Having laid in a good stock of provisions, Mr. Low secured some stout cedar canoes, and set off on his journey from Lake St. John—he and the Indians. They did not advance with the speed which readers of Fenimore Cooper’s novels would expect. Their rate of progress averaged fifteen miles a day, the responsibility for this dilatoriness lying wholly with the Ashwapmuchuan River. Only every now and then is it a level, composed, and Thames-like avenue of water. In between whiles, after the wont of Canadian rivers, it plays leap-frog down the gradients. On approaching foaming rapids and roaring cascades, Mr. Low and the Indians got out and walked. Carrying canoes, stores, and baggage over portages that are sometimes a mile in length is, of course, a laborious and slow business. On the other hand, it is better to go through with that ordeal than to be whirled over a waterfall that has a sheer drop of sixty feet—to mention one picturesque feature occurring along Mr. Low’s route.
I will not dilate upon the glorious mountains and the verdant valleys that came under the explorer’s notice. The lovely lakes—some of them twenty miles and more in length—rather tried his patience. “Many of them are so indented and dotted with islands,” he deplored, “that it is difficult for even the Indian guides to follow correctly the channels.”
He noted the millions of dormant dollars existing in the form of timber: the black spruce (most abundant of all), the fir, the banksian pine, the aspen and balsam poplars, the white birch, the cedar, and other useful sorts. “White spruce up to twenty-four inches in diameter are,” he reported, “in many places numerous enough to permit of profitable lumbering if any means existed for transport to the southern markets.” But discerning science did not confine itself to indicating the fortunes in forests that awaited human immigrants. It shed a passing tear over the timber wealth that had been already consumed by immigrants of another genus. “Larch formerly grew in abundance,” Mr. Low reported, “and often they exceeded the white spruce in size,” as was obvious from old trees still standing as skeletons. But about twelve years ago, it seems, those forests were destroyed by a visitation of the European larch saw-fly—that wasp without a waist whose caterpillars have a large appetite, twenty legs, and an interesting way of standing with the hind part of their bodies gracefully curled over their heads. So our European saw-fly was the guilty party, was he? One wonders how in the name of Christopher Columbus he got across.
Mr. Low found some white fellow-creatures in the virgin territory he was exploring. To begin with, he saw (as the opening of this narrative will have prepared my readers to learn) a small party of miners working at the asbestos outcrops on Asbestos Island in McKenzie Bay, which is situated in the north-west corner of Chibougamau Lake. He also found in the district other white, or whitish, people, who were residents of long standing. Indeed, the strange fact has to be noted that groups of these white or whitish people are to be found in even the most northerly and remote districts of unexplored and unexploited Canada. The history of the Hudson’s Bay Company—one of the greatest dramas that the world and the centuries have witnessed—was sufficiently outlined in the preceding chapter. In this place it is merely necessary to relate that, on approaching Lake Mistassini, Mr. Low found “a number of old men, women and children” congregated on the shore, awaiting the arrival of some flour and groceries they were expecting by canoe from Hudson Bay. Much earlier in his travels, at a point only some sixty miles from Lake St. John, he had come upon another settlement of the ancient fur-collecting corporation.
In a manner wholly unforeseen, the Hudson’s Bay Company is proving of great value to modern Canada. Each of its outposts of civilisation is a treasury of clues to the agricultural possibilities of an unknown country. The trappers, in their remote isolation, have naturally gone in for a little gardening. It has helped to pass the time, not to mention the advantage of having fresh vegetables and ripe gooseberries on the dinner-table. When the rare visitor now arrives, as an emissary from populated regions away in the south, the Hudson Bay folk must be intensely gratified by the interest he takes in their cultivated back-yards.
Mr. Low is not the man to neglect opportunities. “The surrounding country appears to be fertile,” he noted, “as, in the clearing about the old Hudson’s Bay Company post, timothy grass grows abundantly and small fruits ripen early.” On the other hand, no great success had apparently attended horticultural efforts at the second trappers’ settlement he visited. “Great difficulty is experienced,” we are told, “in growing a small crop of potatoes, although the soil is the best in the region.” Again, “attempts have been made at this place to grow oats, barley, and wheat, but without success.” The explanation of this unsatisfactory state of things is detected by the scientific mind, and a valuable hint to the agricultural world is the result. This particular Hudson’s Bay post happens to be twelve hundred feet above sea-level—indeed, it occurs very near the line of greatest elevation running through Quebec province. “When lands are situated above the thousand-foot level,” Mr. Low points out, “there is constant danger of summer frosts, though these would probably be lessened by clearing the lands and breaking the surface with the plough.” He emphasises his contention by instancing experiences at the Hudson’s Bay post beside Waswanipi Lake, which is situated about one hundred and fifty miles away to the south-west. The climatic conditions are more favourable there because the elevation is only seven hundred feet above sea-level. At the Waswanipi station, we learn, “excellent root crops are grown annually, while experiments with the cultivation of cereals show that oats, barley, and the hardier varieties of wheat easily ripen.” The Canadian settler, when choosing a northern homestead, will be well advised to keep this matter of elevation in mind.
Mr. Low, it will be observed, by no means limits his investigations, when travelling through a new country, to matters germane to his own science. “The fisheries of the larger lakes,” reported this broad-minded geologist, “will undoubtedly be a source of considerable wealth to the province as soon as a railway provides quick transport.” Speaking from personal experience, he goes on to say that “the chief food fishes are lake-trout, brook-trout, pike, pickerel, sturgeon, whitefish, and two species of sucker.” The sucker is, I believe, also known on the North American continent as the “stone-roller” and the “red-horse.” No doubt it is more appetising than it sounds.
Coming now to matters belonging to Mr. Low’s special province, I must first mention his discovery of an interesting freak of Nature. “Near the western end of McKenzie Bay,” it seems, “is a low cone of dark, rotten serpentine, peculiar on account of its magnetic attraction, the compass pointing to it from all directions within a radius of half a mile.”
A geological report is, of course, a solemn, technical, and unsensational document. The business of a geologist is to identify the rocks, seen and unseen, the word “rocks,” in its scientific application, including pretty well every constituent of the globe save water and air. The geologist does not mine for gold, silver, and precious stones; he merely decides whether and where it would be worth while to mine for them. His task is to go in advance and prepare the way for the prospector.
Thus Mr. Low’s report does little more than hint at mineral wealth. Having confirmed the discovery of a large mass of gold-bearing quartz, he states the conditions under which similar bodies may perhaps be found in neighbouring localities. As to copper, we have to be content with the information that “in a number of places good signs of ore are seen in diabase schists.” Concerning iron, a “locality of promise” is indicated. With regard to asbestos, which lends itself to readier identification, we have more definite information. “All the areas of serpentine discovered in the region up to the present time,” Mr. Low’s report bears witness, “contain veins of asbestos, and in many places these veins are of sufficient size and number to form valuable deposits as soon as a railway is built to the shores of Chibougamau Lake.”