All through the summer, from early May to mid-October, the shores of the lake swarm with wild geese, and the twilight midsummer midnight is filled with the harsh sounds of the cries of the snow goose, or the “wavy” flying low over their favourite waters.
In early days Chipewyan was an important centre of the fur trade, and in later times it has been made the starting-point of many of the exploratory parties to the northern coast. From Old Fort Chipewyan Mackenzie set forth to explore the great northern river, and to the same place he returned when first of all men north of the 40th parallel he had crossed in the summers of 1792–93 the continent to the Pacific Ocean.
It was from New Fort Chipewyan that Simpson set out to trace the coast-line of the Arctic Ocean; and earlier than either, it was from Fond du Lac, at the eastern end of Fort Athabasca, that Samuel Hearne wandered forth to reach the Arctic Sea.
To-day it is useful to recall these stray items of adventure from the past in which they lie buried. It has been said by some one that a “nation cannot be saved by a calculation;” neither can she be made by one.
If to-day we are what we are, it is because a thousand men in bygone times did not stop to count the cost. The decline of a nation differs from that of an individual in the first symptoms of its decay. The heart of the nation goes first, the extremities still remain vigorous. France, with many a gallant soul striking hard for her in the Carnatic or in Canada, sickens in the pomp and luxury of Versailles, and has nothing to offer to her heroes but forgetfulness, debt, or the rack. Her colonial history was one long tissue of ingratitude.
Biencourt, De Chastes, Varrene de la Verendrie, or Lally might fight and toil and die, what cared the selfish heart of old France? The order of St. Louis long denied, and 40,000 livres of debt rewarded the discovery of the Rocky Mountains. Frenchmen gave to France a continent. France thought little of the gift, and fate took it back again. History sometimes repeats itself. There is a younger if not a greater Britain waiting quietly to reap the harvest of her mother’s mistakes.
But to Chipewyan. It is emphatically a lonely spot; in summer the cry of the wild bird keeps time to the lapping of the wave on the rocky shore, or the pine islands rustle in the western breeze; nothing else moves over these 8000 square miles of crystal water. Now and again at long intervals the beautiful canoe of a Chipewyan glides along the bay-indented shores, or crosses some traverse in the open lake.
When Samuel Hearne first looked upon the “Arabascow,” buffalo were very numerous along its southern shore, to-day they are scarce; all else rests as then in untamed desolation. At times this west end of the lake has been the scene of strange excitements. Men came from afar and pitched their tents awhile on these granite shores, ere they struck deeper into the heart of the great north. Mackenzie, Franklin, Back, Richardson, Simpson, Rae, rested here; ere piercing further into unknown wilds, they flew the red-cross flag o’er seas and isles upon whose shores no human foot had pressed a sand-print.
Eight hundred thousand pounds sunk in the Arctic Sea! will exclaim my calculating friend behind the national counter; nearly a million gone for ever! No, head cash-keeper, you are wrong. That million of money will bear interest higher than all your little speculations in times not far remote, and in times lying deep in the misty future. In hours when life and honour lie at different sides of the “to do” or “not to do,” men will go back to times when other men battling with nature or with man, cast their vote on the side of honour, and by the white light thrown into the future from the great dead Past, they will read their roads where many paths commingle.