Sergeant Mellor ascended Buffalo river from Great Slave lake in 1910 and made detours inland on foot at several points for the purpose of getting some idea of the nature of the country, and found the whole region to be of a swampy nature, with here and there a sandy stretch. Along the southern shore of Buffalo lake is a “dreary muskeg country, thicketed with dwarf spruce and riddled with innumerable streams of water, both sulphur and clear.”
Hay River and Resolution.
Sergeant R. Field, in charge of the Chipewyan sub-district, under date August, 1909, reported:—“The gardens at Hay river and Resolution look very promising, especially the potato crop. The Reverend Vale at Hay river informed me that he grew one thousand bushels of potatoes last year on three acres of land, and also splendid cabbages and cauliflowers, besides all other kinds of vegetables. The potato crop at Chipewyan is going to be very poor this year owing to the extremely hot weather and very little rain.”
In his annual report for 1910-11, Superintendent G. E. Sanders, D.S.O., commanding at Athabaska, gives this interesting reference:—“As regards weather conditions the winter of 1910-11 was one of the coldest known, the thermometer at different times in January and February registering 60° below zero at Athabaska, Lesser Slave lake and Fort Vermilion. In the far north the same months were cold, but the thermometer did not go as low, 58° being the severest at Fort McPherson and 40° at Herschell island. Forty below on the coast, however, would be much more trying than 60° below inland. It is interesting to note that Athabaska river and Mackenzie river, one thousand eight hundred miles farther north, froze over within four days of each other, the former on November 8 and the latter on November 4. The ice left the Athabaska on April 22, and the Mackenzie on May 13.”
To the East of the Mackenzie.
It will no doubt be remarked that so far very little has been said with reference to arable land and agriculture in that section of the territory to which this chapter is devoted, east of the actual valley of Mackenzie river itself. This is easily explained.
In the first place, except at Fort Rae on the north arm of Great Slave lake, no attempts at practical agriculture have been made in the eastern division of the region being treated of, for there are no posts there. Fort Confidence and Fort Franklin on Great Bear lake, and Fort Enterprise near the head waters of the Coppermine, were never ordinary trading posts, being merely winter headquarters, deserted by their tenants as soon as travelling was practicable.
Staff and pupils, Church of England Mission, Hay river.
In the second place, the question of the country’s agricultural possibilities have not been considered by the few lightly equipped explorers who have hurried through sections of it intent upon some special mission or other. The only references we find in the journals of such travellers as have ventured through this region in summer, are such as we get in Mr. Preble’s account of his trip via the lake, river and portage route from Great Slave lake to Great Bear lake, when he states that on August 24 “Currants (Ribes rubrum and prostratum) were abundant and ripe” along the route.