A Change of Scenery
After remaining about twenty-four hours at Simpson, we resumed our journey at five o’clock in the morning, and at nine caught the first sight of the Rocky Mountains (Nahanni Range) with their snow-capped peaks, which attain a height of 5000 ft. above sea level. This change of scenery was welcomed after six weeks of travel through a vast wilderness of comparatively level land.
The weather had continued quite hot, with only an exception of a day or two, from our start, but whether from the effect of the mountains or not, we experienced a very decided change in the temperature immediately we reached their vicinity, and from this on we suffered no more from the excessive heat, which had been as unpleasant as it was unexpected. We had counted on escaping the usual July heat, but for the greater part it had really been more oppressive and certainly more constant, extending right through the long twenty-four-hour day, than I had ever before experienced.
It strikes the observer as extraordinary that the Mackenzie in its way to the sea from Great Slave Lake should bear off to the west, so far as to necessitate its cutting its way between two ranges of the Rocky Mountains, where a much shorter course and apparently one through a more level country lay open to the east into Coronation Gulf.
I do not know the opinion of geologists, but it seems probable that the original outlet of Great Slave Lake has been changed from this course to the longer one now followed, in the same way as the Niagara has become the outlet of the waters of Lake Huron instead of the Northern River of past ages, which flowed directly across country from the Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario.
At the distance of 136 miles below Simpson, we reach Fort Wrigley. This is a new post; the old one of the same name twenty-five miles above having been abandoned owing to its unhealthy locality. The country about Fort Wrigley is fairly well wooded. I noticed a spruce log, cut in the vicinity which measured twenty inches in diameter.
The Nahanni river, which is a considerable stream, flows from the west and joins the Mackenzie about halfway between Simpson and Wrigley. Just north of it rises Mount Camsell, a snow-clad peak 5000 ft. high.
Below Wrigley the river narrows to from a half to three quarters of a mile in width. This continues for some distance and then widens out as we proceed down the stream. Two noted mountain peaks, Mount Bompas and Mount Wrigley, are seen between Wrigley and Norman. About twenty miles above Fort Norman and on the left side of the river the clay banks assume a very red appearance, and the people use the earth as paint. This condition of the earth has been produced by fire in the coal seams. For several miles along the route the fire is now apparently extinct, but as we reached a point eight miles above Fort Norman, for upwards of two miles along the right bank of the river smoke was distinctly observed from fires still burning far down in the seams of coal. It is worthy of note that Sir Alexander Mackenzie makes mention of these fires in his narrative, as existing in 1789 when he explored and gave his name to the river.
About sixty miles below Wrigley we passed the mouth of Salt river which flows from the east. It is so named from deposits of salt that exist some miles above the mouth. Rock salt is said to exist on the Great Bear river above Norman, but the salt in use in the country is from another Salt River sixteen miles below Fort Smith.
At 7 P.M., July 18, we reached Fort Norman at the mouth of the Great Bear River which is the outlet of Great Bear Lake. Fort Norman is distant from Fort Wrigley 184 miles and 1398 miles from Athabaska Landing. Its situation is very picturesque. The mountain peaks stand up in bold relief out of a vast level plain. Bear Mountain on the north side of Great Bear River and east of the Mackenzie is the most conspicuous.
While the steamer lay at Fort Norman, I started down the shore hoping to reach Great Bear River, but I soon found it dangerous to attempt to walk along the water’s edge owing to the banks being in some places too precipitous. I then tried the land farther up from the shore but was unable to find a trail and soon got into a wet swamp and had, very much to my regret, to give up the attempt. The width of the river, I understand to be some 150 or 200 yards and the water clear. This might be expected as it is the outlet of a lake with an area nearly if not quite that of Great Slave Lake.
At Fort Norman a fellow passenger in the person of Rev. H. C. Winch, left us to assume his duties here as a Missionary of the Anglican Church. He had been my room mate on the Wrigley, all the way from Fort Smith.
In company with several of the passengers I went up to the little house which was to be his home and remained till about eleven o’clock at night, and as we bade him good-bye in the twilight the loneliness of the life that was before him impressed itself on my mind.
Fancy the weird situation here in this wilderness with none but the native Indians and a few half breeds for companions. This during the few summer months when the days were long and when the birds and the wild geese had not left for the South might not be altogether unpleasant, but when the days would grow short, when the canoeing on the river was over and the long nights of winter approached, it certainly would require a good deal of fortitude to bear the part that he was to endure.