NORTH WEST TERRITORIES 



4280 



NORTH WEST TERRITORIES 



rides. As soon as the southern point of the 

 western land was passed, however, the expedi- 

 tion \vas blocked by an immense ice stream 

 from Melville Island, and the company made 

 its way to the northwest coast of King Wil- 

 liam Island, where Franklin died in June, 1847. 

 The survivors attempted to reach the Great 

 Fish River but, after abandoning their ships, 

 they, too, perished, "forging the last link of 

 the Northwest Passage with their lives." To 

 Sir John Franklin is due the honor of being 

 the first discoverer of the Passage, for the point 

 reached by his ships brought him to within 

 a few miles of the known waters of Northwest- 

 ern America, leading directly to the Asiatic 

 shore. 



When it became a certainty that the Franklin 

 expedition would never return, numerous ex- 

 peditions, about forty in all, were sent out to 

 discover traces of the heroic company, and 

 many important discoveries were made. Of 

 special interest is the voyage of Sir Robert 

 McClure, who in 1850 set out in the Investiga- 

 tor, proceeding to the scenes of the Franklin 

 expedition by way of Bering Strait. In Octo- 

 ber he ascended a hill on the Princess Royal 

 Islands whence he could see the frozen surface 

 of Barron Strait, thus actually viewing the 

 Northwest Passage. In the spring of 1851, as 

 soon as navigation was open, he sailed around 

 the southern end of Banks Land and forced 

 a passage northward to the northern shore of 

 that island, anchoring his ship in the bay which 

 he named God's Mercy. This expedition con- 

 tinue4 the trip eastward on the ice, but the 

 enterprise fell short of complete success, for 

 the ship had to be abandoned. In 1905 Roald 

 Amundsen, the discoverer of the South Pole, 

 made the trip through the Passage from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific on the ship Gjoa, passing 

 between the American mainland and the coast 

 islands to Bering Strait. The Gjoa was the first 

 vessel to sail through the Northwest Passage, 

 and so the year 1905 saw the culmination of 

 the long series of expeditions having as their 

 object the discovery of a water route between 

 the two great oceans. B.M.W. 



Consult Greely's Handbook of Polar Discover- 

 ies ; Amundsen's Northwest Passage. 



NORTH WEST TERRITORIES, all that 

 part of Canada, except the Yukon, lying north 

 of the great provinces. The Territories com- 

 prise all of Canada, including islands, north of 

 the sixtieth parallel, except the Yukon and the 

 northern tip of the Labrador peninsula, which 

 lies in Quebec. The area of this vast region is 



1.2 12. 21 square miles, approximately one-third 

 of the total area of the Dominion. The popu- 

 lation, which was 18,481 in 1911, consists largely 

 of Indians and half-breeds; the number of 

 white men does 

 not exceed 2,500. 

 Practically t h e 

 whole of the Ter- 

 ritories is a plain, 

 broken by numer- 

 ous lakes and riv- 

 ers and sloping 

 toward Hudson 

 Bay and the Arc- 



LOCATIOX MAT 



_. .., To the west is Yukon ; to 



tic Ocean. Ueo- the south, the great empire- 



Willv mrvst of provinces of Manitoba, Sas- 



1 katchewan, Alberta and Brit- 



the section be- ish Columbia. 



longs to the Laurentian Plateau. The largest 

 lakes are Great Bear and Great Slave, and the 

 principal rivers are the Mackenzie, the Copper- 

 mine, Backs and Dubawnt ; the last empties into 

 Hudson Bay, the others into the Arctic Ocean. 



Resources. The Mackenzie River basin is 

 heavily wooded with birch, pine, spruce and 

 other species, and the southern part of the 

 Territories generally has a fair sprinkling of 

 trees. To the north, however, vegetation be- 

 comes stunted, and finally disappears entirely, 

 except for mosses and lichens, in the barren, 

 semiarctic regions. There are extensive de- 

 posits of minerals in various parts, notably coal 

 along the Mackenzie River, salt and coal near 

 Great Slave Lake, and gold and copper farther 

 east. The exploring expedition led by Vil- 

 hjahlmur Stefansson in 1916 discovered large 

 copper deposits along the Coppermine River. 

 These resources are as yet of no commercial 

 value. The chief present asset of the Terri- 

 tories is fur-bearing animals, among which are 

 bears, beaver, otter, mink and ermine. 



Government and History. The government 

 of the great Northwest is largely in the hands 

 of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (which 

 see). The official head of the administration 

 is a commissioner, who resides at Ottawa; he 

 is appointed by the Governor-General in Coun- 

 cil. Until 1869 Rupert's Land and the North 

 West Territory, then including more than 

 double the area of the present Territories, was 

 the property of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 which surrendered its governmental but not its 

 trading privileges for $1,500,000. Between 1869 

 and 1912 the area of the North West Territories 

 was gradually lessened, first, by the creation of 

 the province of Manitoba in 1870, by the sepa- 

 ration of the Yukon in 1898, then by the erec- 



