Nepigon River Fishing 



Marquette as being in existence in 1670, 

 though it was afterward abandoned. The 

 religious establishments on this river, how- 

 ever, are much more recent. The mission 

 on Lake Helen was founded by the Jesuit 

 Fathers about 1870, and that on Lake 

 Nepigon some fifteen years ago by the 

 Church of England. 



The Hudson's Bay Company, and its 

 predecessor, the Northwest Company, have 

 been established in the Nepigon region 

 more than a hundred and twenty years. 

 Both the spiritual and the trafficking in- 

 fluence persist among the present scattered 

 Chippewas. Order and authority are rep- 

 resented for them by the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, while they retain the traditions 

 planted with their missions by the Jesuits. 

 There is not, however, that utter subjec- 

 tion to the priests that enslaves the poorer 

 and duller habitants of Lower Canada, 

 threatening an insoluble problem for us, if 

 the question of its incorporation with the 

 Union ever becomes a living one. 



It is unlikely that Nepigon Lake will 

 always miss the settlement invited by its 

 breadths of fertile shore, its mountains of 

 ore, and its exhaustless fisheries. Already, 

 prospecting approaches it ; and nothing 

 forbids building to it from the Canadian 



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