The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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pitch our tents for the night in the suburbs of Burlington, not far from the hotel and post-office. The hotel, which just now is the only building in town, is built of logs. It is not very spacious inside, but it has all the universe outside!
Once a week the mail-carrier passes from Fort Abercrombie to Pembina, and as there are a half-dozen pioneers and half-breeds within a radius of thirty miles of Burlington, a post-office has been established here, which is kept in a shed adjoining the hotel.
The postmaster gives us a cordial greeting. It is a pleasure to hear this bluff but wide-awake German say, "O, I have been acquainted with you for a long while. I followed you through the war and around the world."
From first to last, in letters from the battle-field, from the various countries of the world, and in these notes of travel, it has ever been my aim to write for the comprehension of the people; and such spontaneous and uncalled-for commendation of my efforts out here upon the prairies was more grateful than many a well-meant paragraph from the public press.
While pitching our tents, a flock of pigeons flew past, and down in the woods along the bank of the river we could hear their cooing. Those who had shot-guns went to the hunt; while some of us tried the river for fish, but returned luckless. The supper was good enough, however, without trout or pickerel. Who can ask for anything better than prairie chicken, plover, duck, pork, and pigeons?
Then, when hunger is appeased, we sit around the camp-fire and think of the future of this paradise. Near by is another camp-fire.
I see by its glimmering light a stalwart man with shaggy beard and a slouched hat. The emigrant's wife sits on the other side of the fire, and by its light I see that she wears a faded linsey-woolsey dress, that her hair is uncombed, and that she has not given much attention to her toilet. Two frowzy-headed children, a boy and a girl, are romping in the grass. The worldly effects of this family are in that canvas-covered ox-wagon, with a chicken-coop at the hinder part, and a tin kettle dangling beneath the axle. This emigrant has come from Iowa. He is moving into this valley "to take up a claim." That is, he is going to select a piece of choice land under the Homestead Act, build a cabin, and "make a break in the per-ra-ry," he says.
He will be followed by others. The tide is setting in rapidly, and by the time the railway company are ready to carry freight there will be population enough here to support the road.
We have an early start in the morning. Our route is along a highway, upon which there is more travel than upon many of the old turnpikes of New England for Winnipeg, and the Hudson Bay posts receive all their supplies over this road.
At our noonday halt we fall in with Father Genin, a French Catholic priest, who lives on the bank of the river in a log-hut. He comes out to see us, wearing a long black bombazine priestly gown, and low-crowned hat. He is in the prime of life, was educated at Paris, came to Quebec, and is assigned to the Northwest. He has sailed over Lake Winnipeg, and paddled his canoe on the Saskatchawan and Athabasca.
"My parish," he says, "reaches from St. Paul to the Rocky Mountains." He speaks in glowing terms of the country up "in the Northwest," — as if we, who are now sixteen hundred miles from Boston, had not reached the Northwest!
Our talk with Father Genin, and his enthusiastic description of the Saskatchawan Valley, has set us to thinking of this region, to which the United States once held claim, and which might now have been a part of our domain if it had not been for the pusillanimity of President Polk.
Mackenzie was the first European who gave to the world an account of the country lying between us and the Arctic Sea. He was in this valley in 1789, and was charmed with it. He made his way down to Lake Winnipeg, thence up the Saskatchawan to Athabasca Lake. At the carrying-place between the Saskatchawan and Athabasca rivers, at Portage la Loche, he discovered springs of petroleum, which are thus described: —
"Twenty-five miles from the fork are some bituminous springs, into which a pole may be inserted without the least resistance. The bitumen is in a fluid state, and when mixed with resin is used to gum the canoes. In its heated state it emits a smell like sea-coal. The banks of Slave River, which are elevated, discover veins of the same bituminous quality."1
His winter quarters were near Lake Athabasca, at Fort Chippewayan, more than thirteen hundred miles northwest from Chicago. He thus writes in regard to the country: —
"In the fall of 1787, when I first arrived at Athabasca, Mr. Pond was settled on the bank of the Elk River, where he remained three years, and had as fine a kitchen-garden as I ever saw in Canada" (p. 127).
Of the climate in winter he says that the beginning was cold, and about one foot of snow fell. The last week in December and the first week in January were marked by warm southwest breezes, which dissolved all the snow. Wild geese appeared on the 13th of March; and on the 5th of April the snow had entirely disappeared. On the 20th he wrote: —
"The trees are budding, and many plants are in blossom" (p. 150).
Mackenzie left the "Old Establishment," as one of the posts of the Hudson Bay Company was called, on the Peace River, in the month of May, for the Rocky Mountains. He followed the stream through the gap of the mountains, passed to the head-waters of Fraser River, and descended that stream to the Pacific. He thus describes the country along the Peace River: —
"This magnificent theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals can afford it. Groves of poplars in every shape vary the scene, and their intervales are relieved with vast herds of elk and buffaloes, — the former choosing the steeps and uplands, the latter preferring the plains. The whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear blossoms were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising or setting sun added a splendid gayety to the scene which no expressions of mine are qualified to describe" (p. 154).
This was in latitude 55° 17', about fourteen hundred miles from St. Paul.
The next traveller who enlightened the world upon this region was Mr. Harman, a native of Vergennes, Vermont, who became connected with the Northwest Fur Company, and passed seventeen years in British America. He reached Lake Winnipeg in 1800, and his first winter was passed west of the lake. Under date of January 5th we have this record in his journal: —
"Beautiful weather. Saw in different herds at least a thousand buffaloes grazing" (p. 68).
"February 17th. — We have now about a foot and a half of snow on the ground. This morning one of our people killed a buffalo on the prairie opposite the fort" (p. 73).
"March 14th. — The greater part of the snow is dissolved."2
On the 6th of April Mr. Harman writes: "I have taken a ride on horseback to a place where our people are making sugar. My path led me over a small prairie, and through a wood, where I saw a great variety of birds that were straining their tuneful throats as if to welcome the return of another spring; small animals were running about, or skipping from tree to tree, and at the same time were to be seen, swans, bustards, ducks, etc. swimming about in the rivers and ponds. All these things together rendered my ramble beautiful beyond description" (p. 75).
During the month of April there were two snow-storms, but the snow disappeared nearly as fast as it fell.
One winter was passed by Mr. Harman in the country beyond Lake Athabasca, on the Athabasca River, where he says the snow during the winter "was at no time more than two feet and a half deep" (p. 174).
On May 6th he writes: "We have planted our potatoes and sowed most of our garden-seeds" (p. 178).
"June 2d. — The seeds which we sowed in the garden have sprung up and grown remarkably well. The present prospect is that strawberries, red raspberries, shad-berries, cherries, etc. will be abundant this season."
"July 21st. — We have cut down our barley, and I think it is the finest that I ever saw in any country. The soil on the points of land along this