30 ^TRANSACT'IONS. 1 897-8. 



have to push our perilous way among the ice-floes of the Arctic 

 slope of our country ; study the Aurora-Borealis race in that 

 part of the world where, in their most gorgeous garbs, they 

 most rapidly flit ere you can point their place ; and endure 

 the monotony of a six months' day and a six months' night 

 as the compass of our year.* With Champlain we would 

 have to traverse the unknown Ottawa, watch the Indians 

 offering tobacco t to their deities on the rocks of the Chaudiere 

 Falls, follow the " trough " to Nipissing, and, after many 

 vicissitudes of fortune, gaze upon the waters of the Mer 

 Douce (Lake Huron) and of the other Great Lakes. 



With Verandrye we would have to make journeys full of 

 perils from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg, and thence 

 along the rivers of the plains. With Sandford Fleming; we 

 would have to cross from "Ocean to Ocean" by unknown 

 paths over the mountain ranges of British Columbia. With 

 Geo. M. Dawson and Wm. Ogilvie, we would have to enter 

 the Yukon region, watch McConnell make a micrometer 

 survey of the Stikine, and Ogilvie secure chronometer longi- 

 tudes for the establishment of the boundary line, and help 

 Dawson name Mounts Lome and Lansdowne and Logan and 

 Jubilee and a score of other places — shoot, with these explorers, 

 the White Horse Rapids, and scale the Chilkoot or the Chil- 

 kat Pass — chilled to the bone. With Dr. Robert Bell we 

 would have to foot it in the inhospitable country of Nipigon 

 or of Baffln Land, or in the hydrographic basin beyond the 

 sources of the Ottawa river, where the Bell river tintinnabulates 

 through golden sands into Rupert Bay, where Mount Lmtrier 

 lifts high its crest, and where Lake Beatrix recalls Lord Lans- 

 downe's gentle daughter and her brilliant marriage ceremony 

 of a month ago. Under the guidance of J. B. Tyrrell we 

 would have to penetrate the Barren Lands and discover 

 and name in 1893 ^^^ Geikie River, 900 miles long, 

 " in honor of Professor James Geikie of Edinburgh, who has 

 done so much to foster the study of glacial geology." 



*For the effect of these voyages on English literature see Sedgwick, 

 Atlantic Monthly, March, 1898. 



tMr. Moncnre Conway says that a true history of tobacco would be 

 a history of English and American liberty. 



jSir Sandford Fleming, K.C.M.G., gave many of the place-names 

 along the Intercolonial Ry., named all the stations along the 0. P. R. 

 from East of Lake Superior to Winnipeg and is memorized in the place- 

 -name Fleming in Assiniboia. 



