The Arctic Prairies : a Canoe-Journey of 2,000 Miles in Search of the Caribou; / Being the Account of a Voyage to the Region North of Aylemer Lake

Produced by Bruce Miller; Courtesy of Kevin McCarthy Director of Perrot
Memorial Library.
The Arctic Prairies
A Canoe-Journey
By Ernest Thompson Seton
Author of Wild Animals I Have Known , Life Histories , Etc.
What young man of our race would not gladly give a year of his life to roll backward the scroll of time for five decades and live that year in the romantic bygone-days of the Wild West; to see the great Missouri while the Buffalo pastured on its banks, while big game teemed in sight and the red man roamed and hunted, unchecked by fence or hint of white man's rule; or, when that rule was represented only by scattered trading-posts, hundreds of miles apart, and at best the traders could exchange the news by horse or canoe and months of lonely travel?
I for one, would have rejoiced in tenfold payment for the privilege of this backward look in our age, and had reached the middle life before I realised that, at a much less heavy cost, the miracle was possible today.
For the uncivilised Indian still roams the far reaches of absolutely unchanged, unbroken forest and prairie leagues, and has knowledge of white men only in bartering furs at the scattered trading-posts, where locomotive and telegraph are unknown; still the wild Buffalo elude the hunters, fight the Wolves, wallow, wander, and breed; and still there is hoofed game by the million to be found where the Saxon is as seldom seen as on the Missouri in the times of Lewis and Clarke. Only we must seek it all, not in the West, but in the far North-west; and for Missouri and Mississippi read Peace and Mackenzie Rivers, those noble streams that northward roll their mile-wide turbid floods a thousand leagues to the silent Arctic Sea.
This was the thought which spurred me to a six months' journey by canoe. And I found what I went in search of, but found, also, abundant and better rewards that were not in mind, even as Saul, the son of Kish, went seeking asses and found for himself a crown and a great kingdom.