Those who travelled in what were known as the North-West Territories before the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were organised, will remember that intoxicating beverages were prohibited by the laws of the Dominion. This “tyrannical rule” obtains even at the present day in this Mackenzie District, and we soon realised that even if the cabinet had not been personally favourable to the free importation of this essential article, it would have been impossible for them to command the confidence of the people unless they passed an ordinance abolishing this legislation. This was at once done, and received the immediate assent of the Lieutenant-Governor.
This bit of pleasantry was continued for some time, till it began to seem almost real, and in some measure to resemble the initial stages of the uprising many years before of Riel on the banks of the Red River. The Indian is not incapable of a kind of dry humour, but, at the same time, he does not always discern whether you are in earnest or merely jesting, and the result was that the Lieutenant-Governor, in the name of the Company, dismissed all his Ministers and resumed the intelligent autocratic control, which he had long exercised over the country.
A Change of Scenery
After remaining about twenty-four hours at Simpson, we resumed our journey at five o’clock in the morning, and at nine caught the first sight of the Rocky Mountains (Nahanni Range) with their snow-capped peaks, which attain a height of 5000 ft. above sea level. This change of scenery was welcomed after six weeks of travel through a vast wilderness of comparatively level land.
The weather had continued quite hot, with only an exception of a day or two, from our start, but whether from the effect of the mountains or not, we experienced a very decided change in the temperature immediately we reached their vicinity, and from this on we suffered no more from the excessive heat, which had been as unpleasant as it was unexpected. We had counted on escaping the usual July heat, but for the greater part it had really been more oppressive and certainly more constant, extending right through the long twenty-four-hour day, than I had ever before experienced.
It strikes the observer as extraordinary that the Mackenzie in its way to the sea from Great Slave Lake should bear off to the west, so far as to necessitate its cutting its way between two ranges of the Rocky Mountains, where a much shorter course and apparently one through a more level country lay open to the east into Coronation Gulf.
I do not know the opinion of geologists, but it seems probable that the original outlet of Great Slave Lake has been changed from this course to the longer one now followed, in the same way as the Niagara has become the outlet of the waters of Lake Huron instead of the Northern River of past ages, which flowed directly across country from the Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario.
At the distance of 136 miles below Simpson, we reach Fort Wrigley. This is a new post; the old one of the same name twenty-five miles above having been abandoned owing to its unhealthy locality. The country about Fort Wrigley is fairly well wooded. I noticed a spruce log, cut in the vicinity which measured twenty inches in diameter.
The Nahanni river, which is a considerable stream, flows from the west and joins the Mackenzie about halfway between Simpson and Wrigley. Just north of it rises Mount Camsell, a snow-clad peak 5000 ft. high.
Below Wrigley the river narrows to from a half to three quarters of a mile in width. This continues for some distance and then widens out as we proceed down the stream. Two noted mountain peaks, Mount Bompas and Mount Wrigley, are seen between Wrigley and Norman. About twenty miles above Fort Norman and on the left side of the river the clay banks assume a very red appearance, and the people use the earth as paint. This condition of the earth has been produced by fire in the coal seams. For several miles along the route the fire is now apparently extinct, but as we reached a point eight miles above Fort Norman, for upwards of two miles along the right bank of the river smoke was distinctly observed from fires still burning far down in the seams of coal. It is worthy of note that Sir Alexander Mackenzie makes mention of these fires in his narrative, as existing in 1789 when he explored and gave his name to the river.