The Unexploited West / A Compilation of all of the authentic information available at the present time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada

by Ernest J. Chambers

“The weeds grow gradually thinner and smaller as you approach the sea, and the last little tuft of pines that I saw is about thirty miles from the mouth of the river, so that we meet with nothing between that spot and the sea-side but barren hills and marshes.”

Sir John Franklin on his first journey, in 1819-22, reached the upper part of Coppermine river at Point lake just east of the southern arm of Great Bear lake. He found the “valleys on its border intersected with clusters of spruce trees. On the borders of such of these lakes as communicate with Coppermine river, there are a few groves of spruce trees, generally growing on accumulations of sand.”

Coppermine Valley.

Sir John refers as follows to the timber growths on the small lakes or expansions of the Coppermine as observed during the descent of his party:—

“Red Rock lake is in general narrow, its shelving banks are well clothed with wood, and even the hills, which attain an elevation of four hundred or five hundred feet, are ornamented half way up with stunted pines.”

“At Rock-Nest lake (just north of Red Rock lake) the only wood is the pine, which is twenty or thirty feet high, and about one foot in diameter.

“At Fairy lake the river flows between banks of sand thinly wooded, and as we advanced the barren hills approached the water’s edge.”

West of that part of Coppermine river which is nearest to Great Bear lake, Sir John Richardson in 1826 said that they met with wooded valleys and saw much wood in the valleys far to the west. From the height of land between Coppermine river and Great Bear lake they had an extensive view of a lower and well wooded country.

Of the country above Bloody falls, on the Coppermine, Sir John Franklin writes:—“In the existence of many scattered stumps of decayed spruce fir trees, and the total absence of young plants, one might be led to infer that of late years the climate has deteriorated and that the country was no longer capable of supporting trees so near the sea coast as it had formerly done. The largest tree in the clump in which we bivouacked had a circumference of thirty-seven inches at the height of four feet from the ground. Its annual layers were very numerous and fine and indicated centuries of growth, but I was unable to reckon them.”

Fine Spruce Northeast of Great Bear Lake.