According to Mr. Stewart, birch about the delta of the Mackenzie attains a size of twelve to sixteen inches and is used at Fort McPherson not only for their log buildings, but it is also whip-sawed into lumber for general use, and the birch bark here is used by the Indians for their canoes. For a distance of a few miles from the Peel the country is partially wooded with spruce, birch, balsam-poplar and willow, but after this the only timber is that found skirting the shores of the small streams on the way. A fringe of timber, mostly small spruce, lines the banks of the Bell, but apparently does not extend far back.
Mr. Malcolm Macleod, in his statement to the Senate committee of 1888, said:—“As to the wood of that far north I would observe that it is remarkably hard. I have a pair of snowshoes of peculiar shape, made right and left, of birch for frame, like iron in texture, and though perhaps about a hundred years old, perfectly sound.”
The frozen subsoil of the northern portions of the woodland country does not prevent the timber from attaining a good size, for the roots of the white spruce spread over the icy substratum as they would over smooth rock. As may be expected, however, the growth of trees is slow in the high latitudes. On the borders of Great Bear lake, four hundred years (according to Sir John Richardson) are required to bring the stem of the white spruce to the thickness of a man’s waist. When the tree is exposed to high winds, the fibres of the wood are spirally twisted, but in sheltered places, or in the midst of the forest, the grain is straight and the wood splits freely.
Great Bear Lake Country.
As to the country about Great Bear lake and its tributaries, Sir John Richardson, in 1826, reported that there were pine trees in clumps on Dease river, and the valley to the north was well wooded.
Mr. Malcolm Macleod informed the Senate committee of 1888 that in a letter of Thomas Simpson to his father he says that the wood at Fort Confidence had been found suitable for house and boat building. Doctor J. M. Bell says that the location of Fort Confidence was one of the few well wooded spots in Great Bear lake and the trees are fine specimens worthy of a more southern latitude.
Between Keith bay and Smith bay, Doctor J. M. Bell found a small lake well wooded with white spruce, willows and alders, but none of them of great size. Here he saw the most northern specimen of white birch. The surrounding country was wooded in the valleys. It was, he says, a pleasing change from the cheerless, gravelly, treeless shores, to reach Limestone point thirty miles west of Fort Confidence, with its pronounced shore-line and white spruce in the bay. West of Fort Confidence along the coast of Dease bay for some distance the deep bays are well wooded, but towards Cape McDonnell the land gets barren and continues so till the coast turns east again where the trees improve.
“Some forty-five miles east of Cape McDonnell,” says Doctor Bell, “a good sized river enters, probably the Takaatcho. Near its mouth,” he says, “we found great quantities of driftwood among which were some good-sized trunks. I was rather surprised to see these, but learned afterwards that in the interior the valley of this river is well wooded. All the eastern shore of McTavish bay is wooded. In the valleys in the interior and around the bays and sheltered channels this timber may be of economic importance. White spruce is the prevailing forest tree, although canoe-birch is found as far north as Eda Travers bay, and is sufficiently large in Klarondesk bay to permit of its bark being used for making canoes. Tamarack and both balsam poplar and aspen abound in Klarondesk bay, although not of any great size.”
South of this, the eastern part of the lake, Doctor Bell describes Camsell river and chain of lakes as all well wooded. At Lake Ray Banksian pine was noticed.
Trees a Hundred and Thirty Years Old.