he over-hanging banks it oozes at
every fissure, and into some of the bituminous tar-wells we can poke a
twenty foot pole and find no resistance. These tar-sands lithologically
may be described as a soft sandstone, the cementing material of which is
a bitumen or petroleum. They are estimated to have a distribution of
over five hundred square miles. Where it is possible to expose a
section, as on a river-bank, the formation extends from one hundred and
twenty-five to two hundred feet in depth, the bitumen being distributed
through the sands.

Twelve miles below the last exposure of the tar-sands and about two
miles above the mouth of Red Earth Creek a copious saline spring bubbles
up, and there is an escape of sulphurretted hydrogen whose unmistakable
odour follows the boat for half a mile. Kipling was right when he said,
"Smells are surer than sounds or sights."

We speak only of what we observe from the deck of a boat as we pass down
this wonderful river. What is hidden is a richer story which only the
coming of the railroad can bring to light.

CHAPTER VI

FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT

"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their humble joys and destiny obscure."

--_Gray's Elegy_.

At seven in the morning of Sunday, June 21st, we enter Lake Athabasca,
and catch our first glimpse of Fort Chipewyan. An acceptance of the
invitation, "Come, shake your leg," has kept the men busy half the night
over a hot sequence of Red River jigs among "pieces" on the lower deck,
and we have this superb sweep almost to ourselves.

The great lake-scape is blue and green and grey and opaline as the sun
strikes it and the surface breaks to a south wind. Ours is the one craft
on this inland sea, but overhead a whole navy of clouds manoeuvres, the
ships of the ghostly argosy doubling themselves in the lake. As we draw
in, the village takes shape. What haunts us as we look at the white
houses, that crescent beach of pinkest sand? We have it! It is a print,
an old woodcut of "Russian America" that we used to pore over in the
days when one wore "pinnies" of flour-sacking, and "hankies" were made
from meal-bags.

At one end of the village are the little smithy of the Hudson's Bay
Company and the pretentious buildings of their establishment. At the
other gibbous horn of this Athens of the Athabasca rise the steeples
and convent-school of the Roman Church, with the free-trading-post of
Colin Fraser. Midway between is the