16 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



A few years before Edmonton had been but a fur trad- 

 ing outpost, but by 1906 it was a city of six or eight 

 thousand people and since then it has grown to sixty 

 thousand (in 1922). The railways did extend west 

 beyond it, but not north beyond it, and so we had to 

 drive by a horse stage chiefly through sandy land covered 

 with jack pine, a hundred miles to the head of river 

 navigation at Athabasca Landing on Athabasca River. 

 This was then a town of some five or six hundred, half 

 the people either pure or part Indian. In Edmonton 

 the northern fur trade had been an important topic of 

 conversation but in Athabasca Landing it was the only 

 topic. 



Below Athabasca Landing two methods of river travel 

 were in use. There was a steamer, the Midnight Sun, 

 and there were flat-bottomed boats called scows, each 

 carrying about eight tons of freight and manned by crews 

 of Cree Indians. The method of travel by scow was more 

 picturesque and in reality more rapid, as our experience 

 showed. I used that method on my second journey down 

 the Mackenzie with great satisfaction. On this first jour- 

 ney I chose the steamer, not having the northern point 

 of view and being prejudiced in favor of steamers, be- 

 lieving in their greater speed and comfort. 



A floating log would have outdistanced the Midnight 

 Sun several times over, for it took us thirteen days to 

 navigate 165 miles down stream. This may be the slow 

 record for down river steamboat navigation. There were 

 many reasons. For one thing, we used to get shipwrecked 

 every so often. Being shipwrecked sounds rather excit- 

 ing but was a tame performance on the Midnight Sun. 

 She was used to it and knew exactly how to do it. Be- 

 cause of her aptitude in sinking, Lee, an expert canoe- 



