Afterwards he made extensive explorations up and down the country, and took up with mining and with petroleum-boring.
Asked about the Peace River Valley, Mr. Von Hamerstein said it is “a good country for agricultural settlement—as good as any country in Alberta.” He described both the Athabasca and Peace River regions as “marvellous for the growth of small wild fruit,” adding: “At the end of July, or the first part of August, there are strawberries, followed by raspberries and blueberries. Then come the saskatoons, choke cherries, white plums and berries of every description. They are found all over the country and they all have a very nice flavour indeed.”
From this gentleman’s experiences I take the following interesting facts: He has seen trees in the neighbourhood of McMurray that would make 1,000 feet of timber. The missionaries and natives catch a quantity of fish, including a creature called the “inconnu”—the unknown—which weighs from 40 to 50 lbs. Sometimes on a walk of fifteen miles he has seen as many as twenty or thirty bears, which are quite harmless. The long list of Alberta quadrupeds includes the wolverine—a gigantic skunk with stripes on his back and known out West as “the devil.” Among the birds are several varieties of the eagle, a little wild canary, and the Canadian jay, commonly called “the whisky jack.” Along the northern boundary of Alberta, around Salt River, the cariboo, the moose and other game congregate to lick the salt, “and there are quite a few buffalo” to be seen. Ducks and geese assemble around Lake Athabasca in enormous numbers, “and when killed their stomachs are found full of cranberries.”
Mr. Von Hamerstein has done a good deal of gold-mining in the Athabasca and Peace River districts. “I took out gold,” he said, “at a little bar right opposite the mouth of the Lesser Slave River in the Athabasca. I worked it for part of two summers. I would take out enough to last me for the winter and then quit. It is hard work.” He mentioned that the Indians have “gold and diamonds on the brain,” and they have brought him “rocks containing very nice garnets, but they were very mysterious about them.” He explained that there is “very good gold-mining” on the Peace River, a little below Battle River. “But the gold is so very fine that for every dollar you save there, about four and a half go away.” He also referred to many good seams of coal, and mentioned that one season, at Fort McKay, he “took out about twenty tons right on the river bank.” It was a good quality of bituminous coal. At McMurray “150 feet of salt was found,” and the Hudson Bay people “come down and take it with shovels.”
With regard to natural gas, Mr. Von Hamerstein ventilated a grievance of the backwoods. It seems that an experimental bore-hole at Pelican Portage struck “a very large volume of gas, and the well has never been plugged.” He considered it an actual sin to leave it like that, as “the gas has now been escaping for eleven years.” It is robbing the whole district of gas that might be used in the future. It seems that the Government prospectors who made the well were boring for petroleum. The tremendous flow of natural gas interrupted their work. They left the gas alight, and returned to the spot in the following year, hoping the flow would by that time be exhausted. Instead, they found it still burning; so they went away, and never returned; and during the eleven years that have since elapsed it has continued to burn. Once when Mr. Von Hamerstein went there, the column of flame was 40 feet high; afterwards he found it had been reduced to 18 or 20 feet.
He mentioned that he has expended more than £12,000 in “punching holes through the ground.” There is no doubt in his mind that “petroleum will be found all through the country from Athabasca River to the Peace River.” It seems that, in connection with their prospecting, mining and boring operations, Mr. Von Hamerstein’s parties use a good deal of natural gas. “We light our camps with it,” he said, “and do our blacksmith’s work with it, and it comes in very handy.”
Mr. Von Hamerstein remarked: “As far as petroleum is concerned, I have all my money put into it, and there is other people’s money in it, and I have to be loyal. As to whether you can get petroleum in merchantable quantities, that is a matter about which I would not care to speak. I have been taking in machinery for about three years. Last year I placed about $50,000 worth of machinery in there. I have not brought it in for ornamental purposes, although it does look nice and homelike.”
He explained that there are sulphur beds and springs between McMurray and Lake Athabasca, and on the Clearwater River first-class medicinal springs. “It is a very nice, picturesque country,” this interesting witness added, “and the natives go up there and doctor themselves.”
CHAPTER XVII
NEW TRANS-CONTINENTAL LINES
Often the miner, and sometimes the farmer, enters a territory before trains have superseded the canoe and the ox-wagon; and in our chapter on Northern Alberta we have glanced at the romantic life of a pioneer who, if lacking modern means of access to his market, has a delightfully free hand to tap the overflowing natural resources of the landscape surrounding him. A finer career that, I think, for young and muscular manhood than the daily sitting on a stool in smoky London City. But it is for the adventurous, resourceful, self-contained men who need no companions but their own healthy thoughts.