oa Radar Oee0 tothe eee a é at 818 3 ; Z - a Bh Sy ; ‘ pat wows y nad 2039 20 ES 8M Oi e 82 eae eisteace ait eeee pyres a BR 7 ny ye pasncer ina Sea rsides : ety Gates abe pecit eden ciassorsiat os Bian sy neaaiccee, : : RT aidlereserapeasieected SU8es oh, oath f : eke 4 oe ae oe ae : pte : = a; bast A EDs Solara ye . : ee tei sees asthe Sean See eee Stat seed ee ey oeee Creo totale: * “ ti4te a $e Gre wiesez ere wes a Meat es Lidse tid es Be rhe feuges . faite re Seg Saye as bes ae aia 8" (pi ROPE Oe Fe kee THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY Si a G7?@Go IBZ Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books. U. of I. Library HUG I O'30 FEB ¥3 1942 MAR 21 1958 ing O INO JUN we Sf i Ih | APR 27 9p 14685-S Teiy La? ih OCEAN TO OCEAN SANDFORD FLEMING’S EXPEDITION THROUGH CANADA IN 1872 BY THE REV. GEORGE M. GRANT OF HALIFAX, N.S. SECRETARY TO THE EXPEDITION REVISED EDITION Containing the best features of the two former editions, published in 1873 and 1879. ILLUSTRATED TORONTO THE RADISSON SOCIETY OF CANADA LIMITED 1925 iii Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from University of Illinois Uroana-Champaign httos://archive.org/details/oceantooceansandO0Ogran_3 INTRODUCTION BY WituiaAM L. Grant The Canadian West came late into favour with the settler. The travels of the early fur traders made the prairies known as the land of the Indian and the buffalo. Alexander Henry was the first, and Sir William Butler the last of those to whom “The Great Lone Land’ was the land of romance and of adventure, but not of settle- ment. A series of bold adventurers from Alexander McKenzie in 1792 to Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle in 1863 crossed the barriers of the Rocky Mountains. But their accounts of towering canyons to whose depths the sun at mid-day could not pierce, of impassable rivers and endless glaciers, however likely to attract the adven- turous traveller, were little likely to win the settler. In 1857-8 the discovery of gold in the Caribou country did indeed lead to a rush there of the same wild adven- turers who had gone to California in ’49 and to Aus- tralia in °51. But the gold rush ended in disaster, and the farmer was still to come. ~ Control of the Great West was vested in the Hud- ‘ son’s Bay Company, founded by Charles II in 1670. .\ The most important date in its history is probably 1821, “ when it incorporated its Canadian rival, the North- ¢ West Fur Trading Company, which had had its head- \3 quarters at Montreal. The reorganized company pur- _» sued its work under the original name, but with a new s, Vigour and aggressiveness. It set a noble record for ’ fairness of dealing with the Indians; for over a century oN its name has stood for honesty and fairness. ‘The ques- “od vii 996168 Vill OCEAN TO OCEAN tion has been much discussed whether it was equally statesmanlike in dealing with the problem of settlement, or whether, in its natural aversion to seeing the fur- bearing animals driven farther and farther north and west, it did not tend to discourage the settler. This was certainly the view of the great Company taken by the author of Ocean to Ocean, who again and again stated that “all their efforts were directed to keep the country a close preserve,” a reiteration which cost him the friendship of at least one Governor of the Company. Before the amalgamation there was a bitter conflict of interests. The original Company was not averse to settlement, and in 1811 granted to Lord Selkirk a great tract of over 115,000 square miles, chiefly in what was later called Manitoba, on which he endeavoured to found a farming colony; but the North-West Company opposed him bitterly, its employés murdered his settlers at Seven Oaks (1816); and its magnates hounded Sel- kirk to his death. After the amalgamation a milder policy was pur- sued. Sir George Simpson, the greatest and most energetic of the Governors of the Company in the nineteenth century, in his published travels is not unfair to the possibilities of the West, and speaks of great parts of it, especially of the grant to Selkirk, as being “in every respect, well calculated for the purposes of agriculture.”’ But the Company cannot be acquitted of emphasizing the disadvantages of the West; some of its agents were almost as pessimistic as the prophet Joel: what the grass-hopper spared, the hail broke down; and what the hail left untouched was nipped by the early frosts. INTRODUCTION ix But after all, as Grant was the first to admit, it was hardly the business of a fur-trading Company to call attention to the agricultural possibilities of its lands; that duty lay with the home government, and very inadequately it was fulfilled, as the early chapters of Ocean to Ocean sufficiently point out. In 1857 Captain John Palliser was sent out, in charge of an elaborately equipped expedition, but his report was unfavorable alike to the agricultural possibilities of the West, and to the practicability of a route through the Canadian Rockies, and nothing further was done. Bulwer Lytton, Colonial Secretary in 1859, did indeed voice in the House of Commons his vision of a great band of provinces stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but his words fell upon deaf ears. Two things must be said in extenuation of the in- difference of the Mother Country. The first is that it i8 questionable how far a bolder policy would have been successful until the great spaces of the United States had been filled up. The greatest work of colonization in the nineteenth century was that of the Great Re- public. In the first half of the century she flung material civilization from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1783 when the independence of the Thirteen Colonies was acknowledged, the pioneers had topped the Alle- ghanies and were beginning to stream down into the valleys of the Ohio and the Tennessee. Sixty years later their grandchildren had crossed the great central plain and were pouring down from the summits of the Rockies into the valleys of the Columbia and the Willa- mette. But the intervening spaces were only gradually filled up. Wisconsin did not become a state till 1848; Minnesota, not till 1858; Dakota not till 1889. Immi- x OCEAN TO OCEAN gration takes the line of least resistance—climatic con- ditions in great parts of the Middle West were on the whole milder than in the North West, and until the best land south of the border was at least partially settled, it is unlikely that the boldest policy could have led to large and successful settlements between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains. The second thing to be borne in mind is that what- ever the defects of the Home Government, the native- born Canadians were little better. In the scattered provinces of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, little interest was taken in the West. Till about 1850 the politicians were absorbed in winning or in working out responsible government, and for the next fifteen years were in factional strife. The merchant politicians of Montreal, in so far as they turned their thoughts westward, did so as fur traders rather than as statesmen. ‘The remarkable prophecy of Joseph Howe in the Nova Scotia legislature in 1851 that there were men then living who would live to hear the steam whistle in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains was almost a solitary voice. In 1857 an agitation, organized chiefly by the Toronto Liberals, was indeed strong enough to force the Conservative Government of the day to send Chief Justice Draper to England to negotiate with the Hudson’s Bay Company, at the time in process of reorganization; but the Government was bitterly attacked in the legislature for doing so, chiefly by the Quebec Liberals, and the movement, if such it can be called, had little popular backing, and died away. To Nova Scotia the North-West was an unknown land. When in 1868 the Red River settlement was visited by a plague of grasshoppers, and his friend Fleming wrote to the future author of Ocean to Ocean, and asked him INTRODUCTION xl to make a collection for the sufferers, the collection was indeed made, but the collector wrote to say that “I could have collected as much, and the people would have given as intelligently, had the sufferers been in Abyssinia.” The West was saved for Canada, if not indeed for the British Empire, not by any effort of Canadian national consciousness, but by the daring and prescience of a few great men. In 1867 Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were con- federated by the efforts of a group of statesmen, of whom John Alexander Macdonald, Georges Cartier, George Brown and Charles Tupper were the chief. In 1869 and 1870 they entered into negotiations with the Home Government and with the Hudson’s Bay Company and bought from it the area of over one mil- lion square miles which it had ruled for two centuries. In 1871 British Columbia was brought into the new Dominion, and the promise given her that within ten years she should be united to Eastern Canada by a Canadian Pacific Railway. It was time to be stirring. In 1867 the United States had purchased Alaska from Russia, and the pages of Ocean to Ocean give abundant proof that the appetite of the Great Republic was not yet satisfied. A little longer delay, and the western boundary of Canada would in all likelihood have been to-day, not the Pacific Ocean, but some obscure stream between Port Arthur and Winnipeg. On 20th July, 1871, British Columbia entered the Dominion, and as construction of the railway as a govern- ment line had been decided upon, on the same day sur- veying parties were sent out from both ends of the projected line. In the summer of 1872, Sandford Fleming, Engineer-in-Chief of the Dominion Govern- ment, decided to make a personal inspection of the pro- xii OCEAN TO OCEAN posed line of route. On 15th July his small party met at Toronto, and on the next day started westward, with the Reverend George Monro Grant, minister of St. Matthew’s Presbyterian Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, as its secretary. George Monro Grant was born in 1835 at Albion Mines, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, the son of James Grant, a Scottish settler who had come out from Banff- shire in 1826, and in 1831 had married Mary Monro, daughter of another settler. James Grant was an honest Scotch Presbyterian, of no special force of char- acter. His wife came of a clerical line, her grandfather being “the godly Mr. Monro” (minister of Cromarty), spoken of by Hugh Miller in “My Schools and School- Masters”. She was a woman of great practical sagacity and also of intense religious feeling, qualities which were inherited by her five children, of whom George was the third. Upon him her influence was very deep till her death in 1865, and ever after he cherished her memory as that of a saint. “My mother and yours” he said once to his son, on one of the few occasions when he opened his heart and spoke of his own feelings and emotions, “were the two best women I have ever known.” At the age of eight young Grant lost his right hand as the result of a boyish prank in a coal mine. On his recovery he turned his whole splendid energy to scholar- ship. His first ambition had been for a military career, now impossible, and for such “a lad o’pairts” the obvious outlet was the ministry. At an early age he became ‘Dux’ of Pictou Academy, then at the height of its fame. A year or two later he won one of the bursaries given by the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia in the hope of encouraging a native-born ministry, and in 1853 sailed for Scotland. The next seven years were spent INTRODUCTION xill in Glasgow University, with vacations on the continent. Alike in athletics, in scholarship, and in all other aca- demic activities he had a brilliant career, although the chief influences which moulded his young manhood were not academic, but in letters, those of Thomas Carlyle, and in morals and theology those of Norman Macleod, the brilliant minister of the Barony Church in Glasgow. Refusing offers which would have given him a career in Scotland, he returned in 1860 to his native country and for three years worked on a mission station in Prince Edward Island, with such success that in 1863 he was offered and accepted the pastorate of St. Matthew’s Church, Halifax, at the time the most prom- inent Presbyterian Church in the Maritime Provinces. Here he had such rapid success that very soon to his ordinary services chairs were brought into the aisles and strangers sat on the steps of the high old-fashioned Scottish pulpit. In addition he was active in all the social and political questions of the day, and when in 1864 the question of federation with Upper and Lower Canada came up, the young minister was one of those who threw themselves into the struggle for federation. His political mentor had been Joseph Howe, whose oratory had kindled him to a fervent and lifelong belief in an united Canada and in the greatness of the part which such a Canada could play in an united British Empire. When at the crisis of the struggle Howe proved false to the higher hope and the larger vision and was swept by his dis- like of Dr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Tupper into the agitation against federation, Grant broke with his former mentor, and was one of the small band who stood by Tupper. The cry for repeal swept Nova Scotia, but even in the moment of triumph some of the XiV OCEAN TO OCEAN repealers saw that their triumph was short lived. “We shall win this immediate election, win easily, but we shall lose in the end,” said in 1867 A. W. McLelan, at that time one of the foremost opponents of federation. “The men with ideas and ideals are against us. Look at Archbishop Connolly, and that Presbyterian minis- ter, young Grant, in Halifax. Those are the men of the future, and they are all against us.” It is not often that a political prophecy is so exactly fulfilled. It was fitting that such a man should be called on to be the Secretary of the first expedition from ocean to ocean across united Canada. United with the fervent Highlander was his life-long friend, Fleming, a quiet, indomitable Low-lander. Sandford Fleming was born in “the lang town” of Kirkaldy in Fife in 1827, and came to Canada in 1845. He became first a land sur- veyor, and afterwards a railway engineer. Entering the service of the Canadian Government, he was the engineer-in-chief of the Intercolonial Railway from Riviere du Loup to Halifax, and afterwards of the earlier surveys of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Like Grant, he had been an unwearied advocate of federa- tion. Tall, burly and handsome, he was as slow and gentle in speech as the other was eager and vivacious; but if he once took hold, he never let go, and few men have done more for Canada in more varied ways than did Sir Sandford Fleming. Grant returned to Halifax in November, 1872, and early in the next year Ocean to Ocean was published in Toronto and in London. Although his notes were written at the end of long and toilsome marches, by the flickering light of the camp fire, and in some cases on strips of birch-bark, and although the bulk of the book is almost a verbal transcript of them, no evidence of INTRODUCTION XV haste is apparent, and in style it ranks among the few Canadian books which can claim to be written with dis- tinction. From cover to cover it has the merit of being interesting; it is full of vigour—giving a succession of pictures of men and events in which the most graphic word is invariably found with apparent ease. Aided by Grant’s own personality and by his numer- ous and successful lectures, Ocean to Ocean made a distinct impression, and was at least partially respon- sible for the change in the attitude of Nova Scotia toward federation and to some extent in that of Upper Canada to the West. At the general election of 1873 the repeal candidates in Nova Scotia were in almost all cases decisively defeated, andthe agitation practically died out. Dark days were indeed to come. It proved to be no easy task to build a railway around Lake Superior, across the prairies, and through three ranges of mountains. The Liberal administration, under Alexander Mac- kenzie, shrank from the literal fulfilment of their bar- gain with British Columbia, and drove that province to the verge of secession. E.ven the buoyant and enthusi- astic Grant shared in the depression, and sounded a note of warning. In a lecture given in Halifax in 1877 he laid down that while a Canadian Pacific Railway was a necessity, and that at the earliest possible moment, it “should not be commenced from the Pacific side until at least one million of Canadians are settled west of the Red River of the North.” ‘This shows that he had not yet fully grasped the truth that mn modern conditions roads and railways must not follow, or even accompany, but must precede settlement. He outlines, however, an alternative policy, which seems to have been that of the Prime Minister himself, by which the line would have been completed to Winnipeg, and then one or XV1 OCEAN TO OCEAN more colonization lines, with numerous north and south branches, pushed westward, while fulfilment of the bar- gain with British Columbia was postponed until the intervening spaces were at least dotted with settlers. For this policy there was much to be said, had it been vigorously carried out; the sufficient criticism of it is that it risked Canada’s Pacific frontier. In days when even the forward-looking Grant felt it necessary to call upon young Canada to hasten slowly, we can imagine what must have been the feeling of the average man, and can estimate the splendid courage of the Dominion Government, under the Prime Ministry of Sir John Macdonald, when in 1881 they completed with a daring band of Scottish-Canadian financiers, of whom the chief was George Stephen, the agreement for a Canadian Pacific Railway. With the completion of this agreement Grant’s hesitation came to an end. Picturesque Canada, edited and in part written by him and published in 1882, is full of confidence. He could hear the tread of the pioneers, and could say: “Before long, Winnipeg will be more populous than Ottawa, or, its citizens would say, than Toronto; the Saskatchewan a more important factor in Canadian development than the St. Lawrence; and the route from Hudson’s Bay to Liverpool perhaps as well established as the beaten path from Montreal and Quebec.” (Picturesque Canada page 278.) In 1883 he again went from ocean to ocean, in com- pany with Fleming, who had ceased to be the Govern- ment Engineer-in-Chief, but who was a director of the C.P.R. The route chosen by Fleming in 1872 through the Yellow Head Pass had been abandoned, and it had been determined to pierce the Rockies further south, but though by this time rail-head was not far from Cal- INTRODUCTION XVil gary, on arriving there the travellers found that no practicable pass through the Selkirk range had been found. After some hesitation they pressed on, and near the summit of the Kicking Horse Pass met with Major Rogers, the chief engineer of the Company, from whom they heard the glad news that a way through the Sel- kirks had been discovered by following up an hitherto unexplored branch of the LIllecillewaet. Thence they pressed on by the Eagle Pass to Kamloops, and so to New Westminster. The book this time was written not by Grant but by Fleming, but Grant’s letters home and his magazine articles show that for him the time of depression was past. Grant was tall and slight, but wiry and with unflag- ging strength and energy. His eyes had the intense blue of his hero Cromwell, and for all his slightness his head was set on a columnar neck, so muscular that to look at him was to recall Beecher’s saying that “the men with thick necks rule the world.” So full of energy was he that a Halifax friend described him as “a steam- engine in trousers.” The story of his recovery of his lost watch while on his journey across the Rockies in 1883 is characteristic. Climbing up the eastern slope of the Selkirks, where “the horses at one time clambered over fallen trees, still on fire, at another waded through hot ashes or burning vegetable soil’, Grant found dur- ing the afternoon that he had lost his watch, which had been presented to him in Scotland in 1860, and which was almost his dearest possession. Though he was almost forty-eight years of age, he promptly resolved to go back on foot along the way they had come, and did so, finally coming upon the watch on the site of their last night’s camp. As he moved off in the morning the chain had been caught by a bough, and the watch had been XViii OCEAN TO OCEAN dragged from his pocket, and hung unobserved. 'The watch found, back he started over the trail, and caught up to the others soon after they had encamped. They were almost dead-beat, but Grant, as Fleming records, was ‘in the best of spirits.” The double journey had not quelled that exhaustless physical and moral energy. From 1863 to 1877 Grant was minister of St. Mait- hew’s, Halifax. Ever an apostle of Union, he was fore- most in bringing the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia into Canadian Presbyterianism in 1875. In 1867 he married Jessie Lawson, the eldest daughter of William Lawson, a prosperous West Indian merchant, whose family had been established in Halifax since 1750, the year after its foundation. In December 1877 he was appointed Principal of Queen’s University, Kingston, and in twenty-five years raised it from a small college into one of the three chief Canadian universities. Dur- ing all these years he was also the unwearied exponent of a vigorous Canadian patriotism, merged in the larger unity of the British Empire, in the value of which to mankind he had an almost mystic belief. To the last he was “a forward-looking man.” The quotation is hackneyed, yet he cannot be better described than in Browning’s words: “One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph. Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.”’ Grant died on May 10th, 1902. His wife had pre- deceased him on Ist January, 1901. Of their two children one died young, the other still survives. His biography has been written in collaboration by William INTRODUCTION xix Lawson Grant, his son, and Charles Frederick Ham- ilton, a friend and pupil. (Toronto, Morang and Co. 1904: London and Edinburgh, T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1905). Ocean to Ocean may be left to speak for itself. To the last Grant held that a great mistake had been made by the later engineers of the C. P. R., when they aban- doned the route surveyed under Fleming’s guidance through the Yellow Head Pass and took the more southerly route through the Kicking Horse Pass, with its steeper grades. No satisfactory reason for the change has ever been given. Was it due to a lingering faint-heartedness which felt that the northern route would be lost amidst eternal snows; did political con- siderations enter in and Conservatives feel that the Liberal route must be abandoned; it is one of the unsolved problems of Canadian history. The choice of the Yellow Head Pass by the two later lines, the Cana- dian Northern and the Canadian National, have justi- fied the unfailing belief of Grant and of Fleming. When at the end of the Nineteenth Century the West began to fill with settlers and Grant to see the fulfilment of his dream, the idea came to him of re- printing Ocean to Ocean, and overtures were made to a publisher. The suggestion was coldly received, and for many years the book has been procurable only at second- hand, and with increasing difficulty. Its reissue in the present dignified edition would have been a great joy to its author. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ocean to Ocean: (James Campbell, Toronto; Sampson Low, London, 1873). Second Edition—1879. Picturesque Canada: (Toronto, Belden Bros.: 2 vols., 1882- 84). Religions of the World: (A. & C. Black, London: R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh, 1894). Revised and enlarged 1895. Joseph Howe: (MacKinley, Halifax, 1906). Reprinted from 4 articles in Canadian Monthly, May—August, 1875. SERMONS AND PAMPHLETS Sermon, Ist January, 1865, “Rejoice, O young man in thy youth” (Halifax, James Bowes and Sons—500 copies). Sermon, Ist January, 1866, “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” (Halifax, James Bowes and Sons). Sermon before the Synod, June 26th, 1866, ‘““We are labourers together with God.’ (Halifax, James Bowes and Sons). Reformers of the Nineteenth Century (1867). (Halifax, James Bowes and Sons). Address before the Private Bills Committee on The Temporal- ities Fund Bill. (Ottawa, The Citizen, 1882). Our Five Foreign Missions: (1886). Sunday Afternoon Addresses in Convocation Hall, Kingston, Ontario, 1890-91—3 Sermons—‘“‘How to read the Bible.”’ 1892—3 Sermons—“The Old Testament and the New Criti- cism Revelations and Interpretations.” “Wrong Interpretations and a Wrong Spirit.” 1893—1 Sermon—‘“‘Christ is divided.” 1894—1 Sermon—‘“‘The Lesson of the Book of Jonah.” Imperial Federation, (Winnipeg, 1890). The Advantages of Imperial Federation, (Toronto, 1891). xX BIBLIOGRAPHY XXl Canada and the Canadian Question. (Reprinted from The Week by the Imperial Federation League, 1891). Our National Object and Aims, (‘““Maple Leaves’’—being the Papers read before the National Club of Toronto, 1890-91. Edited by F. B. Cumberland, Toronto, 1891). Brief Addresses on the Duty of the Legislature to the Colleges of the Province. $S.L.N.D. MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES Much of Grant’s work took the form of Magazine and Newspaper articles, of which a full list cannot now be given. The most important were: Four articles in Scribner’s Magazine May, June, July, August, 1880. The Canadian Pacific Railway. Century, 1885. A series of articles, sometimes signed in full, sometimes ““G”’ in Queen’s Quarterly from 1893 to 1902. Canada and the Empire: National Review, London, July, 1896. Articles in The Canadian Magazine :— *““Anti-National Features of the National Policy,” Vol. 1, p. 9, 1893. “Canada and the Empire,” A Rejoinder to Dr. Goldwin Smith, Vol. 8, p. 73, 1896. “The Queen’s Reign,”’ its most striking characteristic and most beneficent act. Canadian Views, Vol. 9, p. 140, 1897. *‘Newfoundland and Canada.” A Review. Vol. 11, p. 467, 1898. “The Jason of Algoma.’ Vol. 15, p. 483, 1900. The Outlook of the Nineteenth Century in Theology: American Journal of Theology, January, 1902—reprinted separately. Thanksgiving and Retrospect—A farewell address to the University—printed separately, and also in Queen’s Quarterly, January, 1902. aa ’ AAR A AER Be ai re ai WY, WEN, ACAI LAG ed As aii Mi % Xi na Vitel Fh} 4 it A Kw VRE AS teh ya ' ul a el £% \fa hh f a RAS NOUR GH H Ni 5 Stl ae GAY eee GAN nT ake ‘ VAM Gy ) Wh | Jy im i ‘ }} 1 by | Yep Ve eee On a) ME fi . f ae RCS Y y or ab i n bvbi| t a ; ME rays CuaptTer I Introductory TRAVEL a thousand miles up a great river; more than another thousand along great lakes and a succession of smaller lakes; a thousand miles across rolling prairies; and another thousand through woods and over three great ranges of mountains, and you have travelled from Ocean to Ocean through Canada. All this Country is a single Colony of the British Empire; and this Colony is dreaming magnificent dreams of a future when it shall be the “Greater Britain,’ and the highway across which the fabrics and products of Asia shall be carried, to the Eastern as well as to the Western sides of the Atlantic. Mountains were once thought to be effectual barriers against railways, but that day has gone by; and, now that trains run between San Fran- cisco and New York, over summits of eight thousand two hundred feet, it is not strange that they should be expected soon to run between Victoria and Halifax, over a height of three thousand seven hundred feet. At any rate, a Canadian Pacific Railway has been undertaken by the Dominion; and, as this book consists of notes made in connection with the survey, an intro- ductory chapter may be given to a brief history of the project. For more than a quarter of a century before the Atlantic was connected by rail with the Pacific, public attention had been frequently called, especially in the great cities of the United States, to the commercial advantage and the political necessity of such connection; but it was not till 1853 that the Secretary of War was 1 2 OCEAN TO OCEAN authorized by the President to employ topographical engineers and others “to make explorations and surveys, and to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.” From that time the United States Government sent a succession of well- equipped parties to explore the western half of the Continent. The reports and surveys of these expe- ditions fill thirteen large quarto volumes, richly embell- ished, stored with valuable information concerning the country, and honestly pointing out that, west of the Mississippi Valley, there were vast extents of desert or semi-desert, and other difficulties so formidable as to render the construction of a railroad well nigh impracticable. Her Majesty’s Government aware of this result, and aware, also, that there was a fertilk belt of undefined size, in the same longitude as the Great American Desert, but north of the forty-ninth degree of latitude, organized an expedition, under Captain Palliser, in 1857, to explore the country between the west of Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains; and also “to ascertain whether any practicable pass or passes, available for horses, existed across the Rocky Mountains within British Territory, and south of that known to exist between Mount Brown and Mount Hooker, known as the “Boat Encampment Pass.” It was unfortunate that the limitation expressed in this last clause, was imposed on Captain Palliser, for it prevented him from exploring to the north of Boat Encampment, and reporting upon the Yellow Head Pass, which has since been found so favourable for the Railway and may soon be used as the gateway through the mountains to British Columbia and the Pacific. The difficulties presented INTRODUCTORY Wak by passes further south, and by the Selkirk Mountains, led Palliser to express an opinion upon the passage across the Mountains as hasty and inaccurate as his opinion about the possibility of connecting Ontario or Quebec with the Red River and Saskatchewan Country is now found to be. After stating that his expedition had made connection between the Saskatchewan Plains and British Columbia, without passing through United States Territory, he added:—“Still the knowledge of the country, on the whole, would never lead me to advise a line of communication from Canada, across the Continent to the Pacific, exclusively through British Territory. The time has forever gone by for effecting such an object; and the unfortunate choice of an astrono- mical boundary line has completely isolated the Central American possessions of Great Britain from Canada in the east, and also almost debarred them from any eligible access from the Pacific Coast on the west.” The best answer to this sweeping opinion, is the Progress Report on the Canadian Pacific Railway exploratory survey, presented to the House of Commons, in Ottawa, in the Session 1872, in which the advantages of the Yellow Head Pass over every other approach to the Pacific are shown; and as complete an answer to the second part will be furnished in the Report to be presented in the spring of 1873. The journals of Captain Palliser’s explorations, extending over a period of four years, from 1857 to 1860, were printed in extenso by Her Majesty’s Government in a large Blue Book, and shared the fate of all blue books. There are, probably, not more than half a dozen copies in the Dominion. A copy in the Legislative Library at Ottawa is the only one known to the writer. They deserved a better fate, for his own notes and the reports es OCEAN TO OCEAN of his associates, Lieutenant Blakiston, Dr. Hector, M. Bourgeau and Mr. Sullivan, are replete with useful and interesting facts about the soil, the flora, the fauna, and the climate of the plains and the mountains. M. Bourgeau was the botanist of the expedition. On Mr. Sullivan, an accomplished mathematician and astro- nomical observer and surveyor, devolved the principal labours of computation. Dr. Hector, to whose exertions the success of the expedition was chiefly owing, had the charge of making the maps, both geographical and geological; and, whenever a side journey promised any result, no matter how arduous or dangerous it might be, Dr. Hector was always ready. His name is still revered in our North-West, on account of his medical skill and his kindness to the Indians, and most astonishing tales are still told of his travelling feats in mid-winter among the mountains. After printing Captain Palliser’s journal, Her Mayjesty’s Government took no step to connect the East of British America with the Centre and the West, or to open up the North-West to emigration, although it had been clearly established that we had a country there, extending over many degrees of latitude and longitude, with a climate and soil equal to that of Ontario. In the meantime, the people of the United States, with charac- teristic energy, took up the work that was too formidable for their government. Public-spirited men, in Sacramento and other parts of California, embarked their all in a project which would make their own rich State the link between the old farthest East and the Western World on both sides of the Atlantic. The work was commenced on the east and west of the Rocky Mountains. Congress granted extraordinarily liberal subsidies in lands and money, though in a half sceptical INTRODUCTORY 5 spirit, and as much under the influence of “Rings” as of patriotism. When the member for California was urging the scheme with a zeal that showed that he honestly believed in it, Mr. Lovejoy, of Illinois, could not help interjecting, “Does the honourable member really mean to tell me he believes that that road will ever be built?” “Pass the Bill, and it will be constructed in ten years,” was the answer. In much less than the time asked for it was constructed, and it is at this day as remarkable a monument to the energy of our neigh- bours as the triumphant conclusion of their civil war, or the re-building of Chicago. ‘Three great ranges of mountains had to be crossed, at altitudes of eight thousand two hundred and forty, seven thousand one hundred and fifty, and seven thousand feet; snow- sheds and fences to be built along exposed parts, for miles, at enormous expense; the work, for more than a thousand miles, to be carried on in a desert, which yielded neither wood, water, nor food of any kind. No wonder that the scheme was denounced as impracticable and a swindle. But its success has vindicated the wisdom of its projectors; and now no fewer than four different lines are organized to connect the Atlantic States with the Pacific, and to divide with the Union and Central Pacific Railways, the enormous and increasing traffic they are carrying. While man was thus triumphing over all the obstacles of nature in the Territory of the United States, how was it that nothing was attempted farther north in British America, where a fertile belt stretches west to the base of the Rocky Mountains, and where river-passes seem to offer natural highways to the Ocean? The North American Colonies were isolated from each other; the North-West was kept under lock 6 OCEAN TO OCEAN and key by the Hudson’s Bay Company; and though some ambitious speeches were made, some spirited pamphlets written, and Bulwer Lytton, in introducing the Bill for the formation of British Columbia as a Province, saw, in vision, a line of loyal Provinces, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the time had not come for “a consummation so devoutly to be wished.” Had the old political state of things continued in British America, nothing would have been done to this day. But, in 1867, the separate Colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, became the Dominion of Canada; in 1869 the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rights to the North-West were bought up; and, in 1871, British Columbia united itself to the new Dominion; and thus the whole mainland of British America became one political State under the egis of the Empire. One of the terms on which British Columbia joined the Dominion was, that a railway should be constructed within ten years from the Pacific to a point of junction with the existing railway systems in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and surveys with this object in view were at once instituted. What did this preparatory survey-work in our case mean? It meant that we must do, in one or two years, what had been done in the United States in fifty. To us the ground was all new. Few of our public men had ever looked much beyond the confines of their particular Provinces; our North-West, in some parts of it, was less an unknown land to the people of the States along the boundary line than to the people of the Dominion; and, in other parts, it was unknown to the whole world. No white man is known to have crossed from the Upper Ottawa to Lake Superior or Lake Winnipeg. There were maps of the country, dotted with lakes and INTRODUCTORY 7 lacustrine rivers here and there; but these had been made up largely from sketches, on bits of birch-bark or paper, and the verbal descriptions of Indians; and the Indian has little or no conception of scale or bearings. In drawing the picture of a lake, for instance, when his sheet of paper was too narrow, he would, without warn- ing, continue the lake up or down the side, and naturally an erroneous idea of the surface of the country was given. A lake was set down right in the path of what otherwise was an eligible line, and, after great expense had been incurred, it was found that there was no lake within thirty miles of the point. In a word, the country between Old Canada and Red River was _ utterly unknown, except along the canoe routes travelled by the Hudson’s Bay men north-west of Lake Superior. Not many years since, a lecturer had to inform a Toronto audience that he had discovered a great lake, called Nepigon, a few miles to the north of Lake Superior. When so little was known, the task was no light one. Engineers were sent out into trackless, inhospitable regions, obliged to carry their provisions on their backs over swamps, rocks, and barriers, of all kinds, when the Indians failed them; with instructions simply to do their best to find out all they could, in as short a time as possible. Far different was it with our neighbours. They could afford to spend, and they did spend, half a century on the preparatory work. Their special surveys were aided and supplemented by reports and maps extending back over a long course of years, drawn up, as part of their duty, by the highly educated officers of their regular army stationed at different posts in their Territories. These reports, as well as the unofficial narratives of missionaries, hunters, and traders, were 8 OCEAN TO OCEAN studied, both before and after being pigeon-holed in Washington. The whole country had thus been gradually examined from every possible point of view; and, among other things, this thorough knowledge explains the success of the United States Government in all its treaty-making with Great Britain, when territory was concerned. 'The history of every such treaty between the two Powers is the history of a contest between knowledge and ignorance. ‘The one Power always knew what it wanted. It therefore presented, from the first step in the negotiation to the last, a firm and apparently consistent front. ‘The other had only a dim notion that right was on its side, and a notion, equally dim, that the object in dispute was not worth contending for. Was it wise, then, for the Dominion to undertake so gigantic a public work at so early a stage in its history? It was wise, because it was necessary. By uniting together, the British Provinces had declared that their destiny was-——not to ripen and drop, one by one, into the arms of the Republic—but to work out their own future as an integral and important part of the grandest Empire in the world. They had reason for making such an election. They believed that it was better for themselves and for their neighbours; better for the cause of human liberty and true progress, that it should be so. But it is not necessary to discuss the reasons. No outside power has a right to pronounce upon them. The fact is enough, that, on this central point, the mind of British America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is fixed. But, to be united politically and disunited physically, as the different parts of Prussia were for many a long year, is an anomaly only to be endured so long as it cannot be helped; and when, INTRODUCTORY 9 as in our case, the remedy is in our own hands, it is wise to secure the material union as soon as possible. On the twentieth of July, 1871, British Columbia entered the Dominion. On the same day surveying parties left Victoria for various points of the Rocky Mountains, and from the Upper Ottawa westward, and all along the line surveys were commenced. Their reports were laid before the Canadian House of Commons in April, 1872. In the summer of the same year, Sandford Fleming, the Engineer-in-Chief, considered it necessary to travel overland, to see the main features of the country with his own ‘eyes, and the writer of these pages accompanied him, as Secretary. The expedition started from Toronto on July 16th, and on October 14th, it left Victoria, Vancouver’s Island on the home stretch. During those three months a diary was kept of the chief things we saw or heard, and of the impressions which we formed respecting the country, as we journeyed from day to day and conversed with each other on the subject. The diary was not written for publication, or, if printed at all, was to have been for private circulation only. This will explain the little personal details that occur through it; for allusions and incidents that the public rightly consider trivial, are the most interesting items to the private circle. But those who had a right to speak in the matter said that the notes contained information that would be of interest to the general public, and of value to intending immigrants. They are therefore presented to the public, and they are given just as they were written so that others might see, as far as possible, a photograph of what we saw and thought from day to day. A more readable book could have been made by omitting some things, colouring others, and grouping the whole; but the object was not 10 OCEAN TO OCEAN to make a book. The expedition had special services to perform in connection with one of the most gigantic public works ever undertaken in any country by any people; it was organized and conducted in a business- like way, in order to get through without disaster or serious difficulty; it did not turn aside in search of adventures or of sport; and therefore an exciting narrative of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling descrip- tions of “men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders” need scarcely be expected. CHAPTER II From Ealifax, Nova Scotia, to Thunder Bay, Lake Superior July ist, 1872—To-day, three friends met in Ffalifax, and agreed to travel together through the Dominion from the Atlantic to the Pacific. All three had personal and business matters to arrange, requiring them to leave on different days, and reach the Upper Provinces by different routes. In these circumstances it was decided that Toronto should be the point of rendezvous for the main journey to the Far West, and that the day of meeting should be the 15th of July. One proposed to take the steamer from Halifax to Portland, and go thence by the Grand Trunk Railway via Montreal; another, to sail up the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Pictou to Quebec, (the most charming voyage in America for wretched half-baked mortals, escaping from the fierce heat of summer in inland cities) ; and it ' was the duty of the third—the Chief of the party—to travel along the line of the Intercolonial Railway, now under construction, through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to its Junction with the Grand Trunk in the Province of Quebee. This narrative follows the foot- steps of the Chief, when more than one path is taken. But, though it was his duty to make a professional examination of all the engineering works in progress on the Intercolonial, — the Eastern link of that great arterial highway which is to connect, entirely through Canadian Territory, a Canadian Atlantic port with a Canadian Pacific port,—the reader would scarcely be interested in a dry account of the culverts and bridges, 11 12 OCEAN TO OCEAN built and building, the comparative merits of wooden and iron work, the pile-driving, the dredging, the excavating, the banking and blasting by over 10,000 workmen, scattered along 500 miles of road. The Intercolonial is to link, with rails of steel, the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with the Province of Quebec; the Grand Trunk unites Quebec and Ontario; and the Canadian Pacific Railway is to connect the latter with Manitoba and British Columbia, as well as with the various unborn Provinces which, in the rapid progress of events, shall spring up in the intervening region. But the work of actual railway-construction is an old story; and, if told at all, must be served up at some other time in some other way. ‘The object of the present narrative is to give an account of what was observed and experienced in out-of-the-way places, over a vast extent of Canada little known even to Canadians. It will be sufficient for our purpose, therefore, to begin at Toronto, passing over all that may at any time be seen on the line from Halifax to Truro, and northerly across the Cobequid Mountains to Moncton. From Moncton, westward, there is much along the line worthy of description, but thousands of Railway tourists will see it all with their own eyes in a year or two;—the deep forests of New Brunswick, the noble Miramichi river with its Railway bridging on a somewhat gigantic scale, the magnificent highland scenery of the Baie des Chaleurs, the Restigouche, and the wild mountain gorges of the Matapedia. But, without delaying even to catch a forty or fifty-pound salmon in the Restigouche, we hasten on with the Chief up the shores of the great St. Lawrence, hearing, as we pass Cacouna in the second week of July, a cheer welcome to Lord Dufferin, the new Governor General, who had just landed with HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY A his family, escaping from the dust and heat of cities and the Niagara Volunteer Camp, to enjoy the saline atmosphere and sea bathing, which so many thousands of Her Majesty’s subjects seek along the lower St. Lawrence at this season. At Riviere du Loup a Pullman Car receives us. Passing the cliffs of historic Quebec, we cross the broad St. Lawrence by that magnificent monument of early Canadian enterprise, and triumph of engineering skill, the Victoria Bridge. Two days are necessarily spent at Ottawa in making final arrangements, and Toronto is reached at the time appointed for the rendezvous. July 15ih—To-day, the various members of the overland expedition met at the Queen’s Hotel, the Chief, the Adjutant General, the boys, Frank and Hugh, the Doctor and the Secretary, and arranged to leave by the first train to-morrow morning. On the Chief devolved all the labour of preparation. The rest of us had little to do except to get ourselves photographed in travelling costume. July 16th—Took train for Collingwood, which is about a hundred miles due north from Toronto. The first half of the journey, or as far as Lake Simcoe, is through a fair and fertile land; too flat to be picturesque, but sufficiently rolling for farming purposes. Clumps of stately elms, with noble stems, shooting high before their fan shape commences, relieve the monotony of the scene. Here and there a field, dotted with huge pine stumps, shows the character of the old crop. The forty or fifty miles nearest Georgian Bay have been settled more recently, but give as good promise to the settlers. Collingwood is an instance of what a railway terminus does for a place. Before the Northern Rail- way was built, an unbroken forest occupied its site, and 14 OCEAN TO OCEAN the red deer came down through the woods to drink at the shore. Now, there is a thriving town of two or three thousand people, with steam saw-mills, and huge rafts from the North that almost fill up its little harbour, with a grain elevator which lifts out of steam barges the corn from Chicago, weighs it, and pours it into railway freight-wazggons to be hurried down to Toronto, and there turned into bread or whiskey, without a hand touching it in all its transportations or transformations. Around the town the country is being opened up, and the forest is giving way to pasture and corn-fields. West of the town is a range of hills, about one thousand feet high, originally thickly wooded to their summits, but now seamed with roads and interspersed with clearings. Probably none of us would have noticed them, though their beauty is enough to attract passing attention, had they not been pointed out as the highest mountains in the great Province of Ontario. We reached Collingwood at midday, and were informed that the steamer Frances Smith would start for Fort William, at two p.m. Great was the bustle, accordingly, in getting the baggage on board. In the hurry, the gangway was shoved out of its place, and when one of the porters rushed on it with a box, down it tilted, pitching him head first into the water between the pier and the steamer. We heard the splash, and ran, with half a dozen others, just in time to see his boots kicking frantically as they disappeared. “Oh it’s that fool S » laughed a bystander, “this is the second time he’s tumbled in.” “He can’t swim,” yelled two or three, clutching at ropes that were tied, trunks and other impossible life-preservers. In the meantime S rose, but, in rising, struck his head against a heavy float that almost filled the narrow space, and at HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 15 once sank again, like a stone. He would have been drowned within six feet of the wharf, but for a tall, strong fellow, who rushed through the crowd, jumped in, and caught him as he rose a second time. S ’ like the fool he was said to be, returned the kindness by half-throttling his would-be deliverer; but other bystanders, springing on the float, got the two out. The rescuer swung lightly on to the wharf, shook himself as if he had been a Newfoundland dog, and walked off; nobody seemed to notice him or to think that he deserved a word of praise. On inquiring, we learned that he was a fisherman, by name, Alick Clark, on his way to the Upper Lakes, who, last summer also had jumped from the steamer’s deck into Lake Superior, to save a child that had fallen overboard. Knowing that Canada had no Humane Society’s medal to bestow, one of our party ran to thank him and quietly to offer a slight gratuity; but the plucky fellow refused to take anything, on the plea that he was a good swimmer and that his clothes hadn’t been hurt. | At two o’clock, it being officially announced that the steamer would not start until six, we strolled up to the town to buy suits of duck, which were said to be the only sure defence against mosquitoes of portentous size and power beyond Fort William. Meeting the Rector or Rural Dean, our Chief, learning that he would be a fellow-passenger, introduced the Doctor to him. The Doctor has not usually a positively funereal aspect, but the Rector assumed that he was the clergyman of the party and a D.D., and cottoned to him at once. When we returned to the steamer, and gathered round the tea table, the Rector nodded significantly in his direction; he, in dumb show, declined the honour; the Rector pantomined again, and with more decision of manner; 16 OCEAN TO OCEAN the Doctor blushed furiously, and looked so very much as if an “‘aith would relieve him,” that the Chief, in compassion, passed round the cold beef without a grace. We were very angry with him, as the whole party doubtless suffered in the Rector’s estimation through his lack of resources. The Doctor, however, was sensitive on the subject and threatened the Secretary with a deprivation of sundry medical comforts, if he didn’t in future attend to his own work. At six o’clock it was officially announced that the steamer would not start till midnight. Frank and Hugh got a boat and went trawling; the rest of us were too disgusted to do even that, and so did nothing. July 17th—The Frances Smith left Collingwood at 5.30 am. “We're all right now,” exclaimed Hugh, and so the passengers thought, but they counted without their host. We steamed slowly round the Peninsula to Owen Sound, reaching it about eleven o'clock. The baggage here, could have been put on board in an hour, but five hours passed without sign of even getting up steam. In despair, we went in a body to the captain to remonstrate. He frankly agreed that it was “too bad,” but disclaimed all responsibility, as the Govern- ment Inspector, on a number of trifling pleas, would not let him start, nor give him his certificate,—the real reason being that he was too virtuous ever to bribe inspectors. The deputation at once hunted up the Inspector, and heard the other side. He had ordered a safety-valve for the boilers and new sails a month before, but the captain had “humbugged,” and done nothing. The valve was now being fitted on, the sails were being bent, and the steamer would be ready to start in half an hour. Clearly, the Inspector, in the interest of the travelling public, had only done his duty, HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 17 and the captain was responsible for the provoking delays. We told him so, without phrases, when he promised to hurry up and get off quickly to and from Leith, where he had to take in wood. Leith, a port six miles from Owen Sound, was reached at 6.30, and we walked round the beach and had a swim, while two or three men set to work leisurely to carry on board a few sticks of wood from eight or ten cords piled on the wharf. At ten p.m., there being no signs of a start, some of us asked the reason and were told that the whole pile had to be put on board. ‘The two or three labourers were lounging on the wharf with arms a-kimbo, and the captain was dancing in the cabin with some of the passengers, male and female, as unconcernedly as if all were out for a picnic. He looked somewhat taken aback when the Chief called him aside, and asked if he commanded the boat, or if there was anybody in command; but, quickly rallying, he declared that everything was going on splendidly. The Chief looked so thundery, however, that he hurried down stairs and ordered the men to “look alive:” but as it would take the two or three labourers all night to stow the wood, half a dozen of the passengers volunteered to help, and the Royal Mail steamer got off two hours after midnight. An inauspicious beginning to our journey this! Aided all the way by steam, we were not much more than one hundred miles in a direct line from Toronto, forty- four hours after starting. At this rate, when would we reach the Rocky Mountains? To make matters worse, the subordinates seemed also to have learned the trick of how not to do it. Last night a thunder storm soured the milk on the boat, and though at the wharf, and within a few hundred 18 OCEAN TO OCEAN yards of scores of dairies, it did not occur to the steward that he could send one of his boys for a fresh supply. To-day, after dinner, an enterprising passenger asked for cheese with his beer, and of course did not get it, as nobody knew where it had been stowed. In a word the Frances Smith wanted a head, and, as the Scotch old maid lamented, “it’s an unco’ thing to gang through the warld withoot a heid.” July 18th—To-day, our course was_ northerly through the Georgian Bay towards the Great Manitou- lin Island. This island and some smaller ones stretching in an almost continuous line westward, in the direction of Lake Superior, form in connection with the Saugeen Peninsula, the barrier of land that separates the Georgian Bay from the mighty Lake Huron. These two great inland waters were one, long ago, when the earth was younger, but the waters subsided, or Peninsula and Islands rose, and the one sea became two. Succes- sive terraces on both sides of Owen Sound and on the different islands showed the old lake beaches, each now fringed with a firmer, darker escarpment than the stony or sandy flats beneath, and marked the different levels to which the waters had gradually subsided. The day passed pleasantly, for, as progress was being made in the right direction, all the passengers willingly enjoyed themselves, while on the two previous days they had only enjoyed the Briton’s privilege of grumbling. Crossing the calm breadth of the Bay, past Lonely Island, we soon entered the Strait that extends for fifty miles between the North shore and Manitoulin. The contrast between the soft rounded outlines of the Lower Silurian of Manitoulin and the rugged Laurentian hills, with their contorted sides and scarred forcheads on the mainland opposite, was HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 19 striking enough to justify the declaration of a romantic fellow-passenger, “Why, there’s quite a scenery here!” The entrance to the Strait has been called Killarney, according to our absurd custom of discarding musical, expressive, Indian names for ridiculously inappropriate European ones. Killarney is a little Indian settle- ment, with one or two Irish families to whom the place appears to owe very little more than its name. On the wharf is an unshingled shanty—‘‘the store’—the entrepot for dry goods, hardware, groceries, Indian work, and everything else that the heart of man in Killarney can desire. The Indians possessed, until lately, the whole of the Island of Manitoulin as well as the adjoining Peninsula; but, at a grand pow wow; held with their Chiefs by Sir Kdmund Head, while Governor of Old Canada, it was agreed that they should, for certain annuities and other considerations, surrender all except tracts specially reserved for their permanent use. Some two thousand are settled around those shores. ‘They are of the great Ojibbeway or Chippewa nation,—the nation that extends from the St. Lawrence to the Red River, where sections of them are called Saulteaux and other names. West from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, extends the next great nation of the Algonquin family,_the Crees. The languages of these two nations are so much alike, that Indians of the one nation can understand much of the speech of the other. The structure is simple, there being about a hundred and fifty monosyllabic radical roots, the greater number of which are common to Ojibbeway and Cree, and on these roots the language has grown up. Most of the Ojibbeways on Manitoulin are Christianized. At one point on the Island, where the steamer called, we met 20 OCEAN TO OCEAN Mr. Hurlburt, a Methodist missionary,—a thoughtful scholarly man—who has prepared, with infinite pains, a grammar of the language, and who gave us much interesting information. He honestly confessed that there was little, if any, difference in morals between the Christianized Indians around him and the two or three hundred who remain pagan; that, in fact, the pagans considered themselves superior, and made the immorality of their Christian countrymen their great plea against changing from the old religion. July 19th—This morning we entered a beautiful island-studded bay, on the north shore of which is the settlement round the Bruce and Wellington Copper Mines. 'The mmes have been very productive, and give employment now to three or four hundred men and boys, whose habitations are, as is usually the case at mines, mere shanties. One, a little larger than the others, in which the Gaffer lives, is dignified with the title of “Apsley House.” From the Bruce Mines we sailed westerly through a channel almost as beautiful as where the St. Lawrence runs through the “thousand islands.” A “silver streak of sea,” glittering in the warm sun, filled with rounded islets of old Huronian rock, that sloped gently into the water at one point, or more abruptly at another, and offered every variety and convenience that the heart of bather could desire; low, rugged, pine clad shores; soft bays, here and there, with sandy beaches; all that is required to make the scene one of perfect beauty is a back-ground of high hills. Kvery- where through Ontario, we miss the mountain forms, without which all scenery is tame in the eyes of those who have once learned to see the perpetual beauty that clothes the everlasting hills. HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 21 No. 1—Sault Ste. Marie, from the South Side. 22 OCEAN TO OCEAN St. Joseph, Sugar, and Neebish Islands, now take the place of Manitoulin; then we come to the Ste. Marie River, which leads up to Lake Superior, and forms the boundary line between the Dominion and the United States. At the Sault, or rapids of the river, there is a village on each side; but, as the canal is on the United States side, the steamer crosses to go through it to the great Lake. The canal has two locks, each three hundred and fifty feet long, seventy feet wide, twelve deep, and with a lift of nine feet. It is well and solidly built. The Federal Government has commenced the excavations for the channel of another. Though the necessity for two canals, on the same side, is not very apparent, still the United States Government, with its usual forethought, sees that the time will soon come when they shall be needed. ‘The commerce on Lake Superior is increasing every year; and it is desirable to have a canal large enough for men-of-war and the largest steamers. We walked along the bank and found, among the men engaged on the work, two or three Indians handling pick and shovel as if to the manner born, and probably earning the ordinary wages of $2.25 per day. The rock is a loose and friable calciferous sandstone, reddish coloured, and easily excavated. Hence the reason why the Sault Ste. Marie, instead of being a leap, flows down its eighteen feet of descent in a continuous rapid, wonderfully little broken except over loose boulders. The water is wear- ing away the rock every year. As it would be much easier to make a canal on the British side of the river, one ought to be commenced without delay. The most ordinary self-respect forbids that the entrance to our North-West should be wholly in the hands of another Power, a Power that, during the Riel disturbances at HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 23 Red River, shut the entrance against even our merchant ships. In travelling from Ocean to Ocean through the Dominion, four thousand miles were all our own. Across this one mile, half-way on the great journey, every Canadian must pass on sufferance. The cost of a canal on our side is estimated, by the Canal Commis- sioners in a blue-book, dated February 2nd, 1871, at only $550,000. Such a canal, and a Railway from Nepigon or Thunder Bay to Fort Garry, would give immediate and direct steam communication to our North-West, within our own Territory. At the western terminus of the canal, the Ste. Marie River is again entered. Keeping to the north, or British side, we come to the Point aux Pins, covered with scrub pine (Pinus Banksiana) which extends away to the north from this latitude. Rounding the Point aux Pins, the river is two or three miles wide; and, a few miles farther west, Capes Gros and Iroquois tower up on each side. These bold warders, called by Agassiz “the portals of Lake Superior,” are over a thousand feet high; and rugged, primeval Laurentian ranges stretch away from them as far back as the eye can reach. The sun is setting when we enter the portals, and the scene is worthy of the approach to the grandest lake on the globe. Overhead the sky is clear, and blue, but the sun has just emerged from huge clouds which are emptying their buckets in the west. Immediately around is a, placid sea, with half a dozen steamers and three-masted schooners at different points. And now the clouds, massed together, rush to meet us, as if in response to our rapid movement towards them, and envelope us in a squall and fierce driving rain, through which we see the sun setting, and lighting up, now with deep yellow and then with crimson glory, the fragments 24 OCEAN TO OCEAN of clouds left behind by the heavy columns. In ten minutes the storm passes over us to the east, our sky clears as if by magic, and wind and rain are at an end. The sun sets, as if sinking into an ocean; at the same moment the full moon rises behind us, and, under her mellow light, Lake Superior is entered. Those who have never seen Superior get an inade- quate, even inaccurate idea, by hearing it spoken of as a ‘lake,’ and to those who have sailed over its vast extent the word sounds positively ludicrous. Though its waters are fresh and crystal, Superior is asea. It breeds storms and rain and fogs, like the sea. It is cold in midsummer as the Atlantic. It is wild, masterful, and dread as the Black Sea. July 20th—Sailed all night along the N. EK. coast of the great Lake, and in the morning entered the land- locked harbour of Gargantua. Two or three days previously the Chief had noticed among the passengers, a gentleman out for his holidays on a botanical excursion to Thunder Bay, and, won by his enthusiasm, had engaged him to accompany the expedition. At whatever point the steamer touched, the first man on shore was the Botanist, scrambling over the rocks or diving into the woods, vasculum in hand, stuffing it full of mosses, ferns, lichens, liverworts, sedges, grasses, and flowers, till recalled by the whistle that the captain always obligingly sounded for him. Of course such an enthusiast became known to all on board, especially to the sailors, who designated him as ‘the man that gathers grass’ or, more briefly, ‘the hay picker’ or ‘haymaker’. They regarded him, because of his scientific failing, with the respectful tolerance with which fools in the East are regarded, and would wait an extra minute for him, or help him on board, if the HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 25 steamer were cast loose from the pier before he could scramble up the side. This morning the first object that met our eyes, on looking out of the window of the state-room, was our Botanist, on the highest peak of the rugged hills that enclose the harbour of Gargantua. Here was proof that we, too, had time to go ashore, and most of us hurried off for a ramble along the beach, or for a swim, or to climb one of the wooded rocky heights. Every day since leaving Toronto we had enjoyed our dip; for the captain was not a man to be hurried at any place of call, and, annoyed though our party were at the needlessly long delays, there was no reason to punish ourselves by not taking advantage of them occasionally. Half a dozen fishermen, Alick Clark among them, had eome from Collingwood to fish in Superior for white-fish and salmon-trout, and having fixed on Gar- gantua for summer head-quarters, they were now get- ting out their luggage, nets, salt, barrels, boats, &e. We went ashore in one of their boats, and could not help con- gratulating them heartily on the beauty of the site they had chosen. The harbour is a perfect oblong, land- locked by hills three or four hundred feet high on every side except the entrance and the upper end, where a beautiful beach slopes gradually back into a level of considerable extent. The beach was covered with the maritime vetch or wild pea in flower, and beach grasses of various kinds. When the Botanist came down to the shore, he was in raptures over sundry rare mosses, and beautiful specimens of Aspidium fragrans, Woodsia hyperborea, Cystopteris montana, and other rare ferns, that he had gathered. The view from the summit away to the north, he described as a sea of rugged Laurentian hills covered with thick woods. 26 OCEAN TO OCEAN From Gargantua we steered direct for Michipicoten Island. In the cozy harbour of this Island, the S.S. Manitoba lay beached, having run aground two or three days before, and a little tug was doing its best to haul her off the rock or out of the mud. For three hours the Frances Smith added her efforts to those of the tug, but without success, and had to give it up, and leave her con- sort stranded. In the meantime some of the passengers went off with the Botanist to collect ferns and mosses. He led them a rare chase over rocks and through woods, being always on the look out for the places that prom- ised the rarest kinds, quite indifferent to the toil or danger. The sight of a perpendicular face of rock, either dry or dripping with moisture, drew him like a magnet, and, with yells of triumph, he would summon the others to come and behold the treasure he had lit upon. Scrambling, puffing, rubbing their shins against the rocks, and half breaking their necks, they toiled pain- fully after him, only to find him on his knees before some “thing of beauty” that seemed to them little differ- ent from what they had passed by with indifference thousands of titnes. But if they could not honestly admire the moss, or believe that it was worth going through so much to get so little, they admired the enthusi- asm, and it proved so infectious that, before many days, almost every one of the passengers was bitten with ‘the erass mania,’ or ‘hay fever,’ and had begun to form col- lections. | July 21st—Sunday morning dawned calm and clear. The Rural Dean read a short service and preached. After dinner we entered Nepigon Bay, probably the largest and safest, and certainly the most beautiful harbour on Lake Superior. It is shut off from the Lake by half a dozen Islands, of which the largest is St. HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 27 Ignace,—that seem to have been placed there on pur- pose to act as break-waters against the mighty waves of the Lake, and form a safe harbour; while, inside, other Islands are set here and there, as if for defence or to break the force of the waves of the Bay itself; for it is a stretch of more than thirty miles from the entrance to the point where Nepigon River discharges into the Bay, in a fast flowing current, the waters of Nepigon Lake which lies forty miles to the north. ‘The country be- tween the Bay and the Lake having been found ex- tremely unfavourable for Railway construction, it will probably be necessary to carry the Canadian Pacific Railway farther inland, but there must be a branch line to Nepigon Bay, which will then be the summer terminus for the traffic from the West, (unless Thunder Bay gets the start of it) just as Duluth is the terminus of the Northern Pacific. The scenery of Nepigon Bay is of the grandest de- scription; there is nothing like it in Ontario. Entering from the east we pass up a broad strait, and can soon take our choice of deep and capacious channels, formed by the bold ridges of the Islands that stud the Bay. Bluffs, from three hundred to one thousand feet high, rise up from the waters, some of them bare from lake to summit, others clad with graceful balsams. On the mainland, sloping and broken hills stretch far away, and the deep shadows that rest on them bring out the most distant in clear and full relief. The time will come when the wealthy men of our great North-West will have their summer residences on these hills and shores; nor could the heart of man desire more lovely sites. At the river is an old Hudson’s Bay station, and the head- quarters of several surveying parties for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Chief therefore has business here, 28 OCEAN TO OCEAN and the Doctor also finds some ready to his hand, for one of the engineers in charge is seriously ill; but the captain can spare only an hour, as he wishes to be out of the Bay by the western Channel, which is much narrower than the eastern, before dark. We leave at 5.30, and are in Lake Superior again at 8.30. ‘The passengers, being anxious for an evening service, the captain and the Rural Dean requested our Secretary to conduct it. He con- sented, and used, on the occasion, a form compiled last year specially for surveying parties. The scene was unusual, and perhaps, therefore, all the more impressive. Our Secretary, dressed in grey homespun, read a ser- vice compiled by clergymen of the Churches of Rome, England and Scotland; no one could tell which part of it was Roman, which Anglican or which Scottish, and yet it was all Christian. The responses were led by the Dean and the Doctor, and joined in heartily by Roman- ists, E;piscopalians, Baptists, Methodists and Presby- terians. The hymns were, “Rock of Ages” and “Sun of my Soul;” these, with the “Gloria Patri,’ were accom- panied on a piano by a young lady who had acted for years as the leader of a choir in a small Episcopal Chapel, and she was supported right and left by a Presbyterian and a Baptist. The sermon was short, but, according to the Doctor, would “have been better, if it had been shorter; but all listened attentively. The effect of the whole was excellent; when the service was over, many remained in the saloon to sing, converse, or join in sacred music, and the evening passed delightfully away. The ice was broken; ladies and gentlemen, who had kept aloof all the week, addressed each other freely, without waiting to be introduced, and all began now to express sorrow that they were to part so soon. It was near the HALIFAX TO THUNDER BAY 29 “wee sma’ hour” before the pleasant groups in the saloon separated for the night. At one, A.M., we arrived at Silver Island,—a little bit of rock in a Bay studded with islets. The most wonder- ful vein of silver in the world has been struck here. Last year, thirty men took out from it $1,200,000; and com- petent judges say that, in all probability, the mine is worth hundreds of millions. The original $50 shares now sell for $25,000. The company that works it is chiefly a New York one, though it was held originally by Montreal men, and was offered for sale in London for a trifle. Such a marvellous find as this has stimu- lated search in every other direction around Lake Superior. Other veins have been discovered, some of them paying well, and, of course, the probability is that there are many more undiscovered; for not one hun- dredth part of the mineral region of Lake Superior has been examined yet, and it would be strange indeed if all the minerals had been stumbled on at the outset. Those rocky shores may turn out to be the richest part of the whole Dominion. The steamer arrived at Thunder Bay early in the morning. So ended the first half of our journey from Toronto to Fort Garry, by rail ninety-four miles, by steamboat five hundred and thirty miles. The second half was to be by waggons and canoes ;—waggons at the beginning and end; and, in the middle, canoes paddled by Indians or tugged by steam launches over a chain of lakes, extending like a net work in all directions along the watershed that separates the basin of the great Lakes and St. Lawrence from the vast Northern basin of Hudson’s Bay. The unnecessary delays of the Frances Smith on this first part of our Journey had been provok- ing; but the real amari aliquid was the Sault Ste. Marie 30 OCEAN TO OCEAN Canal. The United States own the southern shores of Superior, and have therefore only done their duty in constructing a canal on their side of the Ste. Marie River. The Dominion not only owns the northern shores, but the easier access to its great North-West is by this route; a canal on its side is thus doubly necessary. The eastern key to two-thirds of the Dominion is meanwhile in the hands of another Power; and yet, if there ought to be only one gateway into Lake Superior, nature has de- clared that it should be on our side. So long ago as the end of the last century, a rude canal, capable of floating large loaded canoes without breaking bulk, existed on our side of the river.* The report of a N. W. Naviga- tion Company in 1858 gives the length of a ship canal around the Ste. Marie rapids on the Canadian side as only 838 yards, while on the opposite side the length is a mile and one-seventh. In the interests of peace and com- merce, and because it would be a convenience to trade now, and may be ere long an absolute national necessity, let us have our own roadway across that short half mile. Canada can already boast of the finest ship canal system in the world; this trifling addition would be the crown- ing work, and complete her inland water communication from the Ocean, westerly, across thirty degrees of longi- tude to the far end of Lake Superior. *May 30th (1800), Friday, Sault Ste. Marie. Here the North- West Company have another establishment on the north side of the Rapid ... Here the North-West Company have built locks, in order to take up loaded canoes that they may not be under the necessity of carrying them by land to the head of the Rapid, for the current is too strong to be stemmed by any craft.— Harmon’s Journal. Cuapter IIT From Thunder Bay to Fort Garry July 22nd—At 5 a.M., arrived at Prince Arthur’s Landing, Thunder Bay, about four miles from the Kaministiquia river, a fine open harbour, with dark cliffs of basaltic rock and island scenery second only to Nepi- gon. Population is flowing rapidly to these shores of Lake Superior. Already more than a hundred stores, shanties, or houses are scattered about ‘the Landing.’ The chief business is silver mining, and prospecting for silver, copper, galena, and other valuable minerals known to exist in the neighbourhood. The engineer of the surveying parties between Ottawa and Red River, and the assistant superinten- dent of the Dawson Road to Fort Garry met us at the Landing and invited us to breakfast in their shanty. After breakfast, our baggage was packed on a heavy waggon, and instructions were given to the driver to keep moving till he reached Shebandowan Lake, the first of the chain to be traversed in canoes. Shebandowan is forty-five miles from Lake Superior, about 800 feet higher, and near the summit or watershed of the district. At 10.30 a.m., we started for that point, the Chief and the Doctor in a buggy, the others in a light waggon. Drove in three hours to “fifteen-mile shanty” through a rolling country with a steady upward incline, lightly wooded for the first half and more heavily for the latter half of the distance. The flora is much the same as in our Eastern Provinces; the soil light, with a surface covering of peaty or sandy loam, and a subsoil of clay, fairly fertile and capable of being easily cleared. 31 OCEAN TO OCEAN 32 : hE pig ‘Aeg Japunyy 0} sueUuy ‘edes Jepunyy—z “ON 7 —— = LEZ A es BEN PE i, PG Le ALL i; THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 33 The vegetation is varied, wild fruit being especially abundant,—raspberries, currants, gooseberries, and tomatoes; flowers like the convolvulus, roses, a great profusion of asters, wild kallas, water-lilies on the ponds, wild chives on the rocks in the streams, and generally a rich vegetation. It is a good country for emigrants of the farmer class. The road, too, is first rate, a great point for the settler; and a market is near. Whatever a settler raises he can easily transport to the ready market that there always is near mines. Miners are not par- ticular about their lodging, but good food and plenty of it they must have. At the “fifteen-mile shanty,” we stopped for an hour and a half to feed the horses, and to dine. A Scotchman from Alloa, Robert Bowie, was “boss of the shanty,” and gave us the best dinner we had eaten since leaving Toronto;—broth, beaf-steak, bread, and tea. The bread, light and sweet as Paris rolls, was baked in Dutch ovens, buried in the hot embers of a huge fire outside, near the door, and Robert accepted the shower of com- pliments on its quality with the canny admission that there were “‘waur bakers in the warld than himsel’.” We walked on for the next three or four miles till the waggon overtook us. The soil became richer, the timber heavier, and the whole vegetation more luxuriant. Six miles from the fifteen-mile shanty we crossed the Kaministiquia—a broad and rapid river,—which, at this point, is, by its own course, forty-five miles distant from where it falls into Lake Superior. The valley of the river is acknowledged to be a splendid farming country. A squatter, who had pitched camp at the bridge end last year, on his way to Red River, and had remained instead of going on because everything was so favourable, came up to have a talk with us, and to 34 OCEAN TO OCEAN grumble, like a true Briton, that the Government wasn’t doing more for him. ‘Timothy was growing to the height of four or five feet, on every vacant spot, from chance seeds. A bushel and a-half of barley, which seemed to be all that he had sown, was looking as if it could take the prize at an Ontario Exhibition. The soil, for the next five miles, was covered luxuri- antly with the vetch, or wild pea. The road led to the Matawan,—a stream that runs out of Lake Sheban- dowan into the Kaministiquia. Both rivers are crossed by capital bridges. The station at the Matawan was in charge of a Mr. Aitken and his family, from Glengarry. He had arrived exactly two months ago, on the 22nd of May, and he had now oats and barley up, potatoes in blossom, turnips, lettuce, parsnips, cucumbers, etc., all looking healthy, and all growing on land that, sixty days before, had been in part covered with undergrowth, stumps, and tall trees, through which fires had run the year previous. Mr. Aitken was in love with the coun- try, and, what was of more consequence, so was Mrs. Aitken, though she confessed to a longing for some neighbours. They intended to make it their future home, and said that they had never seen land so well suited for farming. Everything was prospering with them. The > very hens seemed to do better here than elsewhere. One was pointed out with a brood of twenty strong healthy chickens around her; Guinea hens and turkeys looked thriving. Everything about this part of country, so far, has astonished us. Our former ideas concerning it had been that it was a barren desert; that there was only a horse- trail, and not always that, to travel by; that the mos- quitoes were as big as grasshoppers, and bit through everything. Whereas, it is a fair and fertile land, undu- THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 35 lating from the intervales of the rivers up to hills and rocks eight hundred feet high. The road through it is good enough for a king’s highway, and the mosquitoes are not more vicious than in the woods and by the streams of the Lower Provinces; yet not half a dozen settlers are on the road for the first twenty-six miles; and for the next twenty, not half that number. How many cottars, small farmers, and plough boys in Britain, would rejoice to know that they could get a hundred acres of such land for one dollar an acre, money down; or at twenty cents per acre after five years settlement on it! They could settle along the high road, take their produce to a good market, and be independent landhold- ers in five years. This was the information about the price of land that the settlers gave us. Why free grants are not offered, as in other parts of Ontario or in Mani- toba, it is impossible to say. From the Matawan to Shebandowan lake was the next stage, twenty miles long. We passed over most of it in the dark, but could see, from the poor timber and other indications, that the latter half was not at all as good as the first. The road was heavy, varying between corduroy, deep sand, and rutty and rooty stretches, over which the waggon jolted frightfully. Though the Col- onel beguiled the way with many a story of the wars, all were tired and ready for bed by the time the Lake was reached. So passed the first day of our expedition, for we counted that the journey only began at Thunder Bay. We had been twelve hours on the road; but, as the day had been cool and showery, we did not feel over-fatigued on arriving at Shebandowan. An _ old-countryman, Morris, was in charge of the shanty. He had given up his kitchen to half a dozen emigrants who were going on 36 OCEAN TO OCEAN in the morning to Red River, and had reserved beds for us in little nooks upstairs. July 23rd—Rose at sunrise, and found that the bag- gage waggon had not arrived. An hour after, however, it came in, and, along with it, two young gentlemen, M.... and L.... with a canoe and Indians on their way to Red River. They were travelling for pleasure, and, as they had been on the road all night, and were tired, seedy and mosquito-bitten, they represented very fairly, in their own persons, the Anglo-Saxon idea of pleasure. At Shebandowan all our luggage was now gathered on the wharf, to be stowed in the canoes which were to carry us westerly for the next three hundred and eighty miles, along the chain of lakes. ‘The Chief looked hard at the united heap, and then proposed that Morris should take charge or possession of all that could be dispensed with; and that, before we left Fort Garry, only a certain number of pounds-weight should be allowed to each. Much luggage is a nuisance, even where there are rail- ways, especially if extra weight has to be paid for; but it is simply intolerable where frequent portages inter- vene, over which everything has to be carried on men’s backs. Morris made no objection to the Chief’s pro- posal, and it was carried nem. con. At 8 a.m., the baggage having been stowed in the canoes, the Indians paddled out, and hooked on to a little steam tug, kept on the lake for towing purposes: a line was formed, the word given, and, after a few pre- liminary puffings, the start was made and we proceeded along the lake. The mode of locomotion was, to us, altogether new, and as charming as it was picturesque. The tug led the way at the rate of seven knots, towing first a large barge with immigrants, second a five-fathom THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 37 canoe with three of our party and seven Indians, third a four-fathom canoe with two of us and six Indians, fourth same as number three, fifth M.... and L....’s canoe. We glided along with a delightful motion, sitting on our baggage in the bottoms of the canoes. The morning was dull and grey, and the shores of the lake looked sterile and fire-swept, with abundant indications of mineral wealth. Gold and silver have been found at Shebandowan, and prospecting parties are now search- ing all accessible spots. Our Indians were Iroquois, from Caughnawaga, near Montreal, and a few native Ojibbeways. Their leader was Ignace Mentour, who had been Sir George Simpson’s guide for fifteen years; and the steersman of his canoe was Louis, who had been cook to Sir George on his expeditions, and looked every inch the butler of a respectable English family; we fell in love with him and Ignace from the first; another of the [roquois had been one of the party which sought for Franklin by going down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Sea. Two old pupils of Ignace, named respectively Baptiste and Toma, were the captains of the two smaller canoes; they were all sinewy, active, good looking men. Ignace’s hair was grey, but he was still as strong as any of the young men; he paddled in the bow of the big canoe, leading the way, and quietly chewing tobacco the whole time. In his young days he had been a famous runner, and had won foot races in every town on both sides of the St. Lawrence. These Iroquois, and most of the Ojibbe- ways we have met, are men above the medium size, broad shouldered, with straight features, intelligent faces, and graceful, because natural, bearing. At the west end of the lake we came to a camp of seventy or eighty Ojibbeways—two-thirds of them OCEAN TO OCEAN 38 ‘Suipuvy s ngqyy sug wor ‘Avg 1spunyy—s ‘ON I on ——————— FF — Ae, Hi ‘a —— | ] —— THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 39 children. ‘They had been there for three weeks, of course doing nothing, and the camp was very dirty. More were expected, and, when all assembled, a grand pow-wow would be held, and a Treaty made between them and the Indian Commissioner of the Dominion. So at least they hoped and they declared themselves willing to cede, for a consideration, all their rights to the land, that would hinder settlers from coming in. Poor creatures! not much use have they ever made of the land; but yet, in admit- ting the settler, they sign their own death warrants. Who, but they, have a right to the country; and if a man may do what he likes with his own, would they not be justified in refusing to admit one of us to their lakes and woods, and fighting us to the death on that issue? But it is too late to argue the question; the red man, with his virtues and his vices—lauded by some as so dignified, abused by others as so dirty—is being civilized off the ground. In the United States they have, as a rule, dealt with him more summarily than in British America, but it comes to pretty much the same in the end, whether he is “improved off,’ or shot down at once as a nuisance. His wild, wandering life is inconsistent with modern require- ments: these vast regions were surely meant to maintain more than a few thousand Ojibbeways. Three hours steaming brought our flotilla to the west end of the lake. A portage of three quarters of a mile intervenes between it and Lake Kashaboiwe. The Indians emptied the canoes in a trice; two shouldered a canoe, weighing probably three hundred pounds, and made off at a rapid trot across the portage. The others loaded the waggon of the station with the luggage, and carried on their backs, by a strap passed over their fore- heads, what the waggon could not take. This portage- strap is three or four inches broad in the middle, where 40 OCEAN TO OCEAN it is adjusted to the forehead; its great advantage to the voyageur is that it leaves him the free use of his arms in going through the woods. A tug had been placed on Kashaboiwe, but, as the machinery was out of gear, the Indians paddled over the lake, doing the ten miles of its length in two hours. The wood on this lake is heavier than on Shebandowan: poplars, white birch, red, white and scrub pine, all show well. The second portage is between Kashaboiwe and Lac des Mille Lacs, and is the Height of Land, where water begins to run north and west instead of east and south. The lakes, after this,empty at their west ends. At the east end of Lac des Mille Lacs, a little stream three yards wide, that flows in a tortuous channel with gentle current into the lake, eventually finds its way to Hudson’s Bay. The Height of Land is about a thousand feet above Lake Superior. We now entered Lac des Mille Lacs—a lovely lake, twenty-two miles long; its name explains its character- istic. As the steam launch, stationed on it, happened, unfortunately, to be at the west end, the Indians again paddled for about four miles, when we met the launch coming back; it at once turned about and took us in tow. After a smart shower the sky cleared, and the sun shone on innumerable bays, creeks, channels, head- lands and islets, which are simply larger or smaller rocks of granite covered with moss and wooded to the water’s brink. Through these labyrinths we threaded our way, often wondering that the wrong passage was never taken, where there were so many exactly alike. An Indian on his own ground or water is never mistaken, and we went on as surely as if on a king’s highway. Fortunately, the fire-demon has not devastated these shores. ‘The timber, in some places, is heavy: pine, aspen, and birch being the prevailing varieties. Every THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 41 islet in the lake is wooded down to the water’s edge. Our Botanist, though finding few new species, exulted in his holiday and looked forward, with eager hope, to the flora of the plains. “This expedition,” he said, “is going to give me a lift that will put me at the head of the whole brigade;” but, as we drew near our third portage for the day, his face clouded. “Look at the ground, burnt again.” One asked if it was the great waste of wood he referred to. “It’s not that, but, they have burned the very spot for botanizing over.” What is a site for shanty and clearing, compared to Botany! At the end of Lac des Mille Lacs is Baril Portage, less than a quarter of a mile long. M— and L— resolved to camp here, as they had had no sleep the previous night and their Indians were tired; but, though the sun was only an hour high, we resolved to complete our programme, by doing the next lake, Baril. No steamer has been put on this lake; but the Indians paddled over its eight miles of length in an hour and forty minutes. The bluffs around Baril are bolder than those rising from the previous lakes, and the vegetation very similar. We hurried over the next portage, and, at the other end met the station-keeper, who had a comfortable tent pitched for the emigrants, strewn with fragrant pine and spruce branches. It was impossible to avoid admiring the activity and cheerfulness with which our Indians worked. Their canoes were attended to, as well as the baggage, in half the time that ordinary servants would have taken. They would carry as heavy a load as a Constantinople porter, at a rapid trot across the portage, run back for another load without a minute’s halt, and so on till all the luggage was portaged, and everything in readiness for starting on the next lake. 42 OCEAN TO OCEAN A fire was quickly kindled, and search made for the eatables, blankets and everything needed for the night, when the discovery was made that, though the Colonel had his blankets and the Botanist his pair, a big package with the main supply had been left behind, very probably as far back as the “Height of Land.” The frizzling of the ham in the frying pan, and the delicious fragrance of the tea, made us forget the loss for the time. We all sat around the fire, gipsy-like, enjoying our first gipsy meal, and very soon after threw ourselves down on the water-proof, that covered the sweet-smell- ing floor of the tent, and slept the sleep of the just. July 24th—The Chief awoke us in the grey misty dawn. It took more than a little shaking to awaken the boys; but the Botanist had gone off, no one knew when, in search of new species. As we emerged from our tent, Louis and Baptiste appeared from theirs, and kindled the fire. ‘They next took from a wallet scented soap, brush and comb; went down to the stream, washed and made their toilettes, and then set to work to prepare for breakfast, ham, beefsteak, bread and tea. It never seemed to occur to our Ojibbeways to wash, crop, or dress their hair. They let it grow, at its own sweet will, all around their faces and down their necks, lank and stiff, helping the growth with fish oil; whereas, every one of the Iroquois had a good head of hair, thick, well cropped, and, though always black, quite like the hair of a civilized man instead of a savage. Our Ojibbeways had silver rings on their fingers, broad gaudy sashes and bedraggled feathers bound round their felt hats. The Iroquois dressed as simply and neatly as blue jackets. It had been chilly through the night, and the cold mist clung heavily to the ground in the morning. The THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY vA 4 , @ Sa). > Vat this Oh ees for ie’! x Ny RUSS SS\. eA). . oo aay Sool 43 No. 4—Head of Lake Shebandowan. 44 OCEAN TO OCEAN air is colder than the water from evening till morning. Hence the evening and morning mists, which disappear an hour or two after sunrise, rise and form into clouds, which, sooner or later, empty themselves back again on the land or lakes. After breakfast, we embarked on the mist-covered river that runs into Lake Windegoostigwan. The sun soon cleared away the mists and we glided on pleasantly, down long reaches of lake, and through narrow, winding, reedy passages, past curved shores, hidden by rank vegetation, and naked bluffs and islets covered with clumps of pines. Not a word fell from the Indians’ lips, as they paddled with all the ease and regularity of machinery. The air was delightful, and all felt as if out on a holiday. In three hours the fifteen miles of Windegoostigwan were crossed, and we came to a portage nearly two miles long. This detained us three hours, as the waggon had to make two trips from lake to lake, over a new road, with our luggage. A man from Glengarry, was in charge of the portage; he had lived here all winter, and said that he preferred the winter weather to that of the Eastern Provinces. Great as is the summer rainfall, it is quite different in winter; then the days are clear and cloudless, and so sunny and pleasant that he was accustomed to go about in his summer clothing, except in the mornings and evenings. Three feet of snow fell in the woods after Christmas, and continued dry and powdery till April, when it commenced to melt, and soon after the middle of May it was all gone, and vegetation began to show itself at once. At the west end of the portage is a small encamp- ment of Ojibbeways, around the wigwam of Blackstone, said to be their most eloquent chief, and accordingly set THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 45 down as a great rascal by those who cannot conceive of Indians as having rights, or tribal or patriotic feelings. He was absent, but we saw one of his three wives sitting on a log, with two or three papooses hanging round her neck, and his oldest son, a stout young fellow, who could not speak a word of English or French, but who managed to let us know that he was ill. The Doctor was called, and he made out that the lad had a pain in his back, but, not being able to diagnose more particu- larly, was at a loss what to do for him. Our Chief suggested a bit of tobacco, but the Doctor took no notice of the profane proposal; luckily enough, or the whole tribe would have been ill when the next Medicine-man passed their way. Blackstone’s wife was not more comely than any of the other Indian women; that is, she was dirty, joyless-looking and prematurely old. All the hard work falls to the lot of the women; the husband hunts, fishes, paddles, or does any other work that a gentleman feels he can do without degradation; his wife is something better than his dog, and faithfully will he share with her his last morsel; but it’s only a dog’s life that she has. Our next lake was Kaogassikok, sixteen miles long. The shores of this, too, were lined with good-sized pine, white, red, and scrub. To-day more larch and cedar shewed among the birch and pine than yesterday. When the country is opened up, all this timber will be very valuable, as sleepers and ties for the Pacific Railway, and lumber, for building purposes, can be obtained here in abundance, if nowhere nearer the plains. The trees can be cut down at the water’s edge, rafted, and sent by water to Winnipeg. Numbers of fine trees are now growing in the water; for, by damming up the outflow of the lakes to make the landing places, the water-level 46 OCEAN TO OCEAN has been raised and the shore trees have thus been sub- merged several feet. ‘They will rot, in consequence, and fall into the lakes sooner or later, and perhaps obstruct the narrow channels. ‘The timber gets heavier as we go on; at the west of Kaogassikok are scrub pines, three feet in diameter; but, unfortunately, about one-third of them are punky or hollow. Here are two portages, Pine and Deux Riviéres, separated by only two miles of water; consequently much detention owing to our magnificent quantities of baggage. 'Two Indians, suffer- ing from dysentery, applied for relief at Pine Portage, and received it at the hands of the Doctor; he has already had about a dozen cases, either of white or red men, since we left Owen Sound. The first two were at Nepigon, one the engineer, and the other a dying man, carried on board the steamer there, to be taken home, and who was also kindly ministered to by the captain and one or two of the lady passengers. Our party have, thus far, received little at the Doctor’s hands, sundry medical comforts always excepted. After paddling over four miles of the next lake the Indians advised camping, though the-sun was more than an hour high. As we had experienced the discom- forts of camping in the dark the night before, and as the men were evidently tired, we landed and pitched the tents on a rocky promontory at the foot of a wooded hill. Scarcely were our fires lighted, when M—’s canoe came up, and then another with a stray Indian, his wife, papooses, dog—that looked half wolf—and all their traps. After a good swim, we sat down to our evening meal, which Louis had spread on a clean table-cloth on the sward. In front of us was the smooth lake; on the other side of it, two miles off, the sun was going down in the woods. The country ahead broke into knolls, THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 47 looking in many parts like cultivated: parks; around us the white tents and the ruddy fires, with Indians flitting between, or busy about the canoes, gave animation to the scene and made up a picture that will long live in the memory of many of us. The Indians never halt without at once turning their canoes upside down, and examining them. The seams and crevices in the birch bark yield at any extra strain, and scratches are made by submerged brush- wood in some of the channels or the shallow parts of the lakes. These crevices they carefully daub over with resin, which is obtained from the red pine, till the bottom of an old canoe becomes almost covered with a black resinous coat. The stray Indian pitched camp a hundred yards off ‘from us; and, with true Indian dignity, did not come near to ask for anything, though quite equal to take anything that was offered or left behind. July 25th—Up before four a.m., and, after a cup of hot tea, started in excellent spirits. Our three canoes had tried a race the night before, over the last four miles of the day’s journey, and they renewed it this morning. The best crew was in the five-fathom boat, of which Ignace was captain and Louis steersman. The captains of the other two, Baptiste and Toma, pushed their old master hard to-day; as one or the other stole ahead, not a glance did Ignace give to either. Doggedly, and with averted head, he dug his paddle deeper in the water, and pegged away with his sure steady stroke, and though the others, by spurting, forced themselves half a canoe length ahead at times, they had not the stay of the older men, and every race ended with Ignace leading. ‘Then he would look up, and with sunshine on his broad, hand- some face, throw a good humoured joke back, which the 48 OCEAN TO OCEAN others would catch up with great glee. These races often broke the monotony of the day. “Up, up,” or “hi, hi,’ would break suddenly from one of the canoes that had fallen behind. Everyone answered with quickened stroke that sent it abreast of the others. ‘Then came the tug of war. The graceful, gondola-shaped canoes cut through the water as though impelled by steam. The Buffalo, or Ignace’s canoe—so called from the figure of an Indian with a gun standing before a buffalo, that he had painted on the bow—always led at the first; but often the Swn, Baptiste’s lighter craft, would shoot ahead, and sometimes Toma’s, the Beaver, under the frantic efforts of her crew, seconded by one or two of us snatching up a paddle, would lead for a few minutes. The chivalry of our Indians in the heat of the contest contrasted favourably with that of professionals. No “foul” ever took place, though the course often lay through narrow, winding, reedy channels. Once, when Baptiste at such a place might have forced ahead by a spurt, he slacked speed gracefully, let Ignace take the curve and win. Another time when neck and neck, he saw a heavy line dragging at the stern and called Louis’ attention to it. No one ever charged the other with being unfair and no angry word was ever heard; in fact, the Indians grow on us day by day. It is easy to under- stand how an Englishman, travelling for weeks to- gether with an Indian guide, so often contracts a strong friendship for him; for Indian patience, endurance, dignity and self-control, are the very qualities to evoke friendship. The sun rose bright but was soon clouded. Ten good miles were made and then the halt called for breakfast, at a beautiful headland, just as it commenced to rain. Now we got some idea of what a rainy day in these THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 49 regions means. After breakfast we put on our water- proofs, covered up our baggage and moved ahead, under a deluge of rain that knew no intermission for four hours. Most of the water-proofs proved to be delusions; they had not been made for these latitudes. The canoes would have filled, had we not kept bailing, but, without a word of complaint, the Indians stuck to their paddles. From the lake we passed into the Maligne River, and there the current aided us. In this short, but broad and rapid stream, are six or seven rapids, which must be shot or portaged round; we preferred the shooting, wherever it was practicable, for such large and deeply- laden canoes as ours. To shoot the rapids in a canoe is a pleasure that comparatively few Englishmen have ever enjoyed, and no picture can give an idea of what it is. There is a fascination in the motion, as of poetry or music, which must be experienced to be understood. The excitement is greater than when on board a steamer, because you are so much nearer the seething water, and the canoe seems such a fragile thing to contend with the mad forces, into the very thick of which it has to be steered. Where the stream begins to descend, the water is an inclined plane, smooth and shining as glare ice. Beyond that it breaks into curling, gleaming rolls which end off in white, boiling caldrons, where the water has broken on the rocks beneath. On the brink of the inclined plane, the motion is so quiet that you think the canoe pauses for an instant. The captain is at the bow,—a broader, stronger paddle than usual in his hand—his eye kindling with enthusiasm, and every nerve and fibre in his body at its utmost tension. The steersman is at his post, and every man is ready. They know that a false stroke, or 50 SQ /o* x RN Nis \ OCEAN TO OCEAN oft * Cd Rapid. = - No. 5—Shooting a THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 51 too weak a turn of the captain’s wrist, at the critical moment, means death. A push with the paddles, and, straight and swift as an arrow, the canoe shoots right down into the mad vortex; now into a cross current that would twist her broadside round, but that every man fights against it; then she steers right for a rock, to which she is_ being resistlessly sucked, and on which it seems as if she would be dashed to pieces; but a rapid turn of the captain’s paddle at the right moment, and she rushes past the black mass, riding gallantly as a race horse. The waves boil up at the side threatening to engulf her, but except a dash of spray or the cap of a wave, nothing gets in, and as she speeds into the calm reach beyond, all draw long breaths and hope that another rapid is near. At eleven o’clock we reached Island Portage, having paddled thirty-two miles—the best forenoon’s work since taking to the canoes—in spite of the weather. Here a steam launch is stationed; and though the engineer thought it a frightful day to travel in, he got ready at our request, but said that he could not go four miles an hour as the rain would keep the boiler wet the whole time. We dined with M—’s party, under the shelter of their upturned canoe, on tea and the fattest of fat pork, which all ate with delight unspeakable, for every- one had in himself the right kind of sauce. The day, and our soaked condition, suggested a little brandy as a specific; but their bottle was exhausted, and, an hour before, they had passed round the cork for each to have asmell at. Such a case of “potatoes and point” moved our pity, and the chief did what he could for them. The Indians excited our admiration;—soaked through, and over-worked as they had been, the only word that we heard, indicating that they were conscious of anything unusual, was an exclamation from Baptiste, as he gave 52 OCEAN TO OCEAN himself a shake,—“Boys, wish I was in a tavern now, I’d get drunk in less than tree hours, I guess.” At two o'clock, the steam launch was ready, and, about the same time, the sky cleared a little; a favourable wind, too, sprang up, and, though there were showers or heavy mists all the time, the launch towed us the twenty-four miles of Lake Nequaquon in three and a quarter hours. The scenery was often very fine, but being of the same kind as that for more than a hundred miles back, it began to be monotonous, and we craved for a few mountains. Next came Loon portage; then paddling for five miles; then Mud portage, worthy of its name; another short paddle; and then American portage, at which we camped for the night—the sun having at last come out and this being the best place for pitching tents and the freest from mosquitoes. Tired enough all hands were, and ready for sleep, for these portages are killing work. After taking a swim, we rigged lines before huge fires, and hung up our wet things to dry, so that it was eleven o'clock before anyone could lie down. ‘The Doctor and the Secretary had stowed their luggage in water-proof bags, kindly lent them by the Colonel; but the bags proved as fallacious as our water-proofs. Part of the Botanist’s valise was reduced to pulp, but he was too eager in search of specimens to think of such a trifle, and, while all the rest of us were busy washing and hanging out to dry, he hunted through woods and marshes, and, though he got little for his pains, was happy as a king. Our camping ground had been selected by the Indians with their usual good taste. A rocky eminence, round two sides of which a river poured in a roaring linn; on the hill sombre pines, underneath which the THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 53 tents were pitched; and lower down a forest of white birch. More than one of the party dreamed that he was in Scotland, as he was lulled to sleep by the thunder of the waterfall. July 26th—Up again about three a.m., and off within an hour, down a sedgy river, with low swampy shores, into Lake Nameukan. ‘The sun rose bright, and continued to shine all day; but a pleasant breeze tempered its rays. At mid-day, the thermometer stood at 80° in the shade, the hottest since leaving Owen Sound. One day on Lake Superior it was down to 48°, and the average at mid-day since we landed’ at Thunder Bay was from 55° to 60°. After twelve miles paddling, halted at a pretty spot on an islet for breakfast. Frank caught a large pickerel and M— shot a few pigeons, giving us a variety of courses at dinner. M—’s Indians tried a race with us to-day, and after a hard struggle, got ahead of Toma and Baptiste, but Ignace proudly held his own and would not be beaten. However, among the many turns of the river, Toma, followed by Baptiste, circumvented their old master, by dashing through a passage over- grown with weeds and reeds instead of taking the usual channel. When Ignace turned the corner he saw the two young fellows coolly waiting for him a hundred and fifty yards ahead. They gave a sly laugh as he came up, but Ignace was too dignified to take the slightest notice. Baptiste was so pleased that he sang us two Iroquois canoe songs. Eighteen miles, broken by two short portages, (for we took a short cut instead of the public route) , brought us about mid-day to Rainy Lake; here we were told, but, as it turned out, incorrectly, was the last steam launch that could be used on our journey, as the two on Rainy 54 OCEAN TO OCEAN River and Lake of the Woods had something wrong with them. The engineer promised to be ready in two hours, and to land us at Fort Frances, at the west end of Rainy Lake, forty-five miles on, by sundown. But in half an hour the prospect did not look so bright, as, across the portage, by the public route, came a band of eighteen emigrants, men, women and children, who had left Thunder Bay five days before us, and whom we had passed this forenoon, when we took our short cut. They had a great deal of baggage, and were terribly tired. One old woman, eighty-five years of age, complained of being sick, and the doctor attended to her. As we had soup for dinner, he sent some over to her, and the prescription had a good effect. While waiting here we took our half-dried clothes out of the bags, and, by hanging them on lines under the warm sun, got them pretty well dried before starting. At three P.m., at the cry of “All aboard,” our flotilla formed at once—the steam launch towing two large barges with the emigrants and their luggage, and the four canoes. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and there was a pleasant breeze on the Lake. In half an hour every Indian was asleep in the bottom of his canoe. The shores of Rainy Lake are low, especially on the northern side, and the timber is small; the shores rocky, with here and there sandy beaches that have formed round little bays; scenery tame and monotonous, though the islets, in some parts, are numerous and beautiful. By nine o’clock, we had made only thirty miles. Our steamer was small, the flotilla stretched out far and the wind was ahead. We therefore determined to camp; and, by the advice of the engineer, steered for the north THUNDER BAY TO FORT GARRY 55 shore to what is called the Fifteen Mile House from Fort Frances, said house being two deserted log huts. In a little bay here, on the sandy beach, we pitched our tents and made rousing fires, though the air was warm and balmy, as if we were getting into a more southern region. ‘The Botanist, learning that we would leave before daybreak, lighted an old pine branch and roamed about with his torch to investigate the flora of the place. The others visited the emigrants to whom the log-huts had been assigned, or sat round the fires smoking, or gathered bracken and fragrant artemisia for our beds. July 27th—Had our breakfast before four a.m., and in less than half an hour after, were en route for Fort Frances. Two miles above the Fort the Lake ends and pours itself into Rainy River, over a rapid which the emigrants’ barges had not oars to shoot. They were cast off, and we went on to the Fort and sent men up to bring them down. ‘The Fort is simply a Hudson's Bay Company’s trading post;—the shop and _ the cottages of the agent and employés in the form of a square, surrounded by stockades about ten feet high. From the Fort is a beautiful view of the Chaudiére Falls which have to be portaged round. These are formed by the river, here nearly two hundred yards wide, pouring over a granite ridge in magnificent roaring cascades. A sandy plain of several acres, covered with rich grass, extends around the Fort, and wheat, barley, and potatoes are raised; but, beyond this plain, is marsh and then rock.