CHAPTER IX. 

 THE ATHABASCA RIVER REGION. 



We were now traversing perhaps the most interesting 

 region in all the North. In the neighbourhood of McMurray 

 there are several tar-wells, so called, and there, if a hole is 

 scraped in the bank, it slowly fills in with tar mingled with 

 sand. This is separated by boiling, and is used, in its native 

 state, for gumming canoes and boats. Farther up are 

 immense towering banks, the tar oozing at every pore, and 

 underlaid by great overlapping dykes of disintegrated lime- 

 stone, alternating with lofty clay exposures, crowned with 

 poplar, spruce and pine. On the 15th we were still follow- 

 ing the right bank, and, anon, past giant clay escarpments 

 along it, everywhere streaked with oozing tar, and smelling 

 like an old ship. 



These tar cliffs are here hundreds of feet high, of a bold 

 and impressive grandeur, and crowned with firs which 

 seem dwarfed to the passer-by. The impregnated clay 

 appears to be constantly falling off the almost sheer face of 

 the slate-brown cliffs, in great sheets, which plunge into 

 the river's edge in broken masses. The opposite river bank 

 is much more depressed, and is clothed with dense forest. 



The tar, whatever it may be otherwise, is a fuel, and 

 burned in our camp-fires like coal. That this region is 

 stored with a substance of great economic value is beyond 

 all doubt, and, when the hour of development comes, it vnll, 

 I believe, prove to be one of the wonders of Northern 

 Canada. We were all deeply impressed by this scene of 

 Nature's chemistry, and realized what a vast storehouse of 

 not only hidden but exposed resources we possess in this 

 enormous country. What is unseen can only be conjec- 



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