This devoted woman first went into the country upwards of forty years ago, where she became instrumental in organising this and several other schools during a residence there of more than thirty years. She was at this time making a visit of inspection to them, intending to return before the season closed, to the home of her novitiate, the Convent of the Grey Nuns of Montreal.
The banks of the river here are about thirty feet high. The land is level and the soil a rich clay loam, and this is the general character of the soil along the whole of this great river. In the Mission garden here were found at this time peas fit for use, potatoes in blossom, tomatoes, rhubarb, beets, cabbages, onions, in fact about the same type of kitchen garden as would be seen a thousand miles farther south. Besides the vegetables, were cultivated flowers and also fruit such as red currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries and saskatoons, and more surprising still, near by, was a small field of wheat in the milk, the grain being fully formed, the seed of which had been sown on May 20. I was anxious to know whether this grain would ripen, and was fortunate enough to learn later from one of the passengers, who, returning by the Wrigley, visited this field again on July 28, that it had been harvested before the latter date, probably about two months after the sowing. This seems almost incredible to those who live in lower latitudes, but when we remember that during this whole period the earth had been subjected to almost constant sunlight and heat, coupled with constant moisture from the frozen ground beneath, the reason for its rapid, hot house growth is obvious.
FORT PROVIDENCE ON THE MACKENZIE RIVER
Leaving Fort Providence at 10.40 A.M. we soon entered “The Little Lake,” one of the numerous expansions of the Upper Mackenzie, and at 10 P.M. reached a point known as “The End of the Line,” so named from being the place where the boatmen coming up the river could dispense with the tracking line. As the river widens above this point, the current decreases so that boats and canoes can be propelled without outside assistance, while below here till the river widens again near its mouth, a distance of over 800 miles, the current is too strong for the general use of oar or paddle, and the line is necessary for the greater part of the distance. With no interruption from rapids or delay from darkness and assisted by the current, we reached Fort Simpson on the following morning at seven o’clock, the run from Providence, 161 miles distant, having been made in about twenty hours.
Fort Simpson is 1078 miles distant by the route we had taken from Athabaska Landing or 1175 miles from Edmonton. The latitude is 61° 52´ N.; in other words it is 900 miles due north of the international boundary. It is prettily situated on the left bank of the Mackenzie just below the mouth of the Liard. Evidently the waters of the latter stream have no filtering basin such as the Mackenzie has in Great Slave Lake, for instead of the clear waters through which we have passed so far on the Mackenzie, we see this great tributary coming from the west carrying down a segregated mixture of water and yellow soil which perceptibly changes the colour of the Mackenzie from here all the way to its mouth. We saw no more the clear sparkling waters of a greenish blue, so similar to that of the ocean, that had been before our eyes for the last 300 miles. The banks of the river at Fort Simpson are about thirty feet high and the stream here must be at least two miles wide.
Though the hour of our arrival was early, the bank was lined with the men, women and children of the village, all apparently delighted to see again the return of the Wrigley. Among others I noticed a well-dressed white man hurrying down from the Hudson Bay Company’s store, evidently looking for some one among the passengers. Though I had never seen him before, I at once surmised that this was Charlie Christie, whose wife was buried at Edmonton a few days before our departure. During the whole of our journey the thought of the message we were carrying to the expectant husband was ever with us, and the nearer we approached his home, the sadder seemed this message. How the information was to be broken to him had been talked over many times, but with his hurried steps up the gang plank and eager inquiry if his wife were aboard, evidently disappointed at not seeing her among the passengers, all plans were forgotten and the answer to his inquiry was in a few words which, though uttered in a sympathetic tone, went like a bullet to the heart of the poor man who had waited through the long months of the former autumn, winter and spring for the return of the mother of his children. Such is one of the tragic phases of life in this wilderness.
I have mentioned that Fort Simpson is about 900 miles in a due course north of the international boundary, and I repeat it in connection with the fact that the great staple of our north-west possessions is grown here, to a sufficient extent to show that we may, in calculating the width of the wheat zone, reckon it at least that width from north to south. I do not of course mean that all the land lying between the forty-ninth parallel and this latitude should be considered arable, but it is something to know that the climatic conditions up to this latitude are not too severe for the production of this cereal.
The soil resembles that at Fort Providence and the vegetable gardens are similar to those seen there. The increased sunlight of the summer months as we proceed north counterbalances the disadvantages of the higher latitude. This, however, does not continue indefinitely. Even at points far south of Simpson the frost never leaves the ground at certain depths and this depth decreases till it approaches so near the surface in the far north as to prevent the ripening of either cereals or vegetables.
Fort Simpson has been regarded for many years as the most noted of the H.B. Company’s posts in the north, and, though it has now, I believe, lost some of its importance, it is still a centre of trade for a wide district of country.