Proving the Hudson's Bay Route. 473 



This is just the point where Captain Boulton's plan fails. The 

 only successful method of proving the length of time Hudson Straits 

 are navigable is by navigating those waters. There is no other 

 way. The observing stations are valuable, and the information 

 obtained by their maintenance will be a material contribution to 

 the knowledge of the world concerning that region, but the reports 

 from them are sure to be unfairly damaging to the Hudson's Bay 

 route, for reasons which I shall endeavour to explain. 



In the first place Captain Boulton's scheme was not practicable 

 because, in finding anchorages, so as to make landings to erect 

 buildings for these stationary parties, it was necessary to ascend 

 bays or inlets a considerable distance from the general outline of 

 the coast, and as a consequence, the vision of the observer is limited 

 to a bay or inlet in which the movements of the ice, etc., have but 

 a faint connection with the question of the navigation of the Strait. 

 Take, for instance, the station at Cape Chidley called Port Bur well. 

 That station is located on the east side of the Cape, at least five 

 miles from the waters of the Strait, on the shore of the north-east 

 extremity of Ungava Bay. It is on the shore of an excellent har- 

 bour, near the entrance to McLelan Strait, which runs through from 

 Ungava Bay to the Labrador Coast. Now, what will this station 

 accomplish ? The answer is not difficult. It will record all meteor- 

 ological phenomena, register the rise and fall of the tides, and keep 

 a record of the movements of the ice, such as when the ice forms in 

 the harbour, when it breaks up, and also, notes may be made of the 

 movements of ice-floes in Ungava Bay for some five or six miles out. 

 But of Hudson Strait the observer will know nothing. It may be 

 open all winter, for ought he can tell. His position will not even 

 enable him to say when the shore-ice of the Strait in that neigh- 

 bourhood breaks up, but he may guess pretty correctly of this by 

 the records of his location. As to great ice-floes passing out of the 

 Strait from the North-west he will not be able to see them, to tell 

 when they are heaviest, when they commenced, the channels they 

 follow, or anything about it. In short, as there is no station on Reso- 

 lution Island, and as the post in question is located five miles south- 

 ward on the shore of Ungava Bay, from the shore of the Strait, 



