THE GREAT LONE LAND.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14325, 15 October 1910, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE GREAT LONE LAND.

EA.RL, GREYS G RIO AT JOURNEY. .Y;HEHE NO CHANGE COMES. | Earl Grey, the Governor-G-snara' of Canada, has just concluded a journey few white men have ever taken, and which may well prove to be one of the most momentous journeys of modern times. A contributor of the ''Daily Mail," writing of the country to be covered in this journey says:—As a "voyageur" of the old adventurous days Earl Grey travels to the far north, to the shores of Hudson's Bay, by the old mail packet route, whose portages are parked hard by the moe-ca-sined feet of a hundred years. He traverses a Land at a Standstill. From Winnipeg Earl Grev travelled by rail to the shores of Lake AVinuepeg. Here the small mounted police patrol boat carried him northwards still to Norway House, the famous old tading post cf tho Hudson's Bay Company, situated at the extreme end of the lake, the last vestige of civilisation, the starting point for the barren lands. Thence he will take to eauoe and paddle down, endlessly down, the Hayes River, shooting rapids, portaging, sailing' when the wind is fair, winding in and out between mossy, treeless banks, until, far in the distance, there glimmer the waters of Hudson's Bay. At York Factory, another Hudson's Bay post, supplies will be replenished and a start made up the west- coast of Hudson's Bay towards Fort Churchill, the coming metropolis of the north And from Fort Churchill a Government steamer will carry the GovernorGeneral out through the straits into the North Atlantic, down the Labrador coast, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and home. Native guides and canoe-men, packers and hunters will be employed from one trading nost to another, and the party will travel in precisely the same manner as did Alexander Mackenzie, or Thompson, or Ross, on their voyages of exploration nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. when the country was exactly a3 Earl Grey will find it to-day. THE BARREN LANDS.

For while Canada . as a whole advances rapidly, this district has remamed at a standstill. Wedged in between the great wheat areas to the south, tho bay to the north the mixed farming country of Saskatchewan to the west, and the mining regions of New Ontario to the east, this vast and almost inaccessible area has held sullenly aloof from the white man, and is tracked only by the redskin and the fur-bearing animals he pursues. It is a barren land, a desert within an oasis. But it is a good pelt country, and the little part it has played in the world's history is not without interest. Much of this history, indeed, never has been and never will be Written. One lias heard of the time when the old Hudson's Bay men and the NorthAYest Company fought for supremacy in the fur trade. Before that again one might recall the building and destruction of the old Fort Prince of A\ales, the Gibraltar of the north, the strongest fortress on the continent in its best days, Quebec and Louisbourg alone excepted. And we know how Hearne the explorer, hardy and courageous turned craven when in command of that fort, snatching a white cioth from tho table around which he and his councillors were sitting, and waving it from the rampant as"\a signal to tho French Admiral de la. l-'erouse that ho and his litle garrison surrendered. The ruins of Fort Prince of Wales aro still to be seen as the admiral and tho crews of his three frigates loft them, the stout stone walls blown apart with the black powder brought into that far-away country by tho_ company which reared them, the ancient cannon half-buried in the moss of the barren land. POSSIBILITIES OF THE> COUNTRY.

From Hearne's time until within a few years ago this country remained unknown and unregarded. The traders and the trappers went and came, paddling in witli supplies each summer and tracking out the iurs each "tall." But in 1905 rumours were wafted down from the north of a murder, and barrels of illicit whisky among the Saulteaux men. A mounted police patrol investigated the matter, and discovered many things. Besides tracking, and eventually finding, the murderers, two Fiddler Indians, they found that the country, although hard and barren to look upon, contained timber in places, signs of coal and petroleum, and, above all, putci'nppiugs »f quartz glittering feebly with the glint of gold. And so the canoes drive ever to the, northward. Almost before, you get out of Cross Lake into the river you strike a rapid, and before you have recovered your breath you strike another, and .then another, until five in quick succession have been ran. All this in the short space of ten miles, until Lake Sipiwcsk, the haunted lake, sonins into view. Sipiwcsk is the most difficult bit of wafer in the whole of the. north. It is full of small islands, each exactly like the others, and even ibe_ Indians have been known to lose their way winding in and out in their efforts to keep the channel. They say the water is bewitched and that the landmarks move mysteriously. Lake Sipiwesk empties into a Ewift and well-penned stream, which eventually brings _ yon into Split Lake, where there is another Hudson's Bay post, a mounted police detachment, a little Scotch missionary and a couple of free traders. Split Lnke, in fact, is quite a city, and marks the half-way house, from Winnipeg to the bay. It has taken eight, perhaps iv'ne, travelling days, and yen have paddled and por» taged npproximatelv 260 miles. THE BEAUTY OF THE BARREN SANDS. From Split Lake down the Nelsoft to the coast one sees the most beautiful part of the north. It is so beautiful that it is not beautiful. It is stupendous. When one recalls the fact that the Nelson is drawn from practicaily the whole of the North\Vest, frc'm Edmonton in the north down to the international including the watersheds of the Red and Winnipeg Rivers and Lakes Winnipeg and Iviautioba, it is not hard to imagine that it is no insignificant t/tifuim. Waterfall after waterfall hinders the traveller in his progress, but while the Indians are portaging it is no waste of time to linger and admire their true natural beauty. No woodman's axe has marred the landscape. Everything is as nature made it. The whole distance of two hundred and twenty miles from Split Lake to the coast is one magnificent, changing panoramic view, typical of Canada's wild, unexplored northla-nd; and as one passes farther to the north the smaller become the trees, until they finally disappear altogether, and the. canoe slips along between high, rocky banks, stretching away from which are the barren lands, the home of the ■mufck ox and the caribou. . Fort Churchill seems a metropolis ' when it is reached, although the white population does not number a hundred. I. have tried to give y.ou a picture of this great region. It is awaiting its future, till men shall realise its possibilities. Perhaps after. Earl Grey's journey it may. £gpge to. be a Land "at \v. StfiiisUtiliL »" .. -~'V -'