E. Petitot on the Athabasca District. 29 



followed to its intersection with the 61st parallel, the most easterly 

 limit of the district is then defined. This imaginary line here 

 meets a chain of crystalline rocks, belonging to the Lauren tian 

 system, which divides the basin of Hudson's Bay from that of the 

 great interior lakes ; and as this chain is the highest land in this 

 region it serves as a natural boundary between the Athabasca dis- 

 trict and the districts of the English River and Upper Saskatche- 

 wan. The Athabascan frontier leaves this chain a little to the 

 east of La Biche (or Bed-deer) Lake, and follows the 55th 

 parallel to the Bocky Mountains, thus cutting the old district of 

 the Lesser Slave Lake, in which Forts Assiniboine and Jasper are 

 subordinate to Edmonton House, the headquarters of the tipper 

 Saskatchewan. Then following northwards the great Cordillera, 

 which is the natural western limit of the district, the frontier 

 reaches beyond the Mountain Biver Portage, and comes again to 

 the Great Slave Lake by a line passing between the nearly par- 

 allel courses of the Peace and Hay rivers. 



The Athabasca district comprises two great rivers and two 

 great fresh-water basins. The rivers are the Athabasca (better 

 known locally by the Canadian name of La Biche, meaning Bed- 

 deer or Elk Biver) and the Peace Biver (also called " Des 

 Castors " or Beaver Biver). The junction of these two forms the 

 noble stream which, after connecting the Athabasca and Great 

 Slave Lakes, takes the name of the Mackenzie. Its Indian names, 

 which it preserves throughout its whole course, are " Desneze " 

 or Great Biver, and " Na-otcha-Kotcho " or Biver with giant 

 banks. The lakes are the Athabasca (the " Lake of the Hills " 

 of Hearne) and the Great Slave Lake, (in Chipewyan, " Lake of 

 the Crees"). 



To the chief topographical features of this district I propose 

 to add my own observations on the nature of the soil and its pro- 

 ducts, statistics of the population, and some historical speculations, 

 and I shall follow in these the natural direction of the waters, 

 from south-west to north-east. 



I. 



The most southern source of the Athabasca river is in the 

 Bocky Mountains in a little lake at the foot of Mount Brown, 

 16,000 feet high, not far from the sources of the Saskatchewan, 

 Fraser, and Columbia rivers, and a little south of the Yellow 



