CHAPTER V
Fort McMurray to Smith’s Landing on the Slave River : The Grahame : Beauty of Northern Twilights : Fort Chippewyan : The Slave River : The Peace River Basin.
We found the Grahame a much larger and more comfortable boat than the Midnight Sun, though constructed on the same lines, both being flat-bottomed craft and propelled by stern wheels.
It was late in the afternoon of another very hot day, July 2, when we resumed our journey, and sitting on the deck, I watched a panorama of rare beauty unrolled to view as we descended the river. The Clearwater mingled its contents slowly and reluctantly with those of the turbid Athabaska. Islands clothed with green spruce receded from view as others appeared in the distance.
It was after seven o’clock in the evening, when we left McMurray and yet we sat for hours taking no note of time, till some one remarked it was getting late, though the sun, away around in the north-west, was still a little above the horizon, and seemed very loathe to sink below it. As in “The Lotos Eaters,” it seemed “a land where it was always afternoon.” There are two features that cannot fail to impress the stranger on his visit to these regions, especially in mid-summer; first, those northern twilights, and second, the profound silence that always seems to fall like a pall on the wilderness as the gathering shadows increase more and more till all nature is embraced in silent slumber.
Frequently we tied up to the shore for the few dark hours we enjoyed at this time and in this latitude, later we had none—and the deathlike tranquillity of those approaching nights was almost bewildering in its intensity. One actually seemed to have approached very near to the heart of nature.
This sensation brought back to mind the words of George Eliot in the scene from Adam Bede, where she pictures the absolute calm which prevailed on that night when Adam was engaged long after midnight in making a coffin for his father, and when resting for a moment, he looked across the starlit fields where “every blade of grass was asleep.”
Here, we beheld the wilderness in its lethean repose. Occasionally the cry of a loon would float over the woods from some inland lake, or the hooting of an owl would be heard somewhere in the forest. These, however, seemed rather to add to, than detract from the loneliness that surrounded us. Those who have seen nature in repose will sympathise with me in my feeble attempt to convey an impression of that which is really beyond description.
After the junction of the Clearwater, the Athabaska becomes a stream varying from a quarter to half a mile in width. Some good spruce timber is seen on the way. Asphalt and coal are found along the banks below McMurray. Seams of soft coal of considerable thickness are found in the neighbourhood of Fort McKay, which is used by the blacksmiths at some of the posts.
During our stay at McMurray the first flood from the upper sources of the river overtook us, and on leaving this post the water had risen about two feet. This accelerated our speed, and from here on we were running races with this mountain water. Sometimes we were with it, and then after several hours’ run we would leave it behind till we made another halt, when it would again overtake us. There was no mistaking it, as the colour of the new water was much more muddy than that of the original, which had in its slower course parted with a good portion of its alluvial matter.