Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

One can not but be struck with the lack of enterprise and enthusiasm which marked the relations of Great Britain to her American possessions during this period. The spread of United States settlements had necessitated the establishment of an international boundary line, and in 1818, the 49th degree of north latitude had been fixed by treaty as the limit between the Western States and British America, the St. Lawrence and its lakes remaining, as before, the boundary between Canada and the Eastern States of the Union. But another half-century elapsed before any attempt was made by the British Government to survey and mark this new boundary line. The outlying colonies struggled on, some of them almost entirely cut off from intercourse with the outer world, and many a noble life was lived and lost in the vain struggle for existence. Meantime, as we have seen, the United States were being intersected by railways, and their ocean boundaries were connected by iron bands. California—youngest state of the Union, and a few short years before but an unknown desert—had become the golden link between the East and the West. Yet the owners of a territory as vast, and perhaps as full of great possibilities as the mighty republic itself, still remained in ignorance of the true character of their possessions. Maps there were, but maps made up of sketches filled in on hearsay Indian evidence, and calculated only to mislead the unhappy explorer who should attempt to guide his course by their vague delineations. A change soon came, however, and one as rapid as the course of events which led up to it had been slow. This change may be said to have been inaugurated in 1857, when Captain Palliser started on an expedition, which occupied three years, and resulted in the thorough and just assessment of the economic value of the districts, extending from the United States boundary in N. lat. 49° to the chief rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean.

SASKATCHEWAN STEAMER.

The admission of British Columbia to the newly-formed Dominion of Canada in 1871, the last act of the great political drama alluded to above, was clogged with the condition that a railway should be constructed within ten years “from the Pacific to a point of junction with the existing railway systems in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.” The English, if chary of undertaking new responsibilities, are prompt in acting on them, and the authorities of Canada, now fully alive to the fact that they had to do in a few years what had been done by their neighbors in a half-century, lost not a moment in sending out engineers to survey the ground, and ascertain as rapidly as possible the best route for the promised line of communication. In 1872 the preliminary reports were laid before the Canadian House of Commons, and the same year Sandford Fleming, the engineer-in-chief of the line to be laid down, made an extensive exploration of the districts to be traversed, which added greatly to the general knowledge of the course of the Saskatchewan, Athabasca, and other rivers west of the Great Lakes. This report has been followed by others not less important, and indeed the lengthened survey over which Mr. Fleming presides has become almost as valuable to the geographer as to the statesman and the colonist in its results.

In the month of February, 1875, the source of the Fraser River was found by Mr. E. W. Jarvis, “in a semi-circular basin, completely closed in by glaciers and high, bare peaks, at an elevation of 5,300 feet;” and we can scarcely refuse this fearless traveler a place among our heroes, when we read of nine hundred miles traveled on snow-shoes, the thermometer often being “below the temperature of freezing mercury,” or learn that he “lived the last three days on the anticipation of a meal at his journey’s end.” This same year, 1875, was still further signalized as being that in which the Saskatchewan was first navigated by steam, for in that year a ship of about 200 tons ascended from the Great Rapid to Edmonton, 700 miles higher, and now we learn that this great river is navigated from the neighborhood of Lake Winnipeg to the base of the Rocky Mountains.

FRASER RIVER.

In 1879, very great advances were made by Fleming and his staff in the exploration of the outlying portions of the Dominion; and the Report presented in 1880, together with the Appendices contributed by the various members of the Survey, marks a new departure in North American geography. The extent of territory embraced in the particular expedition referred to extended from the longitude of Edmonton, east of the Rocky Mountains, to Port Simpson on the Pacific. The main object of this survey was to verify the reports of the navigability of Wark Inlet by ocean-sailing ships, and to ascertain how far the tract of country between it and the Skeena River, with the valley of the Skeena itself, were suitable for railway purposes. Its result was the indication of a choice of practicable routes in the districts examined; but the Government, for reasons which, though not obvious, were no doubt well-grounded, decided in favor of the earlier route proposed, namely, that by the Yellow Head Pass and the Burrard Inlet. Thus the great expedition of 1879 was set aside, so far as its main purpose was concerned; but it accomplished much, and has perhaps really served a more practical end, in opening up immense regions barely known before, and providing the student of geography with maps urgently required. Sir J. H. Lefroy admirably expresses our indebtedness to the members who composed the expedition, in an address delivered before the geographical section of the British Association in 1880. He says:—“The final decision of the Canadian Government to adopt Burrard’s Inlet for the Pacific terminus of their railway, relegates to the domain of pure geography a great deal of knowledge acquired in exploring other lines; explorations in which Messrs. Jarvis, Horetzky, Keeper, and others have displayed remarkable daring and endurance. They have forced their way from the interior to the sea-coast, or from the coast to the Peace River, Pine or Yellow Head Passes, through country previously unknown, to Port Simpson, to Burke Channel, to the mouth of the Skeena, and to the Bute Inlet, so that a region but recently almost a blank on our maps, which John Arrowsmith, our last great authority, but very imperfectly sketched, is now known in great detail.” Thus it has happened once more, as we have so often noted in the course of our narrative, that the traveler, foiled in his main purpose, has opened for himself and for the world new scenes by the way; and as we scan the pages of these Canadian reports, pictures rise before us of surpassing loveliness, while we dream of these vast territories as they will be when the glory of the gorge and the mountain pass is varied by the vision of plains covered with corn and dotted with smiling villages.

During the last ten years, another cause has also largely contributed to the opening up of the great West. A dispute between the United States and Canada, as to the exact interpretation of the Treaty of 1818, led to the sending out of a joint commission to settle the matter, and mark out the boundary line between the north-west corner of the Lake of the Woods to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. The Commissioners, most of them able men of science, embodied in their report much interesting geographical information of a supplementary character, the most noteworthy points established being the vast extent of the Great Plains, with their strange, bewildering succession of mirages, rendering surveying operations extremely difficult; and the existence of a chain of salt lakes, with no outlet to the ocean, extending for fifteen miles in an east and west direction, near the very heart of the central watershed of the continent. Nine hundred miles were traversed in this successful trip, and the whole of the boundary line, now finally determined, was marked by stone cairns or earthen mounds, at intervals of three miles on the great plains, and by iron pillars one mile distant from each other for 135 miles through the southern prairie of Manitoba. These solitary landmarks, whether on the rich, fertile lands between the Lake of the Woods and the Pembina Mountains, the prairie steppe extending from the Pembina Mountains to the great Coteau of the Missouri, or the wild semi-desert stretching away from it to the Rocky Mountains, will soon, if we may so express it, be set in frameworks of colonization, for great and mighty are the changes which have taken place within the last few years. Emigration has more than kept pace with the advance of the Canadian Pacific Railway; the Red River settlers, no longer isolated from their kind, are at last enjoying the prosperity so long withheld; the number of settlers has increased rapidly since the opening of two outlets to the ocean for their produce; new settlements in the West are springing up as if by magic; a line of telegraph is completed between the ports on the banks of the Saskatchewan and the chief towns of Canada; while the long inaccessible solitudes of the northern range of the Rocky Mountains echo to the many sounds of the ever-increasing traffic along the line which has at last brought about the long-desired connection between the northern shores of the Atlantic and Pacific.