TKANSACTIO'S OF SECTION E. 649 



communication on tlie plains, is a fact which would have given great gratification 

 to their excellent author." j. t i i. r i.u 



The final decision of the Canadian Government to adopt Burrard s Inlet lor the 

 Pacific terminus of their railway, relegates to the domain of pure geography a 

 great deal of knowledge acquired" in exploring other lines : explorations in which 

 Messrs. Jarvis, lioretskv, Keefer, and others, have displayed remarkable darmg and 

 endurance. They have forced their way from the interior to the sea-coast or from 

 the coast to the" Peace Eiver, Pine or Yellowhead Passes, through country pre- 

 viously unknown, to Port Simpson, to Burke Channel, to the mouth of the Skeena, 

 and to Bute Inlet, so that a region but recently almost a blank on our maps, which 

 John Arrowsmith, our last great authority, left very imperfectly sketched, is iiow 

 known in great detail, and 1 regret to add, the better known, the less admired. The 

 botany has been reported on by Mr. Macoun, and the geology by Dr. Dawson, 

 jm-i passu with its topography. I have great hope that the Section will receive 

 from the last-named traveller in person some account of his many arduous 

 journeys in the prosecution of geological research. Of these, the latest is the 

 exploration of Queen Charlotte Islands, a part of the British possessions, very 

 little known to most of us, although we had a communication on the subject_ in 

 1868. He regards them as a partly submerged mountain chain, a continuation 

 north-westward of that of Vancouver's Island and of the Olympian Mountains in 

 Washington Territory. An island, loG miles long and 56 wide, enjoying a tem- 

 perate climate, and covered with forests of timber of some value (chiefly Abies 

 Menziesi), is not likely to be left to nature much longer. But the customs of the 

 natives in regard to the inheritance and transfer of land are unfavourable to settle- 

 ment, and will demand just and wise consideration when the hour comes. It is as 

 much private property as any estate in Wales. 



Mr. Dawson's report contains a vocabulary of the language, wluch presents this 

 peculiarity, that the words expressing family relationship vary with the speaker. 

 Thus ' father ' said by a son is haimq ; said by a daughter, is Jiah-ta. _ ' Son, 

 said by a father, is keet ; said by a mother, is kin. Evidently at some period the 

 mothers were captives of a different tribe. It would be difficult to produce on the 

 globe a more conspicuous example of the beneficent effect of missionary influence, 

 combinino industrial with religious instruction, than has been presented by the 

 Tsmipsheean Indians at Metla Katla, under Mr. Duncan, a layman commissioned 

 by the Church Missionary Society. 



I must now call vour attention to the remarkable explorations, little known 

 in this country, of "I'Abbe Petitot, also a lay missionary (frere oblat) of the 

 Roman Catholic Church, in the Mackenzie River district, between Great Slave 

 Lake and the Arctic Sea, a region which that Church has almost made its own. 

 Starting sometimes from St. Joseph's mission station, near Fort Resolution, on 

 Great Slave Lake, sometimes from S. Theresa, on Great Bear Lake, sometimes 

 from Notre Dame de Bonne Esp^rance on the Mackenzie, points many hundreds of 

 miles asunder, he has on foot or in canoe, often accompanied only by Indians or 

 Esquimaux, again and again tra^-ersed that desolate country in every direction. 

 He has passed four winters and a summer on Great Bear Lake, and explored 

 every part of it. He has navigated the Mackenzie ten times between Great Slave 

 Lake and Fort Good Hope, and eight times between the latter post and its mouth. 

 We owe to his visits in 1870 the disentanglement of a confusion which existed 

 between the mouth of the Peel River (R. Plum^e) and those of the Mackenzie, 

 owing to their uniting in one delta, the explanation of the so-called Esquimaux 

 Lake, which, as Richardson conjectured, has no existence, and the delineation of 

 the course of three large rivers which fall into the Polar Sea in that neighbour- 

 hood, the ' Anderson,' discovered by Mr. Macfarlane, in 1859, a river named by 

 himself the Macfarlane, and another he has caUed the Ronciere. Sir John 

 Richardson was aware of the existence of the second of these, and erroneously 



' The words, read by Archdeacon Hunter, are ' oomah reaskemow pache oonahne 

 aetabmoo,' and their purport is a direction. ' This road, come, oonahne flee thou.' 

 He cannot make out oonahne. 



