APPENDIX 47,9 



region have to be solved by steam sea-going or lighter river 

 craft. 



20th. The chief present conunercial product of the country 

 is its furs, which, as the region in question is the last great 

 fur preserve of the world, are of very great present and pros- 

 pective value, all the finer furs of commerce being there found, 

 and the sales in London yearly amounting to several millions 

 of dollars. 



31st. The Indian population is sparse, and the Indians, 

 never having lived in large communities, are peaceable, and 

 their general character and habits, as given by witnesses, justify 

 a hope that the development of the country, as in the case of 

 the Indians of British Columbia, may be aided by them without 

 great danger of their demoralization and with a reasonable hope 

 that, as in the case of the Indians mentioned, their condition 

 may be improved. 



Your Committee, desiring to refer briefly to the evidence 

 upon which they have based these conclusions, may explain 

 that very early in their investigations they became convinced 

 that very 'little more was known of the northern and eastern 

 portion of the area committed to them for investigation than 

 was known of the interior of Africa or Australia. Arctic 

 explorers had indeed traversed its coast line and descended two 

 of the rivers which, east of the Mackenzie, flow into the Arctic 

 Sea, but the object sought by them was one which had no rela- 

 tion to that of the present inquiry and it is only incidently that 

 their records are now valuable. The knowledge of missionaries 

 and officers of the Hudson's Bay Company is chiefly confined 

 to the watercourses and the great lakes, while scientific explora- 

 tion has not as yet extended north of Great Slave Lake. 



In referring again to the navigation of this region all the 

 evidence has agreed as to the great extent of unbroken naviga- 

 tion, and this fact has been of great use to the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, who have always used the waterways, even when 

 circuitous and difficult, rather than resort to land carriage, and 

 their inland posts to as far north as the Arctic circle are now 

 supplied from their central depot at Fort Garry, with only 114 

 miLes of land carriage, four of this being by tramway at the 

 Grand Eapids of the Saskatchewan, ninety miles of waggon 

 transport from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing, thence by 

 steamer and fiatboat to Fort Smith on the Great Slave Eiver, 

 where twenty miles of waggon road connects the shallow with 

 deep water navigation, and the steamer Wrigley distributes 



