Bishop Clut, O.M.I., before the Senate committee of 1888, stated that from Fort Smith to Fort Resolution there is a great quantity of beautiful forest, white spruce or ordinary larch. Spruce from two to three feet in diameter is found. The birch of the country is very hard and would make good furniture. It is from birch that they make traineau, buggies, chairs and snowshoes. In the country lying to the south and west of Great Slave lake there is a good deal of forest of beautiful coppice wood, ordinary spruce, and black or red spruce.
The Timber About Great Slave Lake.
Hay river flows into the southwest part of Great Slave lake. Of the country around, Mr. McConnell says: “Grassy and partly wooded plains extend northwards from Peace river and skirt its southern shores. It is the northern limit of the prairie region. Near its mouth the country on both sides is thickly forested with Banksian pine and white spruce to Alexandra falls.”
The country from here east to Slave river is known to be well wooded, but strange as it may seem, the country from Slave river east has never been explored since Samuel Hearne passed through it in 1772, one hundred and thirty-six years ago. Somewhere southeast of the lake, Hearne spoke of a long narrow lake “entirely surrounded with high land which produces a vast quantity of fir trees, but none of them grow to a great height in those parts. Their branches, however, spread wider than those of firs three times their height and thickness do in Europe, so that they resemble an apple tree in shape. They seem rich in tar as the wood of them will burn like a candle and emit as strong a smell and as much black smoke as the staves of an old tar barrel. The under woods were so thick in these parts as to render travelling through them very difficult.” Of the part of Great Slave lake where Hearne crossed it, he says: “The point where we crossed it is said to be the narrowest. It is full of islands most of which are clothed with fine, tall poplars, birch and pines, etc.”
Mr. E. A. Preble, in his report, has this to say of Great Slave lake:—“Great Slave lake lies wholly within the forested region, though some of its eastern affluents drain large areas of treeless country. Its southwestern shores, being watered by rivers coming from the south and southwest, are well wooded, while the northern shores, exposed for most of the year to cold winds from the north and watered by colder streams, are poorly wooded. The soil conditions, also, being more favourable on the southern side of the lake, exert a marked influence on the foresting. The eastern arm of the lake, however, is largely removed from these modifying influences, and the conditions on its northern and southern borders are more nearly uniform.”
Forests North of the Lake.
The country to the north of Great Slave lake has been much more thoroughly examined.
R. G. McConnell (Geol. Rep., 1887-88) wintered at Fort Providence on the Mackenzie and made a winter journey northeast to Fort Rae, on the long arm of the lake that reaches out to the north. From Fort Providence to Birch lake, half the distance across, he crossed the Grand Brulé, the scene of a former destructive fire, wherein he says there were three wide prairies with the intervening timber belts. From here on he crossed first a well wooded country where some excellent spruce was seen, then a more scantily clad country with groves of spruce, poplar, birch and alder, and thence to Fort Rae a thick spruce forest.
J. M. Bell (Geol. Rep., 1904) describes the country along Martin river and chain of lakes emptying into the long northern arm of the lake as thickly wooded with aspen, balsam poplar, canoe-birch, white spruce and Banksian pine.
Mr. Preble made the trip from the north of Great Slave lake to Great Bear lake via the lake, and portage route. August 25, a few days after passing the height of land, he reports:—“The portage track led over rocky ground on the left bank. Favourable spots at the rapid supported a good growth of spruce, with a luxuriant undergrowth of Viburnum pauciflorum, Rosa acicularis, Rubus strigosus, and Vaccinium uliginosum. Since leaving Lake Hardisty I had observed an increased luxuriance in the forest growth, evidently the result of a more favourable soil and the slightly decreased altitude.”