The Arctic Prairies

e remaining forest wilds-the far north-west of Canada-and the yet more desert Arctic Pla

on's Bay Territory and the Mackenzie Valley. While my chief object was to see the Caribou, and prove their continued abundance, I was prepared incidentally to gather na

ot persuade my Hudson's Bay Company friends that I was not sent

Winnipeg, and our observations

ern Hares (Snowshoe-rabbits or White-rabbits) had reached its maximum, for nine-tenths of the bushes in sight from the train had been barked at the snow level. But th

hen. All were south of the track. The bands contained as follows: 4, 14, 18, 8, 12, 8, 4, 1, 4, 5, 4, 6, 4, 18, 2, 6, 34, 6, 3, 1, 10, 25, 16, 3, 7, 9 (almost never

eturning, found themselves cut off from their summer feeding-grounds by those impassable barb-wires, and so were gathered against the barrier. One band of 8, at a stopp

the difficulty, it means extermination f

the beginning of hard travel, and here we waited a few days to gather together our

is the official first day of spring, the beginning of the season; and is eagerly looked for, as every

es northward though a most promising, half-settled country, and late the next day arrived at Athabaska La

up at the principal hotel; the other lodgers told me it was considered the worst hotel i

take the annual supplies of trade stuff for the far north was not ready, and

local natural history and do a little coll

poplar (P. balsamifera), 100 feet to the top, 8 feet 2 inches in circumfere

nds with Caspar Whitney in 1895. He seemed to have great respect for Whitney as a tramper, and talked much of the trip, evidently having forgotten his own shortcomings of the time. While I sketched his portrait, he regaled me with memories of his early days on Red River, where he wa

ps; in some cases even starved to death. I proposed to rely on no game, but to take plenty of groceries, the best I could buy in Winnipe

d on the Hudson's Bay Company scows, taking with us, in the canoe, food fo

rth. And here let me correct an error that is sometimes found even in respectable print-the Company has at all times been ready to assist scientists to the utmost of its very ample power. Although jealous of

has always been the gua

ern that so fully realized the moral obligations of its great pow

the Company insisted on their smoking the peace pipe. The Sioux and Ojibway, Black-Foot and Assiniboine., Dog-Rib and Co

sful effort on the part of the Company to bring about a

re of the Company, not simply general and indiscriminate, but minute and personal, carried into the details of their lives. For instance, when bots so pe

a strain of pure Huskies or Eskimo. When the Albany River Indians were starving and unable to hunt, the Company gave the order for 5,000 lodge poles. Then, not knowing how else to turn them to account, commissioned the Indians to work them into a picket