THE ATHABASCA KIVER EEGION 129 



little ash or clinker. These coal beds seem to extend in all 

 directions, on both sides of the river, and underlie a very 

 large extent of country. The inland country for some eight 

 or ten miles had been examined by Sergeant Anderson, of 

 the Mounted Police post here, who described it as consist- 

 ing of wide ridges, or tables, of first-rate soil, divided by 

 shallow muskegs; a good farming locality, with abundance 

 of large, merchantable spruce timber. Moose were plentiful 

 in the region, and it was a capital one for marten, one white 

 trapper, the winter before our visit, having secured over a 

 • hundred skins. 



On the 25th we left our comfortable spruce beds and 

 " long fires," and tracked on to House Eiver, which we 

 reached at nine a.m. Here there is a low-lying, desolate- 

 looking, but memorable, " Point," neighboured by a concave 

 sweep of bank. The House is a small tributary from the 

 east, but very long, rising far inland; and here begins the 

 pack-trail to Port McMurray, about one hundred miles in 

 length, and which might easily be converted into a waggon^ 

 road, as also another which runs to Lac la Biche. Both 

 trails run through a good farming country, and the former 

 waggon-road would avoid all the dangers and laborious 

 rapids whose wearisome ascent has been described. 



The Point itself is tragic ground, showing now but a few 

 deserted cabins and some Indian graves — one of which had 

 a white paling around it, the others being covered with gray 

 cotton — ^which looked like little tents in the distance. Thes6 

 were the graves of an Indian and his wife and four children, 

 who had pitched through from Lac la Biche to hunt, and 

 who all died together of diphtheria in this lonely spot. But 

 here, too, many years ago, a priest was murdered and eaten 

 by a weeghteko, an Iroquois from Oaughnawaga. The 

 lunatic afterwards took an Indian girl into the depths of 

 the forest, and, after cohabiting with her for some time, 

 killed and devoured her. Upon the fact becoming known', 

 and being pursued by her tribe, he fled to ^ the scene of his 

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