“At Fort Reliance, here and there, are to be seen the charred remains of large stumps, indicating the apparent recent destruction of the original forest.
“The largest young trees, which showed thirty-four to thirty-five years’ growth, were from four to six inches in diameter two feet from the ground, and were not of stunted appearance.
“At the north end of Burr lake there is situated a nice grove of white spruce timber, containing trees of ten to twelve inches diameter. It proved to be the last timber of any consequence met with before entering the barren lands, excepting some on the west shore of Artillery lake near Timber bay.
“On the western side of Artillery lake, about ten miles from the south end, the shore is quite well timbered with small spruce and they continue northerly, although thinly scattered, for a distance of twenty miles, eight miles farther north than the last grove on the east shore. There the woods cease entirely.”
It is interesting to recall that Back pointed out that “the pines are said to disappear along Artillery lake.”
Mr. Warburton Pike thus describes the same country at the time he passed through it:—
“Scattering timber, spruce and birch, clothed the sloping banks to the sandy shores of the lakes; berries of many kinds grew in profusion; the portages were short and down hill; and caribou were walking the ridges and swimming the lakes in every direction. A perfect northern fairyland it was, and it seemed hard to believe that winter and want could ever penetrate here.”
Timber of the Far North.
The first reference to the timber of the northern part of the Barren Lands we find in the report of Samuel Hearne, who in 1771, speaking of his discovery of Coppermine river, writes:—“Before I proceed farther on my return, it may not be improper to give some account of the river, and the country adjacent; its productions, and the animals which constantly inhabit those dreary regions, as well as those that only migrate thither in summer, in order to breed and rear their young, unmolested by man. That I may do this to better purpose, it will be necessary to go back to the place where I first came to the river, which was about forty miles from its mouth. Near the water’s edge there is some wood, but not one tree grows on or near the top of the hills between which the river runs. There appears to have been formerly much greater quantity than there is at present, but the trees seem to have been set on fire some years ago and, in consequence, there are at present ten sticks lying on the ground for one green one which is growing beside them. The whole timber appears to have been even in its greatest prosperity of so crooked and dwarfed a growth as to render it of little use for any purpose but firewood.
“Besides the stunted pines already mentioned, there are some tufts of dwarf willows; plenty of Wishacumpuckey (as the Indians call it, and which they use as tea); some jackatheypuck, which the natives use as tobacco; and a few cranberry and heathberry bushes; but not the least appearance of any fruit.