever there is wheat to be handled or stored.”
The fertile, pleasantly habitable region of the Canadian West is a triangular region with a base 800 miles in width east and west, and a northern limit marked by the forests beyond the Saskatchewan. Between these forests and the Rocky Mountains the arable country extends almost to the borders of Alaska, and through it are scattered trading stations and small settlements among a peaceful and semi-industrious Indian population. The climate is dry, yet the rainfall (except in the southwestern part) is quite sufficient for agriculture. The winters are rigorous, but not so long as those of Quebec, and the snowfall is light. Wheat, oats, barley and vegetables grow to perfection even farther north than the Peace River valley, in latitude 56° to 57°—the parallel which in the east passes just north of Labrador. Settlement on these fine prairies (which are often bushy, and show no sage-brush and little alkali) is only a decade old, yet last year there was produced a surplus for export of twelve million bushels of wheat alone.
Not far beyond the Regina wheat plain, which is about 1,800 feet above the sea, the altitude is abruptly increased by a rise to the top of theCoteau de Missouri, where the average of elevation is 3,000 feet. Here the climate is drier, and grazing becomes the principal industry, especially toward the foothills, where enormous herds of horses, cattle and sheep are pastured. Of this great and growing business Calgary is headquarters.
Only ten years ago this was the home of millions of buffalo, whose trails and wallows mark the surface in every direction; but not a bison is now to be seen within a long distance northward. The prairies from Regina westward are dotted with lakes, generally of fresh water, are well grassed, and broken by wooded eminences. The elk and mule-deer are still common, and in the autumn immense herds of antelope, migrating southward, are still to be seen from the car windows. Around the lakes crowd countless wild fowl at all seasons, while flocks of prairie chickens whirl away on each side at our approach. In the seasons of migration geese and ducks are here in myriads.
We cross the South Saskatchewan near some extensive coal mines, and toward evening of Friday (we left Montreal on Monday night and Winnipeg on Thursday morning) we catch our first brief glimpse of the Rockies—a serrated white line notching the sunset horizon. To-morrow morning we shall awake within their glorious gates.
STONE POGAMOGGANS OF THE CANADIAN SIOUX.
STONE POGAMOGGANS OF THE CANADIAN SIOUX.