In 1907, Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, the author and artist, made a trip into the barren lands via Athabaska river, Lake Athabaska, and Great Slave and Great Bear lakes. Describing his trip in a course of lectures, Mr. Seton declared that the barrens were not in reality barren in any sense of the word. Nature had seized every available cleft in the rock, and had massed it with anemones, Athabaska roses, and beautiful flowers of all hues. Between the vast flower stretches the bare rock was covered with rich mosses of varying colours. “In fact,” he said, “it seems that nature began at the barrens with a full palette, and when she got down to the tropical regions there was nothing left in her tubes but green. The scenery surpasses that of the central west in the beauty of the hills and the manifold variety of wild flowers.”
Term “Barren Lands” a Misnomer.
Mr. E. A. Preble gives us this sketch of the scenery of the Barren Lands eastward of the Coppermine:—“Thousands of lakes dot its surface, and they are often bordered by grassy plains and gentle slopes, on which, during the short summer, the bright flowers of a profusion of shrubby and herbaceous plants lend their beauty to the landscape, and prove the appellation “Barren Grounds” to be a misnomer, though in many parts, from the nature of the soil, there is little plant life. Alders (Aldus alnobetula) occur in a more or less dwarfed condition in favourable places well into the treeless area, and several species of willows, some of which here attain a height of five or six feet, border some of the streams as far north as Wollaston Land. These are the only trees which occur even in a dwarfed state on the barren grounds proper.”
Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, in one of his reports, describes the Barren Lands as consisting “very largely of rolling plains, underlain by stony till and covered with short grass or sedge.” He adds:—“Doubtless the ground is permanently frozen a great distance below the surface, and the surface in summer is almost constantly wet, like the plains of Assiniboia and Saskatchewan in early spring. Rounded rocky hills rise here and there through the clay, and on these, as well as often on the more stony parts of the till, the surface is dotted with a thick growth of lichens, such as Alectoria ochroleuca, A. divergens, and Centraria Islandica. Many flowers brighten these plains during the short summer months.”
As the country has been so long known as the Barren Lands, it would at present scarcely be recognized by any other designation, although when the exploitation of its mineral wealth once attracts population, it will some day be known by some other and more suitable name—“Hearne,” for instance, after the cognomen of the first white man who undertook to explore its natural resources.
Authorities differ in their definitions of the limits of the Barren Lands. Some consider the territory coming under that designation as extending much farther south in the vicinity of Hudson bay; others include in the Barren Lands most of the area immediately north of Great Bear lake. Mr. Preble, the most recent scientific explorer to report officially upon the country, under the heading “The Barren Grounds”, includes the area lying to the northward and northwestward of Great Bear and Great Slave lakes. J. B. Tyrrell, M.A., B.Sc., F.G.S., in a paper read before the British Association at its Toronto meeting in 1897 entitled “Natural Resources of the Barren Lands,” confined himself to a roughly triangular area bounded on the north by the Arctic ocean, on the east by the west coast of Hudson bay and Fox channel, and on the southwest by a line extending from the vicinity of Churchill on Hudson bay, northwestward, roughly at right angles to the magnetic meridian, crossing Kazan river at Ennadai lake, Telzoa river at Boyd lake, passing south of Clinton-Colden and Aylmer lakes, across Point lake and down the east side of Coppermine river to within fifty miles of its mouth, and thence striking westward across Anderson river till it reaches the Arctic coast near the mouth of Mackenzie river.
Mr. Tyrrell’s Definition.
According to Mr. Tyrrell, this line follows very closely the line of the mean summer temperature of 50° Fahr. south of which some of the most hardy trees can grow and ripen their fruit, while north of it the summer is not sufficiently long or warm, to allow even the most hardy trees to bring their fruit to perfection.
This portion of the Barren Lands, according to Mr. Tyrrell, has a greatest length from the southeast to northwest of twelve hundred miles; a greatest breadth from southwest to northeast of seven hundred and fifty miles, and an area of four hundred thousand square miles, a region twice as large as the province of Ontario, or more than three times as large as the whole United Kingdom.
It will be observed that Mr. Tyrrell leaves out of consideration in this paper a couple of areas included in the term “Barren Lands” as used in this chapter, namely the country south and southeast of the eastern arm of Great Slave lake, and a triangular piece of country in the angle between the same sheet of water and Yellowknife river. Mr. Tyrrell also considers the Arctic strip of country north of Great Bear lake to the mouth of the Mackenzie as forming part of the Barren Lands.