The Wild North Land / The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs across Northern North America

by Sir William Francis Butler

To the north of this prairie country, lies the Peace River; south, the Lesser Slave Lake; east, a land of wood and muskeg and trackless forest. The Smoking River flows almost through its centre, rising near Jasper’s House, and flowing north and east until it passes into the Peace River, fifty miles below Dunveyan. From the most northerly point of the fertile land of the Saskatchewan, to the most southerly point of this Smoking River country, is about 100 or 120 miles. The intervening land is forest or muskeg, and partly open.

The average elevation of this prairie above sea level would be under 2000 feet. In the mountains lying west and north-west there are two passes; one is the Peace River, with which we are already acquainted; the other is a pass lying some thirty or forty miles south of the Peace River, known at present only to the Indians, but well worth the trouble and expense of a thorough exploration, ere Canada hastily decides upon the best route across its wide Dominion.

And here I may allude to the exploratory surveys which the Canadian Government has already inaugurated. A great amount of work has without doubt been accomplished, by the several parties sent out over the long line from Ottawa to New Westminster; but the results have not been, so far, equal to the expenditure of the surveys, or to the means placed at the disposal of the various parties. In all these matters, the strength of an Executive Government resting for a term of years independent of political parties, as in the case of the United States, becomes vividly apparent; and it is not necessary for us in England to seek in Canada for an exemplification of the evils which militate against a great national undertaking, where an Executive has to frame a budget, or produce a report, to suit the delicate digestions of evenly balanced parties.

It would be invidious to particularize individuals, where many men have worked well and earnestly; but I cannot refrain from paying a passing tribute to the energy and earnestness displayed by the gentlemen who, during the close of the summer of 1872, crossed the mountains by the Peace River Pass, and reached the coast at Fort Simpson, near the mouth of the Skeena River.

But to return to the Indian Pass, lying west of the Smoking River prairies. As I have already stated, this pass is known only to the Indians; yet their report of it is one of great moment. They say (and who has found an Indian wrong in matters of practical engineering?) that they can go in three or four days’ journey from the Hope of Hudson to the fort on Lake Macleod, across the Rocky Mountains; they further assert that they can in summer take horses to the central range, and that they could take them all the way across to the west side, but for the fallen timber which encumbers the western slope.

Now when it is borne in mind that this Lake Macleod is situated near the height of land between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans; that it stands at the head of the Parsnip River (the south branch of the Peace); and that further, a level or rolling plateau extends from the fort to the coast range of mountains at Dean’s Inlet, or the Bentinck arm on the coast of British Columbia, nearly opposite the northern extreme of Vancouver’s Island; the full importance of this Indian Pass, as a highway to the Pacific through the Rocky Mountains, will be easily understood.

But should this Indian Pass at the head of the Pine River prove to be, on examination, unfit to carry a railroad across, I am still of opinion that in that case the Peace River affords a passage to the Western Ocean vastly superior to any of the known passes lying south of it. What are the advantages which I claim for it? They can be briefly stated.

It is level throughout its entire course; it has a wide, deep, and navigable river flowing through it; its highest elevation in the main range of the Rocky Mountains is about 1800 feet; the average depth of its winter fall of snow is about three feet; by the first week of May this year the snow (unusually deep during the winter) had entirely disappeared from the north shore of the river, and vegetation was already forward in the woods along the mountain base.

But though these are important advantages for this mountain pass, the most important of all remains to be stated. From the western end of the pass to the coast range of mountains, a distance of 300 miles across British Columbia, there does not exist one single formidable impediment to a railroad. By following the valley of the Parsnip River from “the Forks” to Lake Macleod, the Ominica range is left to the north, and the rolling plateau land of Stuart’s Lake is reached without a single mountain intervening; from thence the valley of the Nacharcole can be attained, as we have seen in my story, without the slightest difficulty, and a line of country followed to within twenty miles of the ocean, at the head of Dean’s Inlet.

I claim, moreover, for this route that it is shorter than any projected line at present under consideration; that it would develope a land as rich, if not richer, than any portion of the Saskatchewan territory; that it altogether avoids the tremendous mountain ranges of Southern British Columbia, and the great gorge of the Frazer River; and, finally, that along the Nacharcole River there will be found a country admirably suited to settlement, and possessing prairie land of a kind nowhere else to be found in British Columbia.