48 ¢ Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 
VEGETATION 
West Side of Coronation Gulf 
Concerning the lower Coppermine river, the observations herewith given 
are mainly from a sledge trip made in February, 1915. The mouth of the river 
is wide and while its east side is formed by a long and broad sandspit shooting 
out from a low, gravelly tundra plain lying at the foot of the clay hills, the 
west side of the mouth is formed by an outrunner from the gravelly clay banks 
up to about 100 feet high which a little farther up the river form the banks on 
both sides. These banks are partly of marine,! partly of glacial origin, and are 
steep and barren, furrowed by melt-water on the side facing the river, but 
otherwise well covered with the typical tundra vegetation. Willows, reaching 
the height of a man, were noticed on the low, gravelly clay banks or islands in 
the river mouth, but outside of them they only occurred of any size on a south- 
exposed, protected place on the west bank of the mouth; and it was only as one 
ascended the large creek valleys coming down to the river that they attained a 
similar or larger size. I followed such a creek valley on the east side a con- 
siderable distance up and found that high, steep clay banks faced the creek 
valley in the same way as along the river itself, but with the difference that the 
willows attained a much closer growth and better development at the foot; in 
especially protected places they reached more than double man-height, and 
some of them had trunks thicker than a man’s arm.2 The predominant species 
of the bushy or tree willows is Salix Richardsonii but some of the fragments 
(catkins, etc.) which I collected there have been doubtfully referred by Dr. C. 
Schneider to S. glauca, so that it would seem that this more southern species 
comes very near the Arctic coast at least in the larger creek and river valleys. 
I collected a few plants sticking up from the snow on the top of the clay hills in 
this creek valley; besides the willows mentioned they included Festuca sp., 
Lupinus sp., Plantago lanceolata, Achillea borealis, Artemisia vulgaris var. Tilesit. 
Lupinus seemed to be much more common on the lower Coppermine than around 
Bernard harbour. 
For the kind of plants that compose the vegetation, I refer to Richardson’s* 
general remarks about the coast between Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers, and 
to the appendix in Richardson’s‘ account of his last expedition and to Hooker’s 
Flora.2 No plants were collected by members of the Canadian Arctic expedition 
along the west side of Coronation gulf and the lower Coppermine river, except 
those which I noticed sticking up from the snow and of which I took samples; 
these species of course represent only a part of those actually present. 
Bloody fall has been well described by the earlier explorers of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries and little that is new has been added since. The east 
side of the gorge is formed of very steep and high cliffs, practically without 
vegetation on the side facing the river; the vegetation is best developed (scrub 
willows, etc.) upon the lower cliffs on the west side. 
Above Bloody fall the river widens out considerably and has high, gravelly 
and sandy cliffs on both sides, generally steep and barren towards the river, 
but often with “foreland” at their foot and with slopes and gullies on the sides, 
the latter with good vegetation (scrub willows, etc.). I also noticed a few 
almost man-high willows on a south-facing slope on the east side of the river 
just below the narrows above Bloody fall. Hanbury who passed here in the 
summer describes the country as flat or undulating and grass-covered, with 
willow beds on either side; he also says that the river winds between low banks 
or in places without definite banks. At Escape rapid, farther inland, the hills 
1 Pleistocene mollusks found by F. Johansen here Feb. 1915. See W. H..Dall, Moilusks, Recent and Pleistocene, 
Report of the Canadian Arctic expedition, 1913-18, voi. VIII, Pt. A. Ottawa, 1919, pp. 26-29. 
2 See photo on B10, in Pt. B, of this volume. 
3 Franklin, J. arrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea. London, 1828, pp. 264-65. 
4 Richardson, J. Arctic Searching Expedition, New York, 1852. 
5 Hooker, W.J. Flora boreali-americana. London, 1833-40. 
