ns of lakes by
which you can go from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic without once
lifting your canoe; quaking muskegs--areas of amber stagnant water full
of what the Indians call mermaid's hair, lined by ridges of moss and
sand overgrown with coarse goose grass and "the reed that grows like a
tree," muskrat reed, a tasseled corn-like tufted growth sixteen feet
high--areas of such muskeg mile upon mile. I traversed one such region
above Cumberland Lake seventy miles wide by three hundred long where
you could not find solid camping ground the size of your foot. What
did we do? That is where the uses of a really expert guide came in; we
moored our canoe among the willows, cut willows enough to keep feet
from sinking, spread oilcloth and rugs over this, erected the tents
over all, tying the guy ropes to the canoe thwarts and willows, as the
ground would not hold the tent pegs.

It doesn't sound as if such regions would ever be overrun by
settlement--does it? Now look at your map, seventy miles north of
Saskatchewan! From the northwest corner up by Klondike to the
southeast corner down in Labrador is a distance of more than three
thousand miles. From the south to north is a distance of almost two
thousand miles. I once asked a guide with a truly city air--it might
almost have been a Harvard air--if these distances were "as the crow
flies." He gave me a look that I would not like to have a guide give me
too often--he might maroon a fool on one of those swamp areas.

"There ain't no distances as the crow flies in this country," he
answered. "You got to travel 'cording as the waters collect or the ice
goes out."

Well, here is your country, three thousand by two thousand miles, a
great fur preserve. What exists in it? Very little wood, and that
small. Undoubtedly some minerals. What else exists? A very sparse
population of Indians, whose census no man knows, for it has never been
taken; but it is a pretty safe guess to say there are not thirty
thousand Indians all told in the north fur country. I put this guess
tentatively and should be glad of information from any one in a
position to guess closer. I have asked the Hudson's Bay Company and I
have asked Revillons how many white hunters and traders they think are
in the fur country of the North. I have never met any one who placed
the number in the North at more than two thousand. Spread two thousand
white hunters with ten thousand Indians--for of the total In