PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Mr. Elihu Stewart’s opening words are strangely significant. “Perhaps no portion of America has received greater attention from the explorer during the last three centuries than the sub-arctic regions of Canada, and yet they remain practically unknown to the present day.” The author relates his experiences in traversing what was practically virgin soil. That he should have carried out his immense programme without fear or accident is no mean feat, and this narrative should be found intensely interesting by all who recognise the great commercial and historical future in store for the vast Dominion, as well as those to whom the adventurous side of life especially appeals.
Mr. Stewart is well competent to do more than furnish a superficial travel book. As Managing Director of “Canada Timber and Lands, Limited,” he is actively concerned in the possibilities of the timber trade in Canada. There is no doubt that with the completion of the Panama Canal in sight and with the rapid settlement of the prairies and the increased railway facilities bound to eventuate, the superior timber of British Columbia can be exploited as never before. No other part of Canada produces timber in such abundance. Mr. Stewart was formerly Superintendent of Forestry for Canada, and much of the knowledge he thus acquired helps to form the present volume. Mr. Stewart gives many charming pen-pictures to relieve the more material side of “Down the Mackenzie and Up the Yukon,” and he shows a fine feeling of atmosphere for lands “where it is always afternoon,” where the late sun lingers in the quiet west; where the northern twilight embraces reluctant day, amid the profound silence of the gradual shadows. Only the cry of a loon or the hooting of an owl heard somewhere in the forest pierces the mournful calm.
Mr. Stewart wisely makes frequent reference to the soil conditions he has observed on his line of travel, and his impressions will be found most valuable. He insists, too, that before any accurate report can be given on the subject it will be most desirable—and indeed necessary—for the Government to have an exploration survey made by men competent to give an authoritative opinion. Canada is losing year after year from lack of information concerning its unoccupied areas. The difficulties of handling immense tracts of land are obvious, but not more so than the lack of enterprise which stays the country and delays its cultivation. In the present state of things the stray settler has little or no chance. “What would be thought,” asks Mr. Stewart, “of the settler who built his house and commenced to clear and till his land on the front of his lot without ever taking the trouble to examine the rest of his possessions? The chances are he would afterwards find that much of his labour had been misdirected. In many parts of the country land has been surveyed, and opened up for settlement, that was unfit for agriculture and which should have been left for the growth of timber for which it was well suited. Frequently this land looked attractive to the inexperienced, and in many cases the settler spent years of hard labour only to find at last that beneath the few inches of humus there was nothing but barren sand.”
In a country like Canada with its vast areas of wonderfully fertile land, it is unnecessary that any one should waste his labour on any part that is unproductive.
It is well that Mr. Stewart should express himself forcibly, without circumlocution, and his grave warning may perhaps act as a deterrent to the unwary and inexperienced, while bringing home to the Government the necessity not only of bringing agricultural immigrants into the country, but of directing them to fields where there is a known and excellent chance of labour and concentrated industry meeting with adequate reward.
Mr. Stewart pleads very earnestly for the establishment of a hospital somewhere in that vast region of the Mackenzie watershed. “Between Edmonton,” says Mr. Stewart, “and the Arctic Sea we pass over sixteen degrees of latitude, while the distance by the travelled route is over two thousand miles. Again, from the Rocky Mountains on the West to the Hudson Bay on the East the distance is almost equally as great. At Athabaska Landing and at Peace River in the Southern fringe of this great wilderness a few physicians have established themselves, but beyond these places the only medical aid available is from an occasional visit of the Government physician and what the missionaries are able to furnish. At practically every fort and Indian village on our way we were besieged for medicine by the afflicted.”
Probably most of the illnesses would have been relieved, if not actually cured, by proper surgical treatment. It is curious to note that the Indians of these regions are as susceptible to appendicitis as Europeans. Mr. Stewart goes on to suggest that if such a hospital at Fort Simpson or at some point on Great Slave Lake were established it could be reached by canoes in summer from points all along the Mackenzie, and it would be possible to ameliorate the sufferings of many whose only hope is death. If this little volume may serve even as a faint plea for the assistance of those who dwell at present so far beyond reach of some of civilisation’s essential requirements, Mr. Stewart will have performed a profound service.