in the morning along banks of
a coal-like blackness, loose and friable, with thin cracks and
fissures running in all directions, the forest behind being the
usual mixture of spruce and poplar. By midday we were at the rapids,
by no means formidable, but with a ticklish place or two, and got
to Pelican Portage in the evening, where were several shanties
and a Hudson's Bay freighting station. Here, too, is a well which
was sunk for petroleum, but which struck gas instead, blowing up the
borer. It was then spouting with a great noise like the blowing-off
of steam, and, situated at such a distance from the shaft at the
Landing and from the Point Brule spiracle described, indicated,
throughout the district, available resources of light, heat and
power so vast as almost to beggar imagining.

Mr. Ross having obtained on the 14th the adhesion of the Crees
to the Treaty at Wahpooskow, it was now decided that the Scrip
Commission should make the canoe trip to that lake, whilst Mr.
Laird and party would go on to Athabasca Landing on their way home.
Accordingly Matcheese--"The Teaser"--a noted Indian runner, was
dispatched with our letters to the Landing, 120 miles up the river.
This Indian, it was said, had once run from the Landing to Edmonton,
ninety-five miles, in a single day, and had been known to carry 500
pounds over a portage in one load. I myself saw him shoulder 350
pounds of our outfit and start off with it over a rough path. He was
slightly built, and could not have weighed much over nine stone, but
was what he looked to be, a bundle of iron muscles and nerves.

On the 29th Mr. Laird and party bade us good-bye, and an hour
later we set out on our interesting canoe trip to the Wahpooskow,
a journey which led us into the heart of the interior, and
proved to be one of the most agreeable of our experiences.

Chapter X

The Trip To Wahpooskow.

Our route lay first up the Pelican River, the Chachakew of the
Crees, and then from the "divide" down the Wahpooskow watershed
to the lake. We had six canoemen, and our journey began by
"packing" our outfit over a four-mile portage, commencing with a
tremendously long and steep hill, and ending on a beautiful bank
of the Pelican, a fine brown stream about one hundred feet wide,
where we found our canoes awaiting us, capital "Peterboroughs,"
in good order. Here also were a number of bark canoes, carrying
the outfit of Mr. Ladoucere, a half-breed trader going up to
Wahpo