FORT RAE 6 g 



main route and is usually visited on but one inward trip, the 

 second, but for the same reason as at Resolution the store was 

 empty, and goods must be had to secure the furs which the 

 Indians were preparing to carry in large canoes to the free 

 traders across the lake. 



Rae is situated at the extremity of a peninsula extending 

 from the east shore nearly half way across the arm, there about 

 five miles wide. Cliffs of a compact yellowish limestone rise 

 to a considerable height 1 and furnish the only exposures of 

 Paleozoic rocks to be found on the east shore. The arm 

 marks in a general way the western limit of the Archaean, but 

 two isolated granite hills stand on the west shore, south of the 

 fort. Five miles eastward, La Grosse Roche, the only eleva- 

 tion east of the arm, rises in a rugged granite ridge, on the 

 eastern face of which the eagles find a nesting place. The nar- 

 row bays from the lake penetrate almost to the base of the 

 precipice, and separate the low, rounded, granite hummocks 

 into a multitude of islands. 



The "Mountain" was formerly an island; the Dog Rib name 

 — Nishy-ku 11 signifies Island-hill post. The channel was filled 

 twenty years ago, and is now dry and overgrown with willows. 

 The timber has been stripped from the hill for fuel until it is 

 now little more than a barren rock. Wind-swept at all seasons, 

 five miles from fuel, which must be hauled with dogs, Rae is not 

 an attractive spot, its only redeeming feature being the unfail- 

 ing fishery before its doors. The country about Rae is wooded; 

 the timber on the east shore is of little value for building pur- 

 poses. Fair-sized spruce and banksian pine is obtainable from 

 the west shore which soon rises to a plateau with innumerable 

 ponds and muskegs, and some groves of — for that region — 

 excellent timber. 



Two hundred yards from the big house, on the shore of a 

 little cove called Sandy Bay, a few crumbling ruins of clay and 

 stone chimneys mark the site of an "old fort," abandoned so 

 long ago that nothing is known by the present inhabitants con- 

 cerning it. Another fort once stood near the Big Point, 

 twenty-five miles south, and still another 2 had been established 



1 Two hundred and twenty feet according to Captain Dawson. Observa- 

 tions of the International Circumsolar Expedition, Rae, p. xi. 



'Original Fort Providence. Masson, I,. R., Les Bourgeois, Vol. I, p. 40. 



