19093 Prince Rupert 



Nass, a stream a mile or so wide at its mouth and Nass River 

 with sloping walls almost as high. At the little village andthe 

 of Nass Bay hundreds of steelhead averaging seven- 

 teen pounds each were stacked up like cordwood, 

 waiting to be frozen and shipped to London or 

 Sydney. 



Port Simpson, a frontier settlement just south of 

 Nass Bay and inhabited mainly by Indians, lies on a 

 pleasant wooded slope above a deep and sheltered 

 harbor. It is nearer to Japan by hundreds of miles 

 than Seattle or San Francisco, and was to have been 

 the Pacific terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway of 

 Canada. But the Indians, badly advised, demanded 

 an inordinate price for their rights, and speculators 

 bought up the surrounding lands. The railroad 

 builders then selected an area a few miles to the south 

 on another excellent anchorage, there creating a town 

 which they named Prince Rupert. The new location Prince 

 was unfavorable in one respect, it being traversed Ru ^ ert 

 north and south by thin parallel strata of very hard 

 mica schist set on edge and separated by narrow deep 

 gullies worn by ice in the softer intermediate rocks; 

 these depressions, filled with water and moss, are 

 from ten to thirty feet in depth and not much wider. 

 By dint of blasting and grading, however, a tolerable 

 town site was prepared at a cost vastly less than that 

 which would have been involved in the purchase of 

 Port Simpson. At the time of our visit the road had 

 reached Hazelton in the mountains, whence it was to 

 follow down the water grade of the Skeena to Port 

 Essington and Prince Rupert. 



Widely honored all along the coast of British Father 

 Columbia was the rector of the Anglican Mission at Hogan 

 Port Simpson, huge William Hogan, six feet six in 



C 267 ] 



