Monseigneur,—Fort Edmondton or Auguste is the great emporium of the Hudson Bay Company in the districts of Upper Sascatshawin and Athabasca:[247] Forts Jasper, Assiniboine, Little Slave Lake, on the river Athabasca,[248] Forts des Montagnes, Pitt, Carrollton, Cumberland, on the Sascatshawin, depend on it.[249] The respectable and worthy Mr. Rowan, Governor of this immense district, unites, to all the amiable and polite qualities of a perfect gentleman, those of a sincere and hospitable friend; his goodness and paternal tenderness render him a true patriarch amidst his charming and numerous family. He is esteemed and venerated by all the surrounding tribes, and though advanced in age, he possesses extraordinary activity.
The number of servants at Edmondton, including children, is about eighty. They form a {187} well-regulated family. Besides a large garden, a field of potatoes and wheat, belonging to the establishment, the lakes, forests, and plains of the neighborhood furnish provisions in abundance. On my arrival at the Fort, the ice-house contained thirty thousand white fish, each weighing four pounds, and five hundred buffaloes, the ordinary amount of the winter provisions. Such is the quantity of aquatic birds in the season, that sportsmen often send to the Fort carts full of fowls. Eggs are picked up by thousands in the straw and reeds of the marshes.
The greater number of those employed being Catholics, I found sufficient occupation. Every morning I catechized the children, and gave an instruction; in the evening, after the labors of the day, I recited the prayers for the honorable Commander and his servants. I must acknowledge, to the credit of the inhabitants of Edmondton, that their assiduity and attention to religious duties, and the kindness and respectful regard evinced for me, were a source of great consolation during my sojourn of two months among them. May God, who has granted them so liberally and plentifully the dews of the earth, enrich them likewise with those of Heaven; {188} such is the most sincere wish and prayer of a friend who will never forget them.
I visited Lake St. Anne, the ordinary residence of Messrs. Thibault and Bourassa; the latter gentleman was absent. The distance from the fort to the lake is about fifty miles. I mentioned this interesting mission in my preceding letters, and I will now say a word relative to the country.—The surface of this region is flat for the most part, undulating in some places—diversified with forests and meadows, and lakes teeming with fish. In Lake St. Anne alone were caught, last autumn, more than seventy thousand white fish, the most delicious of the kind; they are taken with the line at every season of the year.
Notwithstanding the rigor and duration of the winter in this northern region, the earth in general appears fertile; vegetation is so forward in the spring and summer, that potatoes, wheat and barley, together with other vegetables of Canada, come to maturity. Lake Saint Anne forms one of a chain of lakes; I counted eleven of them, which flow into the Sascatshawin by the small river Esturgeons, or Sturgeon. Innumerable republics of beavers formerly existed there; each lake, each marsh, each river, {189} bears, even to this day, proofs of their labors. What I here say of beavers is applicable to almost all the Hudson territory. When the reindeer, buffalo, and moose abounded, the Crees were then peaceful possessors;—animals have disappeared, and with them the ancient lords of the country. Scarcely do we meet with a solitary hut—but now and then the tracks of some large animal. Seventeen families of Metifs, descendants of English Canadians and savages, have assembled and settled around their missionaries. The Crees have gained the buffalo plains, and they contend for them with the Black-Feet, whose mortal foes they have become.
In proportion as the rigors of winter began to give place to the cheering dawn of spring, simultaneously did my pulse beat to approach near the mountain, there to await a favorable opportunity to cross it, so that I might arrive as early as possible at the mission of St. Ignatius.
The 12th of March, I bade farewell to the respectable Rowan family, and to all the servants of the Fort. I was accompanied by three brave Metifs, whom Mr. Thibault was so kind as to procure me. At this season, the whole country lies buried in snow, and voyages are {190} made in sledges drawn by dogs. Our provisions and baggage were conveyed in two of these sledges; the third, drawn by four dogs, was reserved for me. I found this mode of travelling quite a novelty; and on the glittering ice of the rivers and lakes, it was particularly convenient and agreeable. The third day we encamped near Lake de l’Aigle Noir, which abounds in white fish; on the sixth, we arrived at Fort Assiniboine,[250] built in a meadow on the river Athabasca, where it is two hundred and thirty-three fathoms broad, which breadth it seems to preserve more or less until it leaves the Rocky Mountains, its current is extremely rapid. In the spring it can be descended in three days from Fort Jasper to Fort Assiniboine, a distance of more than three hundred miles. With our sledges we were nine days accomplishing the journey. The bed of the river is studded with islands, which, by their various positions and features, render the prospect very agreeable. Its shores are covered with thick forests of pine intersecting rocks and high hills which embellish and give a touch of the picturesque to the general monotony of the desert.
The principal branches are the Pembina, which measures four hundred and sixty-four {191} feet across—the river des Avirons, one hundred and twenty-eight feet; the river Des Gens Libres, the branch McCloud, and river Baptist Berland, are about eighty fathoms wide at their mouth. The rivers Du Vieux, du Milieu, des Prairies, and des Roches, form beautiful currents.[251] Lake Jasper, eight miles in length, is situated at the base of the first great mountain chain. The fort of the same name, and the second lake, are twenty miles higher, and in the heart of the mountains.[252] The rivers Violin and Medicine on the southern side, and the Assiniboine on the northern, must be crossed to arrive there,[253] and to reach the height of land at the du Committees Punch Bowl, we crossed the rivers Maline, Gens de Colets, Miette and Trou, which we ascended to its source.[254] The river Medicine mingles its waters with those of the Sascatshawin; the Assiniboine and Gens de Lolets with those of the Boucane, a tributary of a la Paix.[255] The waters of the Miette, have their source at the same height, with some branches of the river Frazer, which crosses New Caledonia.[256]
Some years since, the valleys and high forests of Athabasca were exclusively appropriated to the chase by the Assiniboines of the forests: {192} the scarcity of game forced them to quit their land—since their departure the animals have increased in an astonishing manner. In various places on the river, we saw ravages of the beavers which I should have taken for recent encampments of savages, so great a quantity of felled trees was there. Many wandering families of the carrier tribe and Achiganes or Sock Indians of New Caledonia,[257] compelled by hunger, have quitted their country, traversed the last of the mountains, and now cross the valleys of this region in quest of food. They nourish themselves with roots, and whatever they can catch, many of them have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment. In winter they fare well: for then the moose, elk and reindeer are plentiful. The reindeer feed on a kind of white moss, and the paunch is considered delicious when the food is half digested. By way of a dainty morsel, the Indians pluck out the eyes of fish with the end of the fingers and swallow them raw, likewise the tripes with their whole contents, without further ceremony than placing them an instant on the coals, from thence into the omnibus or general reservoir, without even undergoing the operation of the jaws.